This is not the first time the State Department has obstructed transparency requests regarding Sgt. Blas.

In November 2025, Covenant for Forgotten Warriors documented a pattern of improper FOIA closures involving multiple requests for Blas-related records. Several requests were closed administratively without determinations, without records, and without explanation.

The December 8 letter closing nine FOIAs simultaneously represents an escalation of this pattern. Rather than process requests individually on their merits, the State Department appears to have implemented a blanket closure strategy for Covenant’s FOIA requests.

The selective acknowledgement of appeals—acknowledging six while ignoring three from the identical batch—suggests the agency is not simply closing requests en masse, but actively managing which appeals enter the formal review process.

This level of coordination requires intent. Random administrative errors don’t produce such clean patterns.

What They’re Protecting

At the center of this obstruction campaign sits F-2025-28025: the Hawkins/Burleson file.

This is the request the State Department responded to ten days late, routed to spam, and for which they’ve “lost” an appeal that sat unprocessed for 90+ days. This is the file containing remarks from a former U.S. Army commanding officer that reportedly influenced how U.S. Embassy officials treated a stranded American veteran.

The question raised by this file is profound: Did U.S. Embassy staff allow a former commanding officer’s assessment—provided years after the fact, from thousands of miles away—to override their duty to assist an American citizen in distress?

If the answer is yes, it would explain why the State Department has fought so hard to keep this file hidden. It would suggest that embassy officials prioritized the opinion of a former military officer over their own consular responsibilities. It would mean that Sgt. Blas’s six-year ordeal in Togo may have been prolonged by bias imported into the embassy’s file by someone with no current connection to his case.

The State Department’s extraordinary efforts to obstruct F-2025-28025—the late response, the spam routing, the 90-day “lost” appeal—suggest this file contains information the agency desperately wants to keep from public view.

The Implications for FOIA Transparency

The Freedom of Information Act exists to prevent exactly this kind of selective transparency. Agencies cannot lawfully pick and choose which requests to process based on whether they like the requester or fear the content.

Yet that is precisely what the State Department’s pattern suggests: a systematic effort to obstruct FOIA requests from a veteran advocacy organization seeking accountability for how the government treats stranded Americans.

If government agencies can “lose” appeals that are demonstrably filed, close requests without determinations, and selectively acknowledge appeals from the same batch, then FOIA becomes meaningless. The statute’s deadlines, appeal rights, and processing requirements exist to prevent agencies from simply ignoring requests they find inconvenient.

The State Department has violated all three.

This pattern also raises questions about how the State Department treats FOIA requests from other advocacy organizations, journalists, and transparency groups. If Covenant for Forgotten Warriors’ appeals can disappear for months, who’s else can?

What Happens Next

Covenant for Forgotten Warriors has now provided the State Department with documented proof of the September 24 appeal for F-2025-28025, including email headers and timestamps. The organization has also outlined the pattern of selective acknowledgements, duplicate closures, and “lost” appeals across multiple FOIAs.

The State Department has been given seven days to:

• Confirm receipt of all appeals
• Provide expected processing timelines
• Explain why appeals were “lost” for 90+ days
• Explain why appeals from the same batch were selectively acknowledged
• Explain how F-2025-30284 was closed on two different dates

Whether the agency will provide substantive answers remains to be seen.

What is certain is this: the State Department’s pattern of obstruction has now been documented in detail. Every “lost” appeal, every selective acknowledgement, every suspicious closure is now part of the public record.

Government agencies that play games with transparency should remember that journalists document patterns. And once a pattern is documented, it becomes very difficult to dismiss as coincidence.

The State Department has spent months trying to hide records about Sgt. Kelvin Blas. In doing so, they’ve created a different story—one about their own willingness to obstruct accountability.

That story is now public.

Marcus Hartwell is an investigative journalist covering government accountability and transparency issues for True Signal Media.