How FOIA Works

In the 60s, Congress worried the White House was operating too much in secret and passed the Freedom Of Information Act, opening the government to public questioning. It has been an ongoing struggle to pry those secrets loose ever since.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We've got guest producer Matt
over here that makes this Stuff you Should Know Sunshine Edition.

(00:22):
The storms are gone. Well. Plus they say sunshine is
the greatest disaffectmant that really Yeah, you shine a light
in the dark corners and it reveals truth, gotcha. Plus
you know people are less shady in the sunlight. So
this is part episode two of our recording session of

(00:42):
uh Freshly being without Power Irma going through Atlanta dead cats.
All right, and I'm going on vacation. Oh good, tomorrow good.
So if anyone wants to meet me at the Isle
of Palm, South Carolina, build a time machine, right, go
back a few weeks and you'll find me drinking Gin

(01:04):
and Tonics on the beach. Nice songs, child, Oh really, Wow,
you're vacationing vacation, not frustratingly running around trying to get
sand out of sunscreen off a small child. That's a
losing proposition. Yeah, man, can't wait. Good, We'll enjoy yourself.
We were originally going to Folly Beach, but it was damaged.

(01:26):
The house was, but this one was not, so they
moved us. I've never been to island Palm is it
shaped like a palm like in Dubai. No, it's just
one of Charleston's. Uh. I don't know what they call him,
low country border islands. Maybe that's what they call him.
Now right next to Sullivan's Island and James Island and

(01:47):
Folly Beach are all kind of right there, great area.
Charleston's amazing. Yeah, we're gonna go in for dinner and
stuff and trying to throw a little money at their economy.
But I think they had some really bad flooding. So
everyone all right there. I thinks like three or six
ft storm surge that was there on the outskirts. They
were not even in the past in the end. Not

(02:09):
good stuff, not good. Well, I'm glad Charleston made it,
and I'm glad you're going to Charleston. Man, I can't wait.
I'm gonna eat so much seafood. Yeah, alright, so Chuck,
as I was saying, sunshine is the greatest disinfectant. Let's hope. Um,
there's actually something called Sunshine Week. Have you heard about that. No,
it's a week that celebrates openness in government. It's as

(02:33):
simple as that. It's the Reporter's Committee for Freedom of
the Press. It's their thing, and they're trying to shine
a light on the idea of shining a light on government, right,
and that existed until this year. It's still right. No. Actually,
it's funny like the last guy gets a lot of
credit and praise for being open, but in retrospect, supposedly

(02:57):
it was very much a lot of smoking mirrors. Yeah, yeah,
there was. It was not a very open administration either. Well,
you know what they say, politics is politics? Who says that?
Is that? I love palm saying yeah the politics? Politics?
Have another crawfish past the frog wrest? Is there a

(03:18):
frog in that? No, that's just like a low country boil. Yeah,
I love low country boil. I'm gonna make that. I
think you should my own self. I think you should
bring something back here for me. Yeah, I don't know
if I guess it would keep. It depends, you know.
I want to be like, here's a week old frog
morps to I'd probably still eat it. I know you would. So. Um,

(03:42):
the idea of of government giving up its secrets. Right,
it's actually fairly new here in the States. Um, there's
a a time not too long ago where if you
wanted classified information or any information for um, the federal government,
they you had really no way to ask for it.

(04:06):
And even if you could figure out who to ask
for it from, they would say no. And then you
would you'd say, well, what next, nothing next, man, go
back to sleep. Citizen, that was your role to just
shut up and stop asking questions. And thankfully for those
of us who believe that government should be way more

(04:27):
transparent than it is. Uh, there was a guy named
Representative John Moss from California. He was a congressman back
in the sixties, and he became concerned that, um, not Congress,
but the federal government, the executive branch, was getting a
little too opaque. And specifically, there was a report that

(04:50):
he asked for that concerned, UM, the firing of some
civil servants, ostensibly because their loyalty to the administration had
been questioned, and so they got fired, and he wanted
to look into it, and the federal agency he requested
the documents from said no. And he was a congressman,
yes he was, So he said, I'll be back, yeah,

(05:15):
Arnold style. And then this was but thirteen or so
years after UM, the American Society of Newspaper Editors published
a study about secrecy in the government and basically said
what you said, which is citizens have no access to records,
no recourse if they're denied records. That was the nine three.

(05:39):
Kind of surprising to me. It was that early that
they were kind of ringing the bell for this. But
I think the Cold War, like almost immediately the development
of the bomb and the Cold War really drove this,
this desire to keep everything secret, and the federal government,

(06:00):
the executive branch, keeps everything secret by classifying everything. There's
this kind of mentality that is classify everything when in doubt,
classify it because not only does it it it obscures
what you're doing from say, like your enemy, it also
obscures what you're doing from your citizen right, so you
can't be questioned, you can't be criticized, you can't be

(06:21):
exposed as incompetent. If no one knows what you're doing,
they can't see that if you're doing it poorly, and
that they could actually do it better, or know somebody
who could do it better, or it could elect somebody
who could do it better. And as the way that
you do that is to just classify everything, keep it
a secret. Yeah. I've always had the feeling that if

(06:42):
the federal government in the United States had its drugs,
they would operate in complete isolated secrecy. Yeah. Well they're
trying like you wouldn't even have press conferences, right, Like
they would just shut it down and say don't don't you.
Let's worry about anything we have it coverage. Just go

(07:02):
about your day, go about your business. Uh So Moss
went to uh fellow Democratic President Phil Democrat President Lyndon
Johnson and said, you know, I think we uh should
change the way we're doing things here, and Johnson said,
I don't know about that. That's pretty good, John Johnson.

(07:23):
We should. He's very interesting, Uh, I think, conflicted dude.
We should do a show on him at some point,
very ambitious domestic policies like he wanted to be FDR
like the Second Coming, didn't know a lot about foreign policy.
Oh that's not good. No, he's a very interesting dude. Anyway,

(07:47):
He's a domestic He was a domestic guy. Had I
never realized that he didn't know about was not his specialty.
I think he wanted to do great things for this country,
um in his heart right, but uh, I don't know.
It's interesting. I think ever since I saw the Cranston
play in New York. What's it called all the Way?

(08:08):
I think, and they made it too. I didn't see
the movie version, but I saw the play all the Way.
That's what's called I think. So I think that's like
a tawdry John Ritter film or something like that. That's
let's go all the way? Okay, uh oh man, I
missed John Ritter, sure he was the best. Uh So anyway,

(08:29):
Johnson said, I don't know about that. All the all
the federal departments and agency said, I definitely don't know
about that. Bad idea, but it was the bell had
been wrong in the House. And this is something that
is kind of fun to look back on when these days,

(08:49):
how things are, how they are, how divisive they are.
Back in the House about a three hundred and seven
to zero to pass the Moss Freedom of Information Act,
the fo I A and UH John and signed it,
and uh didn't have a big press conference when he
signed it, like they do a lot of big laws
and bills. He signed it in secrecy. Yeah, he did, like, oh,

(09:10):
we'll sign it, but maybe people don't know about it.
I won't go we don't have to we have to
go around shooting our mouths off about it. But he
did say, no one should be able to pull the
curtains of secrecy around decisions which can be revealed without
injury to the public interest. I signed this measure with
a deep sense of pride that the United States is
an open society. Uh, but no one heard that, right,

(09:33):
the doors are shut, correct? So yeah, he signed it
in secrecy, which is a little weird, and also opened
the door for like, you know that that second part
of the first sentences decisions which can be revealed without
injury to the public interest, there's a big caveat attached
to that openness, right exactly. Don't forget we have ways

(09:53):
around this. Yeah. Um, And you said that it was
hardening to hear that Congress unanimously passed the four Act, right,
a little bit, right, This is what it is. This
is not the only time Congress has come together unanimously
in defense of FOIA. In two thousand four, team, which
we'll talk about later, they did with John Bayner as

(10:15):
the um at the helm of the House in Obama
in the White House, and that the Congress divided as
much as it's ever been. The House came together unanimously
in in for this Foya Act or Amendment A. There
was also a time when Gerald Ford was president where
Congress overrode a veto of his as far as FOYA.

(10:38):
So FOIA is this one thing because for for those
of you who don't know, it only pertains to documents
in the control of the executive branch of the federal government,
just the executive branch, just the White House. So any
secrets the president's administration is keeping, that's what it's pertaining to. Okay.

(10:59):
So Congress very frequently comes together and it's like, no,
we want you to share this information with everybody, including us,
and they look like the good guys too for coming
to the aid for open and honest and transparent government.
And just to clarify, Chuck, like, it's not just like
the White House. There's tons of agencies, federal agencies that

(11:21):
fall under the executive branch, including like the FBI or
the CDC or the UM. There just basically any agency,
if any federal agencies probably under the purview of the
the executive branch, so therefore FOYA would apply to it
as well. That's very nice to point that out, because
you confused even me off. Sorry about that. Uh So this, uh,

(11:46):
I think this this bears reading this quote. There's a
journalist named John Wiener or Winer who he um tried
for fourteen years to get John Lennon's FBI files through
f o i A quests, and he very succinctly wrote this,
and it kind of sums it up to me. The
basic issue was that government officials everywhere like secrecy by

(12:10):
keeping the public from learning what they have done, they
hope to avoid criticism, hinder the opposition, and maintain power
over citizens. And they're elected representatives. Classified files and official
secrets lie at the heart of the modern government bureaucracy.
Of such a hard time with that word. It's almost impossible,
is spell to I don't even try, uh and permit

(12:30):
the under undemocratic use of power to go unrecognized and
unchallenged by citizens. And he was just trying to get
John Lennon's files. That's how riled the peacock. You know,
you don't want to rale up a journalists, but that's
who this pertains to for the most part, I should
say not entirely, but yeah, for the most part is
accurate journalists. Journalists are the ones who are supposed to

(12:52):
be reporting on the goings on of the government, especially
when it comes to exposing wrongdoing, corruption, waste, all this off.
That's one of the main roles of the media, right yea,
journalists and more and more now activists, thankfully, citizen activists right.
And one of the reasons why citizen activists have gotten
in on this is because the journalists aren't doing it enough. Yeah. Um,

(13:13):
but the early on the journalists were largely in support
of FOYA. The Congress was like, sure, why not, it
will probably make the president who we don't like, look bad.
And um. Now we have as of the sixty six Act,
the Freedom of Information Act, right yeah, which officially, uh,

(13:36):
I mean, people know what this is. This is the
ability of a of a citizen of the world. Very
important there. You don't have to just be an American
citizen to request records of an executive branch like you said,
government agency. Uh. And along with that Act originally nineteen
sixty six said these are available to the public with
nine exemptions, which will go over later. Um that protect

(14:00):
the agency under certain circumstances. And if you were denied,
there is also now a process in place to appeal
that denied right. Very important and so when LBJ signed
it into law, it was basically like, yeah, I guess
just go along with it, but if you don't feel
like it, you don't have to write right. Um. That's
kind of went for a while, Yeah until Watergate. The

(14:21):
Watergate scandal really change people's relationship with government big time.
That changed government's relationship to government. Yeah. And one of
the things that happened was there was an update to
FOYA and a strengthening of FOYA UM so that there
were like greater sanctions if you didn't follow through on
on supplying the requested information. It was harder to just

(14:43):
say no to deny it. Yeah, they had a specific
time frame finally, like you couldn't just say yeah, we'll
get to it, right. So, Uh, Congress puts uh this
FOI amendments or updates on Gerald Ford's desk to sign,
and uh, He's like now, well he looked around the
room and said what should I do? Right? And the

(15:04):
two people that piped up where Donald ROMs felt his
chief of staff and Antonin Scalia, who was the chief
legal counsel for the Justice Department, and they both said,
don't sign it. Yeah. And apparently at least this article
says that Rumsfeld early on was a supporter of FOI right,
I think in the very easily manipulated version. Yeah. But

(15:27):
when it when it came time to right, he said no,
don't And so Ford argued that it was unconstitutional, and
Congress said, you're wrong, and we're overriding your v two.
That does not happened. Yeah, you say too too, that
doesn't happen very often that a veto is overridden. I

(15:48):
don't have ever done one on vitos should because I
have no idea how often it happens. But I guarantee
you it's not often. All right, So let's take a break. Um,
we're just getting heat it up here on this one. Uh.
And as you'll see in the coming segments for your
changes gets more teeth and less teeth over the years,
depending on whose office. And we'll be right back with

(16:09):
Ronald Reagan. All right, Ronnie, he's here. That's so, like

(16:37):
I promised, over the years, Foia has um had more
teeth and less teeth depending on who is running the show. Um,
probably not so. Surprisingly, when Ronald Reagan got into office
in two or in nineteen two, he created he made
it much tougher to uh, to get information, made it

(16:57):
easier for agencies to withhold stuff. Um, Bill Clinton comes along,
relaxes things, right, it kind of goes like that in
our country. Well, Reagan also one of his things was, um,
he definitely helps spearhead that classify everything mentality under his administration, Yeah,
he said print, he said, manufacturer as many classified rubber

(17:19):
stamps as you can. Every office needs about a hundred
of them. And I think, especially during the Cold War,
the Soviets served as a real boogeyman for keeping citizens
in the dark. We don't want the Rooskies to find out.
So no, yeah, we we don't trust you with this
because you might hand it over to the Rooskies. Yeah,
that was what they say. And they said Rooskys too,

(17:42):
they did so. Like I said, Clinton comes wrong along.
And there were a few, um, a few big events
in his administration. But hold and think about it. When
Clinton comes along, no more uss are well true, Yeah,
no more boogeyman. Right, good times, man, let's part. Uh
did you like? Yeah, that was good. It was not

(18:05):
I think together we do the perfect book. Glinton um
he during an administration had a bunch of big um
but had a big impact on FOYA. We're calling it
for you, right, Yeah, Freedom of Information Act. It's a
perfect acronym because it takes all words into account for you. Yeah,
and it's not fake. No, one just like cooked up

(18:25):
some weird word to throw in there to make it
a word. So the release an archiving of Cold War
previously classified Cold War documents was a big one. And
then a really big see change is when Clinton said,
you know, get with it and digitize all this stuff,

(18:46):
like this is the future. We don't need everything on paper.
Documents make it easier, uh to file and store the stuff.
He and make it easier to distribute this stuff under
FOY And it was and also uh they extended that timeline.
I don't think we initially said it was ten days. Yeah,
you had ten days to respond to a fourier request

(19:06):
as a forficer um and then that was extended to
twenty days. Although it says in here that that wasn't
so much of a big deal. Just gave him a
little more time. Basically no, because an agency that's not
frequently contacted for FOY information and is not running a backlog,

(19:27):
it is probably going to do it in about ten
days anyway, right, An agency that is running a backlog
is still not going to get in touch with you
within ten days or twenty days. So it really had
no effect, but it is on the book still to
this day. They have twenty days to respond to you
before you can appeal their lack of response. So UM

(19:49):
George Bush H George W. Bush comes along, of course,
and UH titans restrictions again. After September eleven. That was
the perfect time to tighten the belt on FOY UH
again because the boogeyman is back USA Patriot Act. So
after September eleven, UM he ordered or you know, the

(20:09):
administration ordered thousands of documents and data removed from websites
agency websites, things like airport UH safety data, things like
pipeline maps, environmental data. I gotta tell you I don't
disagree with all of that. This is a double edged sword,
you know, this, this this topic itself is to unpack

(20:30):
this thing fully Like it's hard to make an argument
for full transparency or full secrecy. Sure, Yeah, I don't
think I would argue for full transparency. I think just
by definition we would have to get so far away
from being like the world's police and doving like military everywhere,
and like being interventionist and adventuroust and all just basically

(20:52):
completely changed the complexion of the modern United States. To
be able to be fully transparent, you can't. And even
then it might be kind of like Norway can be
fully transparent, but even still, like can they like maybe
somebody be like, well, I'm I want to practice being
a terrorist, So I'm gonna start on Norway because they
publish all their pipeline information. Yeah, so maybe I'll just

(21:14):
go see what happens when I blow that up. Or
the great wooden shoes scandal of the U was that
Norway or the Netherlands. I don't think they wear wooden
shoes in Norway. Oh, I just I just think they
all wear wooden shoes all over the place. They don't.
We have listeners there, man, they're gonna hear you, I know,
but they know we're kidding, right, I don't know the

(21:35):
Australians thought we were serious about drinking fosters down there, really, Yeah,
didn't you see how many emails we got there were
like gently correcting us that no one actually really drinks
fosters in Australia's um. Bush Also what he made a
move to do was limit access to records of former presidents,
which was sort of a big move. UM. And then

(21:59):
in the Intelligence Authorization Act of two thousand two wanted
to limit requests by foreign governments or international organizations. So again, okay,
I don't really disagree with all of it. One of
the only things that Bush did too was UM he
expanded who could get cheap or free access to for you? Yeah, UM, journalists.

(22:26):
I think as part of the UM Watergate expansion or
maybe the Clinton expansion, journalists were offered um, expedited and cheap,
if not free for you UM requests. Yeah, we should
point out you have to pay for this stuff. No
journalists get a break. They say that, and apparently there's

(22:46):
not a there's not a standard fee. It's just that
as part of the law, an agency can recover costs
associated directly associated with the search, right, UM, So it
could be eleven dollars an hour, it could be two
hundred dollars an hour. Depending journalists get faster expedited service

(23:07):
as paper at least, and then they get their fees
waved or else pay a reduced fee. And then what
Bush did with the changes to FOYA under his watch
were UM to expand who qualifies as a journalists. It
now included independent investigative journalists bloggers UM, and then public
interest groups. Apparently it always been included in that too.

(23:29):
I just like thinking of w saying the word blogger,
like I get the feeling that he didn't even know
what that was. Intelligence. He just always struck me as like,
I know he got made fun of for intelligence, but
I don't think it's because of intelligence. I think he's
the dude though that would sit down at a computer

(23:50):
and just kind of be like, how how do I
work this thing? You know, just sort of old school roots.
He he didn't know what a blogger was. Maybe come on,
maybe not or a vlogger. I agree with you, he
definitely didn't know it a vlogger or at any rate.
It was the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act. It

(24:11):
was a good thing that UM and of course Harry
Reid is who introduced the bill. But UM, see that's
what I'm saying. Congress is like, we don't like this president.
We're gonna make them look bad and force a foy
some new Foya stuff on him. And then all it
does is just point the point. It shines a light
on just how secretive the government is. And then Congress

(24:31):
looks good by trying to pull pull back the curtains.
That's right. Then Obama gets on his h But hold on,
I'm sorry, but that's not to say that even if
Congress is doing it cynically, that it's a bad thing.
It's actually a very good thing. Yes, it's just I
don't think that Congress is riding to the rescue of

(24:51):
the American people. I think that their motive is probably
to make the president look bad. Yeah, I hear you.
So then Obama mounts his horse and rides into the
White House. Um. Not great would that have been if
he literally did that like Ronald Reagan? You probably did? Um.
In two thousand nine, he very first day in office,

(25:12):
he said, here's a memo, We're going to be the
most transparent government that's in American history. And everyone went, yes,
that's awesome, and he went you think people bought that?
He's like, oh my gosh, they did. Yeah, he said
that he wanted to die. He wrote a memo, like

(25:34):
you said, the first day in off very first day,
and he said that federal agencies agencies should adopt a
presumption in favor of disclosure, so lean toward releasing it
rather than against it, which is a big difference. And
he actually had Eric Holder, Um who was running the
d o J for him. I guess that makes him

(25:55):
as an attorney general, right, Eric Holder was Attorney general
Whenney and he said, figure out how to codify this,
and he did. They came up with UM guidelines for
the federal agencies to become more transparent. Yeah, and a
lot of it this that wasn't two thousand nine By

(26:16):
the time rolled around. The exact opposite was going on. Yeah.
Two thousands and sixteen is when the Foyer Improvement Act
was was put through and UM foisted onto Obama. Yeah,
this was the one that supposedly just kind of reinstated
a lot of what it was supposed to do to
begin with that had been shirked over the years from

(26:36):
what I understand, Yeah, Um, it was also an attempt
to take that codified presumption of disc of disclosure UM
that the DJ come up with and put it into law,
like make it part of the Foyer Act. And a
FOIA request revealed lobbying by the Obama administration, tense lobbying

(27:00):
by the Obama administration to prevent that that that codification,
that that an administration had come up with, to prevent
that from becoming part of FOIL law. And at the
same time they're talking about how they're the most transparent
administration ever, but they're also behind the scenes lobbying against it. Um.
And the thing that caught everyone's attention, or at least

(27:22):
the people who filed these Foyer requests to get this
information UM, is that in two thousand fourteen, Congress, well,
the House passed a bill that had this in it
four d and ten to nothing, unanimously passed it, and
then it was never brought up for a final vote.
John Bayner never called for a final vote, was just

(27:44):
allowed to die. That's pretty suspicious. So when they finally
got to the bottom of it, they saw that the
d o J and the Obama administration and then later
on the FTC, the Trade Commission, and the Securities and
Exchange Commission, we're all very much lobbying against the expand
mentioned because one of the things that um that it
serves as an exemption to FOY requests is anything that

(28:06):
has to do with the financial system or the agencies
that regulate them. So the FTC and the SEC can
do whatever they want and keep all their documents secret
and no one can do anything about it. Well, the
two thousand and sixteen four Act would have expanded that,
but that got lobbied out. It is quite disheartening. I
mean it's but yeah, like the Obama administration being the

(28:29):
most transparent administration of all time is just such bullocks.
It's just completely untrue. And yet it's it's a myth
that that was perpetuated by that administration that still stands today.
They used the Espionage Act more than all the other
presidents before them combined since the Espionage Act was was created,
and I think the beginning of the twentieth century um

(28:51):
to to prosecute journalists sources. You just didn't go after
journalists or their sources. The Obama administration was the first
one to do that. So there's a lot wrong with
the idea that was the most transparent. Ever. Should we
take a break, I think all right, we will be
back in boy it's still like we're still feel like

(29:12):
we're heating up here. I got a lot to cover.
We'll be back with how you can file one of
these things right for this Alright, So, as said before,

(29:40):
you can be a foreign national, you can be US citizen,
if you want to file a FOIA request. You can
be a corporation, can be a news outlet. Uh most
well probably most times your journalists. Uh and we already
kind of went over the fees. But um, what you
do is if you want to request documents, yeah, just

(30:01):
fill this out and triplicate, get it back to US
UH to request documents, you appeal um too directly to
that agency that holds the documents. Well that's just for
your own so you don't waste time. Well yeah, you
want to find out who to send it to. Yeah,
and um no, I think you legally have to go
to that agency and to the through the FOI office,

(30:22):
and then you have to do both. I'm not mistaken,
maybe not, but it's a good idea. Well, each agency
has its own FOY office, right Okay, So uh, well
yeah that that bears pointing out, like that's part of
the FOI Act and all the improvements over the years
is there is somebody at every office that heads us up,
at least one person, and it's it's got to be

(30:43):
on their website. There's got to be clear directions on
how to do this right. And most of the federal
agencies will have a very easy form that you can
fill out on there for you, the easy forma what
what what did we do to your face? Only that
you want to know exactly? Um, that you just fill
out these different fields and and you can submit a

(31:05):
FOIA request like that. Yeah, depending on what you're after,
we'll determine how long this takes or if you get
a response at all. Initially, Uh, they say it's first come,
first serve. Uh. If you're depends on what you're looking
for and who the agency is. Quite honestly, if you're
looking for a few pages of a document from the

(31:26):
Forestry Service, you might get that thing turned around pretty quick.
They will bring it to your house that day if
you were looking at you with a smile and then
a little rather little horse away. Everyone's riding horses. Um.
If you're looking for six hundred pages from the CIA,
good luck, It'll take a little while. You will undoubtedly

(31:48):
end up in federal court probably finally complaint. Yeah, because
in that case, FOI requests very frequently turned into Foyer lawsuits.
It just happens, umsonal No, not at all, But that
does suck when it does happen, because that gets a
lot more expensive. Yeah. This one reporter, Charles Orstein, tried

(32:10):
to appeal the Department of Defense for a story he
was doing on drug companies paying doctors. Took three and
a half years to get the final verdict, which was
a denial. Yeah, so how about that. So here's the process.
You file a Foyer request, You wait twenty days, hopefully
within that time they respond to you. If they don't
respond to you, you can appeal based on their lack

(32:34):
of response, or if they respond to you and say no,
you can appeal the denial after twenty days. Following that,
you can then go take it to federal court. And
you can also, and this gets a little funny, Uh,
you can also file a Foyer request about your Foyer requests. Yeah,
if it was denied. If it was denied, and then
that's when this one reporter is like, that's where it

(32:56):
gets really depressing when you see sort of the beckheind
the curtain process of this stuff, right. So there there,
we came across some tips from George Washington University's National
Security Archive for filing for your requests. Yeah there, It's
pretty straightforward, but it's good to know. Like one of
the ones that stood out to me was like, don't

(33:19):
don't be an aggressive jerk to the FOY officer. In
a lot of cases, the FOY officer might even see
things your way, but they might be the only person
at their agency who does. They might work at an
agency who thinks that FOYA is stupid and UM is
a threaten to national security, and they have to go

(33:39):
and convince their colleagues who they have to work with,
to give them those files to give to you. And
it's They're probably not the most popular person at their
their office, so ticking them off if not the best idea.
So treat them with courtesy, with respect, be direct, don't
include tons of supporting UM in information and emails. Do

(34:01):
you want to give them as much information as you
can but succinct. Yeah, And you also don't want your
request to be too broad. Although I think there's a
lot of FOIA journalists who would disagree with this, But
apparently the broader your request, the more difficult it makes, it,
the more likely it is to be denied and say
this is what I'm looking for specifically. Yeah, and the

(34:22):
more likely it is to um overlap with other agencies,
which is just going to complicate things further. Um They say,
don't include a lot of narratives, even if you think
your story is important, like like if you if you
send a request that starts with dear sir, I'm an
anarchist from Boise, Idaho, and I think whatever when I
was a boy not not a good way to get started. Right.

(34:46):
Leave out some of those details. Try and be succinct,
try and be to the point. A lot of this
is common sense stuff. Well a lot of it is.
One of the common sense things that I would not
have thought to to do first is to look to
see if this information is already out there. That is
hu huge, and I would not have thought that either.
There's a lot of declassified information that exists a lot

(35:07):
of time on these agency websites. They have it a
lot of times. I mean it saysn't here, and this
is very true. I've done it. Congress has a just
tons and tons of material about public policy, online that
you can find, so it might already be out there you. UM,
you can also contact, like if there's a public interest
group or something like that that's focused on your topic,

(35:31):
they might have access to it. I read that, UM
an article about a woman in Oregon who um the
intercept wrote an article and I can't I think it's
called the Poison Papers or something. This woman has been
fighting chemical companies because of what they were doing in
her backyard for decades and has like a hundred thousand
pages of internal documents and memos and stuff from lawsuits

(35:56):
that they're now scanning and digitizing and putting onto the web. Um.
But UM, she would be a great person to go
to for those specific art for those YEA, for those sources,
I bet you. At this point, unless it's something very
specifically related to you personally or your family, someone has
probably either asked about it and gotten it and it exists,

(36:19):
or asked and been denied. Yeah. And the other thing
is apparently I think the two thou sixteen amendments UM
said that you if if a document has been requested
three or more times, they have to release it to
the public, like it's just released after that and then
some UM agencies will maintain a fo your reading room

(36:39):
on their site which will have all the documents that
have been publicly released through for you. Yeah. I thought
three was a pretty heartening number. Actually, I could have
if it would have said three hundred, I would not
have been surprised. So the fact that said three, I
was like, all right, that's legit. It's a magic number.
So there's a lot of um, a lot of loophole

(37:00):
to this, right, Oh yeah, And I mean also you've
got to step back here and think about what you're doing, Like,
you are asking someone in the government to do research
for you that you could probably do better if only
you had the access to the stuff that they had access.
And the whole reason you're having to ask them in
the first place is because the government is unjustly keeping
things in secret that it shouldn't be. Yeah, it's a

(37:21):
little or welling in to say the least. It is okay,
but there's a lot of loopholes associated with this that
will keep government agency from from approving your request every time. Yeah,
And the first thing they point out in our article,
which is bears repeating, is you are asking for something
you were not guaranteed anything. This is a request that

(37:42):
you're submitting things that you definitely cannot do or get
physical objects, uh, like you can't request uh like evidence
from the JFK shooting to be sent to your house,
send me the magic poet. Uh. Private information about an individual,
which gets so hinky. That's over the years they've gone
back and forth on uh really at the basis of it.

(38:06):
And we'll get to uh these some of these landmark
court rulings that decided these things. But whether or not
the public interest outweighs privacy rights, which is a big thing. Uh.
And then information that's covered under the nine exemptions that
I think we kind of have to read through these, right,
I think, all right, go ahead. The first one is
any information that's classified for national security purposes. Okay, pretty straightforward. Uh.

(38:30):
And then you've got records that are only about an
agency's personnel, rules and practices. I did not get that one,
which makes it seem super shady to me, probably so
like no, no break room rules, see a break room rules?
Shall what are you doing in the break room? I
hadn't even thought about that. Clean up your coffee? Uh.
Information that's prohibited from being released because of another statute

(38:53):
that just seems like a very long way of saying
kind of anything we'd think of um doc mints that
protect trade secrets or contain information that could damage a
company's business, Like you can't petition Coca Cola for their
secret formula or you know, anything that would show that
the telecoms were working with the n s A for

(39:13):
the Prism project or something like, and that Coca Cola obviously,
but petition the government for Coca Cola. UM number five
is the most used one. Apparently, it's so frequently used.
It's called the I'm withholding because I want to clause.
It's it's basically any any documents that contain personal opinions, recommendations,

(39:33):
or conclusionments, right, And it's it's ostensibly meant to protect
legal documents, so attorney client privilege, and to promote a
m a tone of frankness among inner agency and intra
agency communications. Basically, if you are emailing your colleague and

(39:55):
you're worried about somebody reading it on the outside, you're
not gonna be as open and frank. And it's kind
of freeze free speech within the agency. It's so broad,
so vague and everything falls under it that UM A
number five is is the exemption most frequently used. Like
all they really needed is number five. Basically, UM personal

(40:20):
privacy UM things like social security numbers, phone numbers, addresses,
stuff like that. UM. Law enforcement documents that could interfere
with law enforcement deprived person of the fair trial invasion
of privacy again reveal identities of confidential sources, law enforcement techniques,
or procedures for investigations or prosecutions, or anything that endangers

(40:42):
that person's life or safety. Uh, this one is the
one that drives me up the wall. Information related to
agencies that are responsible for regulating financial institutions see previous
rant right. Documents that protect information related to geological or
geophysical data, including maps, makes sense to me that one does.

(41:02):
So those are the nine. I don't know if those
I mean there are originally nine. Are those the original
nine or those just been tweaked over the years. I
believe those are the original nine and they're still in use.
All right. So UM, there's this really good point made
by a journalist named Philip eel ile E I l Um,
and he says that if you are a an editor

(41:26):
who is being approached for the story about how another
journalist is being stonewalled in their foyer request that you
kind of have an obligation to tell other people about
it because if you don't, he says, quote, you're not
being neutral, you're helping the government keep taxpayers in the dark.
And so that combined with you know, going up against

(41:47):
the government and then a light being shined on it
when the government doesn't cooperate and follow the letter of
the law just means like you might as well not
have for you that it's just basically a roll of
the dice whether you're going to get it or not,
rather than predictable under the terms of the law. Right,
So don't don't file a FO your request get denied

(42:10):
and then just say all right, right, or if you
go to another publication and you're at that publication, don't
just be like this is boring, no one cares about that.
You need to write about it. People need to talk
about it. And if if stonewalling is going on, from
FO your requests all right. So we promised a couple
of landmark court rulings. Um, this first one is good

(42:31):
ninety six philipp E v. The c I A. I
think usually when you're v. The C I A, we
know which way that's gonna work, right, probably not in
Philippe's favor. Uh. And that's what happened in this case.
So this was the very famous everyone's heard the phrase
we can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non
existence of X. This is where that came from. Uh.

(42:54):
And the original case was the UH there was a
Soviet submarine sunk off the coat sot Hawaii, and the
CIA said, who should we partner with to build a
ship to go look for this thing? Howard Hughes, of course,
we need to do an episode just on that. On
Howard Hughes that, yeah, totally uh. And that ship was
called the Glomar Explorer and UM to salvage the submarine.

(43:17):
So there was a rolling Stone reporter file the Foyer request,
and the CIA very famously said, we cannot confirm. Uh.
We refused to confirm or deny any such a document.
And he went, what does that even mean? Like no
one's ever ever even said that before? And the CIA went, Hey,
nice work. I think we flu mixed everybody did, uh,

(43:38):
And it did work. So eventually it went to federal
appeals Court and they said CIA wins uh. And now
that is known as the Glomar response that you hear
over and over and over. That's where it's origin. Like
pretty neat. Um. There's another one that was pretty big.
It actually came into play pretty quickly after it was ruled,

(44:02):
I guess so. Two thousand and sixteen, the US Court
of Appeals said that if you have work related federal
agency emails and a personal account, you can't get around
a Foyer request. Who would do that? And that was
used for a long time, including most famously by Hillary Clinton,
who um, her whole email scandal came out of a

(44:25):
Foyer request. There were a whole bunch of people who
had filed Foyer requests dating as far back as two
thousand twelve. I think the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics
in Washington crew filed one of the first ones UM,
and the State Department just kept losing them or said
they weren't aware of any four requests or whatever. And

(44:46):
then a Foyer reporter, he's a self styled Foyer terrorist,
I believe, addresses himself. I think so. UM. Jason Leopold
filed a Foyer request UM for Clinton stuff as well,
and then was in talks I believe with the State
Department for getting that for your request fulfilled, and it

(45:07):
led to the existence of Clinton's server in her home
that she was keeping State Department secrets on or using
for State Department official email. He eventually had a sue
I think even oh yeah, yeah, right, almost out of
the gate. Um. But that's a That's another point too,
is that, like again, a lot of these things quickly

(45:28):
become foil lawsuits. Which if you're a journalist with a
big organization that's willing to spend money on foil lawsuits,
that's great. But if you're just an independent journalist or
a responsible citizens group or something like that, you might
not have the money to go to court. And the
government knows that. So a lot of a lot of
Foyer requests just die upon denial because the person doesn't

(45:52):
have the resources to take the government to court over it. Yeah,
Jason Leopold bears mentioning for sure, because he is uh,
he's Mr Foya, Dr Foya. Um. He has probably filed
more fo your lawsuits than anyone. In fact, it says
so um, anyone more more than anyone except for The

(46:12):
New York Times. Over the years in the fifteen years.
He's been the entire New York Times. Yeah. Uh. And
he worked for Advice for many, many years and now
works for BuzzFeed. And um was inducted into the National
Freedom of Information Hall of Fame, which I've never heard of.
But that's adorable. And he's the one who, ah, well,

(46:33):
he sued for Clinton's emails. He Um, he's the one
that got information on Guantanamo. He's the one that got
information on U n s A and and Snowdon Snowdon's revelations. Yeah,
he has like a knack for thinking of what to
ask for. So like he asked for the drafts of
the talking points for the n s A after this

(46:56):
emails or the Snowden revelations came through, Which is to
say he's a great researcher. He's a great researcher's mind.
He's about as good as they come as far as
researchers go. Yeah, we should put him on staff. I'm
sure he'd take us up on it right away. We'd
be like, we need to look into crayons. You got

(47:17):
anything else? Nope? Okay, Well, if you want to know
more about FO, you you know what, send a FO
your request that's the best way to get acquainted. Figure
it out, go do it, let us know how it
turned out. Uh, since I said for your request in
there somewhere, it's time for listener mail. I think this

(47:37):
is anonymous. I never heard back from this this person,
but it's a good one because we got a legit
um psychopath. Yeah, I think this one's probably anonymous. Yeah. Sorry,
I'm just looking to see now did not You're back? Um?
Hello guys, love your show. Um. I've always wanted a

(47:59):
reason to write, but I'm endlessly learning and entertained by
your show. I felt compelled to write as a high
functioning psychopath. I found a young age after many lock
up fires, block ups, fires, arrest trouble, et cetera. I
know I didn't act or react like normis or normal people.
I realized at thirteen I had to learn to play
nice with others I would be locked up. Became a

(48:21):
student of human behavior. Cry when other's cry, show shocked
when others do. I'm a successful, in good family man. Uh,
father of two college age kids, one of which is
a psychopath. And that was a very odd conversation. Yes,
something is missing in my brain, though I don't count
this as bad. I've been in so many emergency situations, avalanches,
swift water rescue, medical emergencies. I've heard people say the

(48:44):
training takes over and it feels more like taking off
the mask. Norm's panic and run. I just hit the switch.
I do agree, however, that people like this should be
avoided if at all possible, especially if they haven't learned
to play well with others. It's a little scared recent. Uh,
some of us on the spectrum are safe and dare
I say necessary, some of us can learn and care

(49:06):
and learn to care and feel. I have learned through
much trouble and strife that I can care through twenty
years of A and N A so very interesting revealing email. Yeah,
it sounds like a pretty thrilling life too. Yeah. And
you know, we heard from another psychopath and I think

(49:27):
they've come to terms with the fact that their brain
is different. And I would still like to function in
the society, so I have learned to do so or
they'll lock me up, right, And we talked about the spectrum,
and you know, it's just fascinating to me. That was
a good episode. Yeah, despite our weird pronunciations. Well, thanks
a lot anonymous for writing in We appreciate you, um

(49:51):
and UH. If you want to get in touch with
this anonymous or otherwise, you can tweak to us at
s Y s K podcast. You can join us on
Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can
also hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W.
Chuck Bryant. You can hang out with me on Twitter too,
by the way, at josh um Clark. Send us an
email this stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com

(50:12):
and it's always hanging out with us at our home
on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, is that
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