This week, the National Security Archive at George Washington University named the U.S. Department of the Treasury as the winner of its annual “Rosemary Award” for the worst performance by a federal agency in responding to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

The National Security Archive named the award after President Nixon’s secretary Rose Mary Woods and the backwards-leaning stretch with which she erased an eighteen-and-a-half minute section of a key Watergate conversation on the White House tapes.

“The Treasury Department has brought new meaning to the notion of sub-prime performance,” remarked the Archive’s director Tom Blanton. “Instead of answering Freedom of Information requests, Treasury puts the burden on requesters to repeatedly confirm interest in their requests and actually destroys the original request letters the way Rose Mary Woods erased the tapes.”