DOD Circulated Mobile Now Critique to Senate Offices Soon After 2015 Draft Introduction
DOD began “circulating among some members” of Congress feedback on the first November 2015 draft of Mobile Now within days of the draft spectrum bill’s unveiling, according to the responses to a Freedom of Information Act request that Communications Daily…
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filed last year with NTIA. Responses to this request were largely supplied in the final months of 2016 (see 1612160062, 1612200031 and 1612220020), but NTIA gave us a final selection of documents this month. The latest result included several pages of entirely redacted text, presumably encompassing the attachment listed in the non-redacted email exchanges as DOD's assessment of Mobile Now. NTIA Chief Counsel Kathy Smith told us in a May 5 letter that the records are being withheld due to the FOIA exemption protecting "inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with an agency." Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., wrote the 2015 draft, and, after extensive negotiation with the Obama administration, pared it down. That less-aggressive version stalled on the Senate floor last year and is stalled again on the Senate floor now, in both cases due to an unrelated FCC nominations concern. David Quinalty, a telecom policy aide to Thune, sent the “DoD assessment” of the first Mobile Now draft as an attachment to a Nov. 13, 2015, email to NTIA officials “in case you have not yet seen it,” he said. Quinalty referred to talking with NTIA officials that day “to discuss the Administration’s views” on the draft bill, citing the DOD document's circulation among some Senate offices. “Between our conversation and the DOD document, we feel quite confident we can satisfactorily address the Administration’s concerns.” Earlier responses to this FOIA request showed a harsh administration critique of the draft but make no mention of such a DOD-penned document circulating on Capitol Hill then. DOD concerns were known during those 2015 months of negotiation due to comments from senators and staffers (see 1511180058). Upon receipt of this DOD critique in the Nov. 13, 2015, email exchange, NTIA Chief of Staff Glenn Reynolds forwarded the document within eight minutes to Aalok Mehta and Ben Page, both of whom then worked in the White House Office of Management and Budget, and Hannah Merves, then a policy adviser in the White House National Economic Council. “For awareness,” Reynolds told the Obama administration officials.