FOIA F-2025-28917, filed September 17, 2025, specifically sought:

“All communications and records concerning U.S. citizen Kelvin Blas, stranded in Togo, specifically including but not limited to:

• Internal emails, memoranda, cables, or other communications between U.S. Embassy Lomé (Consular Section) and the Bureau of Consular Affairs (Washington, D.C.) referencing or discussing Mr. Blas.

• Notes, entries, and documents maintained in Mr. Blas’s consular case file.

• Correspondence between consular officials and other U.S. government entities concerning Mr. Blas.

• Any reports, incident logs, or case status updates referencing Mr. Blas during this period.”

The request covered January 1, 2020 through present. It sought documentary evidence of State Department actions—or failures to act—regarding an Army veteran stranded abroad.

WHAT WAS PROVIDED INSTEAD

The State Department provided 20 pages:

Pages 1-16: Redacted copies of emails between David Burger (Kelvin’s advocate) and Brian Sells, a State Department official. These emails were sent TO David Burger—he already had them. The State Department simply returned his own correspondence with officials’ names redacted.

Pages 17-20: The fabricated Welfare & Whereabouts summary created November 25, 2025.

What was not provided:

• Any internal communications between Embassy Lomé and Washington, D.C.
• Any case file notes or entries created by embassy personnel
• Any correspondence with Department of Defense, VA, or other agencies
• Any incident reports (including the November 11 assault)
• Any status updates or welfare check documentation
• Any evidence that consular officials actually investigated Kelvin’s situation

The State Department claimed this 20-page response constituted a “thorough search” and closed the FOIA on November 27, 2025.

THE DOCUMENT SHELL GAME

State Department’s response to FOIA F-2025-28917 reveals a different kind of obstruction; one that technically complies with FOIA while avoiding transparency entirely.

The request was specific: internal communications between Embassy Lomé and the Bureau of Consular Affairs, case file notes, correspondence with other agencies, incident reports, and status updates.

The response delivered three categories of documents:

Category 1: Your Own Documents Returned
Pages 1-16 consisted of David Burger’s emails to Brian Sells from February-May 2020. These weren’t internal State Department communications—they were emails Burger had sent TO the State Department. The agency simply photocopied his own correspondence, redacted officials’ names using (b)(6) privacy exemptions, and returned them as a “FOIA response.”

Burger already had these emails. He sent them. Returning them accomplished nothing except padding the page count.

Category 2: Your Own Summary Returned
Buried in the response was a document Burger had sent to State Department in June 2025—a case overview he’d created summarizing Kelvin’s situation, military service, and stranded status. This document included references to Ambassador Stromayer’s alleged “Americans aren’t Black” statement.

The State Department had possessed this documentation for months. Instead of investigating the racial discrimination allegation, they photographed Burger’s summary and included it in the FOIA response as if it were their own record.

Category 3: Fabricated Records Created
The only document the State Department actually created was the November 25, 2025 Welfare & Whereabouts summary—manufactured eight days before FOIA delivery, backdated to June 16, containing wrong name, wrong age, wrong letterhead, and blank activity logs.

What remained absent: Any actual internal State Department communications.

This is the FOIA shell game. When pressed for internal records that would document five years of abandonment and racial discrimination, State Department:

• Returned the requester’s own documents
• Manufactured fake records to pad the response
• Claimed this constituted a “thorough and complete search”

Where are the actual internal records? Specifically:

From Embassy Lomé Officials:
– Brian Sells’ emails with supervisors after the Stromayer incident
– Daniel Neptune’s case notes from his tenure as Acting Consular Chief
– Incident reports from the November 11, 2025 assault
– Status updates and welfare check documentation (March 2020-November 2025)

From Washington DC Officials:
– Carlos Hernandez’s internal communications about the mysterious October 2025 document he sent unsolicited (RB_OCS2025008939-Burger.docx)
– Records about “The File” created by Chargé d’Affaires Hawkins and passed to Chargé d’Affaires Michaels

From Any State Department Source:
– Correspondence with Department of Defense, VA, or other agencies
– Case file entries and management communications
– Any documentation of actual welfare checks or status inquiries

They don’t exist in this FOIA response—not because they don’t exist, but because providing them would document systematic abandonment, racial discrimination, and institutional cover-up.

Instead, State Department gave David Burger his own documents back, added one fabricated record with forensic evidence of fraud, then closed the request twice to prevent appeals challenging the inadequacy.

This isn’t transparency. This is obstruction with paperwork.