And if Anyone Asks Any Questions . . .

The Air Force had the distinction of having a substantial backlog on unfilled FOIA requests, explained Archive Director Tom Blanton, but that alone is not good enough to win.

After all, many agencies have serious personnel shortages, he said, making it difficult to fill requests on a timely basis. "So it has to be more than tardiness," Blanton said. "They really have to mess with a requester to win the award," so much so that the agency's incompetence has to border on the malevolent in order to be honored.

So how did the Air Force pull this off? The award notes that, in one instance, "the relevant documents were lost when an Air Force computer hard drive crashed; no paper copies were kept, and the Air Force does not know how many or which records were destroyed."

In addition, the FOIA information on the Air Force Web site is incorrect and out of date. Faxes sent to a number listed as the place to send FOIA requests for one Air Force component went instead to a room in the maternity ward of a hospital at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. And a federal judge in April ruled that the Air Force had "failed miserably to handle . . . requests in a timely manner."

The award, a framed photo of Rose Mary Woods in action, will be sent to the Air Force's chief information officer, Lt. Gen. Michael W. Peterson, and to John Espinal, who runs the Air Force FOIA office.

The Justice Department made a spirited run, Blanton said, "but they did pretty well Web-posting the most commonly requested records." Last year's winner, the CIA, now simply has too much information on its Web site, so it lost out. The FBI was a solid contender because it answers 70 percent of requests by saying there are no relevant records, "which is demonstrably false," Blanton said.

Citizenship and Immigration Services, another finalist, has nearly 40 percent of the total backlog of FOIA requests -- 75,000 of 200,000 -- carried over from year to year. "They are probably the leading contender for next year's Rosemary," Blanton said.

There's still plenty of time . . .

Banishing Bush's 'Bad Spirits'

After every parade, campaign rally or street party, there's always some cleanup to do. After President Bush's less-than-triumphant tour of five countries in Latin America this week -- with anti-U.S. demonstrations and clashes at every stop -- there likely was more than the usual tidying to do.

Yesterday, Mayan priests in Guatemala spiritually "cleansed" a religious site of "bad spirits" after Bush visited on Monday, lighting candles in the four corners of the ruins to represent the elements and burning incense. They beat a ceremonial drum on the top of a pyramid at Iximche, capital of the pre-Hispanic Kaqchiqueles kingdom.

The priests said they wanted to purify the site before a visit by Bolivia's indigenous President Evo Morales later this month, Reuters reported. Morales is a pal of Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chávez.

A New Gig for a Former Congressman

Seven-term Republican House member Henry Bonilla, defeated in November after his Texas district was re-re-districted following a Supreme Court ruling, has been tapped to be ambassador to the Organization of American States, which is conveniently based here.

Bonilla replaces career Foreign Service officer John F. Maisto.