The FOIA obstruction isn’t the story. It’s the cover-up of the story.

True Signal Media has obtained evidence pointing to far graver allegations involving Sgt. Blas’s case:

• Physical assault by embassy security on November 11, 2025, witnessed by multiple civilians and embassy staff—who knew they were being watched and escalated to violence anyway
• Human trafficking operations connected to his stranding in Togo
• A murder-for-hire plot
• Theft of his commercial shipment worth millions
• A fraudulent death declaration filed December 9, 2025 by an individual claiming authority from the U.S. Embassy

The December 8 FOIA purge happened one day before someone claiming embassy authority declared Blas deceased in an apparent attempt to steal his assets—and just 27 days after the embassy physically removed and threatened him while knowing their conduct was generating public criticism.

Embassy staff weren’t ignorant of the scrutiny. They discussed “tarnishing the image of the embassy on the internet” internally. They knew advocacy organizations were documenting their abandonment of a veteran. They escalated to physical force anyway—suggesting they believed they could suppress both the veteran and the accountability efforts targeting them.

These allegations will be detailed in subsequent installments of this investigation. But the State Department’s frantic effort to prevent disclosure of even basic communications and case files suggests officials know exactly how damning the full story will be.

Who Authorized the Cover-Up?

The systematic nature of the obstruction raises accountability questions that reach beyond FOIA processing:

What role has Supervisory Government Information Specialist Ennelle Debrosse played in coordinating obstruction from the September 11 unmonitored email response through the December 8 mass closure?

Who ordered the coordinated closure of nine FOIA requests on a single day?

What role did senior State Department officials play in establishing a policy of systematic denial for Blas-related requests, and what did current Chargé Richard C. Michaels do after being briefed with Hawkins’s file?

Why did the September 11 response come from an unmonitored email address that prohibited replies, rather than from the three monitored addresses where the FOIA was originally sent?

Why does the PAL system still show F-2025-30611 as “assigned for processing” 18 days after the State Department closed it with “no records”—proving either the search was never conducted or the closure was fraudulent?

What is in “the file” that former Chargé Ronald E. Hawkins Jr. created in 2024 and passed to current Chargé Richard C. Michaels, and why is the department so determined to prevent its disclosure?

What did Ambassador Stromayer know about Blas’s situation during his tenure, and what communications exist that the department now claims don’t exist? Why did Stromayer allegedly tell Blas “Americans aren’t Black” and threaten him with security removal when the veteran sought help in 2020?

How does the November 11, 2025 embassy incident connect to the December 9 fraudulent death declaration, and why were FOIA requests about that incident among those killed on December 8?

Who authorized the guard to physically remove Blas from embassy property on November 11, and who is “the secretary” who reportedly ordered him declared “not welcome”?

Why was the regular security guard replaced with Abdulai Majeed shortly before the November 11 incident—was the previous guard deemed “too accommodating” toward a stranded American veteran?

Where is the CCTV footage, visitor logs, and security incident reports from November 11 that should exist as mandatory documentation of physical force against a U.S. citizen?

Did embassy staff monitoring online advocacy about the Blas case influence the decision to escalate from passive denial to physical force—and is the November 11 assault retaliation for public criticism?

Who authorized threatening Blas with arrest if he returned without physically holding his passport—despite the embassy knowing his passport was confiscated by Togolese authorities?

Appeals Pending, Oversight Escalating

Covenant for Forgotten Warriors has filed formal challenges to all nine December 8 closures, demanding adequate search affidavits under penalty of perjury and threatening referral to the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) if the stonewalling continues.

The veteran advocacy nonprofit has also filed appeals with the Department of Veterans Affairs for similar obstruction tactics, including two FOIAs closed with false claims about missing responses despite documented evidence of timely replies.

The pattern of obstruction across multiple federal agencies—and the coordinated tactics used against a nonprofit organization advocating for an abandoned veteran—suggests this isn’t bureaucratic incompetence but deliberate institutional resistance to accountability.

Embassy staff knew they were under scrutiny when they escalated to physical force on November 11. State Department officials knew they were facing oversight threats when they executed the December 8 mass closure. They proceeded anyway—a calculated bet that they could suppress both the evidence and the advocates demanding answers.

That bet is failing.

Coming Next

Part 2: Physical assault, racist denial, and systematic abandonment—how Embassy Lomé treated a starving Army veteran from 2020 through the November 2025 attack.

Part 3: The evidence of human trafficking operations and the network that stranded an Army veteran in West Africa for six years.

Part 4: Murder-for-hire plots, fraudulent death declarations, and the December 2025 attempt to steal substantial assets.

Part 5: How multiple federal agencies coordinated to abandon one of their own.

Part 6: How federal agencies treat FOIA requests differently when they come from nonprofit advocates versus news organizations—and what happens when both start asking the same questions.