The San Francisco Chronicle's Yobie Benjamin goes on a fishing expedition for information about the BP oil spill in this FOIA request to the Unified Command.
He's going to be disappointed in the results, because the request he made was poorly formed and so absurdly overbroad that no FOIA officer is ever going to be able to answer it in such a way that satisfies him. E.g.
1. Countries, non-governmental organizations and international agencies that have offered assistance to help respond to the BP oil spill and what specific boats, marine vessels and said boats or marine vessels' technical capabilities and operational capacities.
How on earth can you possibly do a search that answers this request? You'd have to look through every piece of correspondence with every organization on the planet over an unidentified span of time to figure out what was responsive.
Don't try to boil the ocean all at once. Narrow this request to be as specific as possible, so that it's possible to answer it. For instance, instead of "countries", be very very narrow and say "Cuba". Has Cuba offered oil spill help? That is an answerable question. Come up with a list of all possible countries that might be offering help, and iterate down that list one at a time to look for official reaction.
