How FOIA Works

you know people are less shady in the sunlight. So this is part episode two of our recording session of 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

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. 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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,

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. 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,

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

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 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 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. 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, 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? 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, 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, 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, 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,

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 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 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. 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. 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 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,

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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 Ronald Reagan. All right, Ronnie, he's here. That's so, like 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 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 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, 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

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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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,

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 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 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

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 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. 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. 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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, 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 how stuff Works dot com