On this day in 1966, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Now, quoting from the National Security Archive:
The U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a law ensuring public access to U.S. government records. FOIA carries a presumption of disclosure; the burden is on the government – not the public – to substantiate why information may not be released. Upon written request, agencies of the United States government are required to disclose those records, unless they can be lawfully withheld from disclosure under one of nine specific exemptions in the FOIA. This right of access is ultimately enforceable in federal court.
LBJ only reluctantly signed the law. He held no signing ceremony, which was unusual, given that he typically enjoyed pageantry almost as much as patronage. And he issued a signing statement (pdf) that undercut FOIA. I suppose it’s not surprising that the president wasn’t a huge fan of a law that offered the American people unprecedented access to government documents. More surprising? Republican Congressman Donald Rumsfeld (pdf) was on the side of the angels, championing FOIA — though only in the wake of LBJ’s landslide in the 1964 election. Approximately a decade later, Rumsfeld and his buddy, Dick Cheney, would spearhead the Ford administration’s losing effort to contain FOIA’s growth.
If Rumsfeld’s support for the bill was politically motivated, the real hero of the story was a Congressman from Sacramento, John Moss. Moss had led hearings in the mid 1950s on the perils of government secrecy. Ten years after that, in 1965, he sponsored the FOIA bill. At the time, Moss struggled against every agency in the federal apparatus, including the Department of Justice, which threatened that the Supreme Court would strike down FOIA (pdf) even if it somehow became law.
Despite the executive branch’s misgivings and roadblocks set up by entrenched bureaucratic interests, the Senate passed its version of Moss’s bill in the spring of 1966. The Johnson administration — nudged by a young press secretary named Bill Moyers — then began looking for ways to hop on the bandwagon before it completely filled. White House counsel Milton Semer, for example, suggested that LBJ could spin FOIA as an effort to cut through the red tape (pdf) in Washington. The Justice Department, meanwhile, worked directly with Moss, watering down his bill by exempting many different kinds of documents from FOIA and offering “broader protection for the internal working papers of executive agencies.”
The House voted on Moss’s bill on June 20, passing it unanimously. Johnson then signed FOIA into law on this day in 1966. Years later, Bill Moyers recalled:
I knew that LBJ had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the signing… He hated the very idea of the Freedom of Information Act; hated the thought of journalists rummaging in government closets and opening government files; hated them challenging the official view of reality. He dug in his heels and even threatened to pocket veto the bill after it reached the White House…He relented and signed ‘the damned thing,’ as he called it (I’m paraphrasing what he actually said …).
So, on Independence Day, we should celebrate our freedom to gather information about the government, even as the government gathers information about us.
23 comments
July 4, 2008 at 11:53 pm
eyeingtenure
Independence Day? That was minutes ago.
July 4, 2008 at 11:54 pm
ari
Nope. Look at the time stamp on your comment. I beat the deadline by 7 minutes.
July 5, 2008 at 12:00 am
Walt
I have a question which is only off-topic because you hate America. Why did the American colonists think they had any chance of winning? From the perspective of 1776, didn’t victory seem impossible?
July 5, 2008 at 12:27 am
ari
Are you asking about tactics or strategy? Because I know about neither.
July 5, 2008 at 12:31 am
urbino
What you need is a good military historian.
(Excellent post, ari. You couldn’t have picked a better topic.)
July 5, 2008 at 12:35 am
ari
What about reproductive rights? That would have been better, no?
July 5, 2008 at 12:37 am
urbino
There’s always next year.
July 5, 2008 at 1:09 am
CharleyCarp
Phooey.
July 5, 2008 at 7:13 am
silbey
From the perspective of 1776, didn’t victory seem impossible?
From a purely military perspective, victory seemed difficult but not impossible. For all Britain’s advantages (and they were enormous), the one great disadvantage was the 3000 mile supply line from England to the colonies. If the revolutionaries could prevent the British from supplying themselves effectively in North America, than the British would be in great trouble. That’s what turned out to be the case.
July 5, 2008 at 7:57 am
Fontana Labs
FOIA is so great. Have any of the non-lawyers here filed any requests? I’ve always wanted to, just for fun, but I’ve never gotten around to it. Hmm, a great liveblogging topic for the future…
July 5, 2008 at 8:11 am
SomeCallMeTim
I sometimes listen to podcasts from Australia–their public radio is better than ours–and I recall hearing one in which the speaker, in the course a speech quite critical of the US on nuclear disarmament, expressed wonderment and awe at the fact that once the US government decided on a policy, it just gave away the information necessary to monitor it. It was sort of an aside, but you could hear the deep surprise and admiration in his voice.
USA! USA! USA!
July 5, 2008 at 8:47 am
CharleyCarp
As noted above, FL, I’ve done one as a client, rather than a lawyer. When I worked for a federal judge, during law school, I was surprised how many FOIA cases there were. Many, but far from all, were filed by federal prisoners.
July 5, 2008 at 9:18 am
Charlieford
Excellent post. For all our problems, we still have things such as FOIA, the 1st Amendment, the Army’s recent history of itself in Iraq, and similar exhibits of openness, all of which are just plain cool. Or at least better than the alternative.
July 5, 2008 at 10:37 am
Walt
silbey: Is that how the colonists thought about it at the time? I thought logistics was a modern invention.
July 5, 2008 at 10:37 am
Megan
Such a good post! I never wondered how FOIA came about, but I love it and now I’m so glad I know!
July 5, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Fats Durston
The best part about FOIA is the electronic reading room, where the number 1 search–by a large margin–is consistently about the government’s relationship to UFOs.
July 5, 2008 at 5:30 pm
silbey
silbey: Is that how the colonists thought about it at the time
Yep. George Washington’s greatest contribution to the American victory was not on the battlefield (he didn’t actually win that many battles), it was in the recognition that the longer the colonies stretched things out (and to Washington that meant keeping the Continental Army intact), the worse Britain’s situation would be.
This is not to say that the concurrent strategy of getting the French on our side wasn’t a good one as well…
I thought logistics was a modern invention.
If by “modern” you mean “All the way back to Alexander the Great and even before” then yes, it’s a modern invention.
There’s a saying about this that goes something like: “Amateurs study strategy and tactics. Professionals study logistics.”
July 5, 2008 at 5:38 pm
ari
Hey, silbey, I’m almost finished with your book, and it’s really excellent. Even if you don’t know a thing about George Washington’s true genius. (And yes, I know that I keep linking to that. Sorry.)
July 5, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Walt
I’ve heard that saying, but I always assumed that it was a modern saying, and that it encapsulated the modern insight that logistics was central. I suppose I’m completely wrong on that, though. I blame my history teachers. And Ari, of course.
July 5, 2008 at 6:59 pm
silbey
Hey, silbey, I’m almost finished with your book, and it’s really excellent
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
Even if you don’t know a thing about George Washington’s true genius. (And yes, I know that I keep linking to that. Sorry.)
That’s a really scary video. I mean really scary.
I’ve heard that saying, but I always assumed that it was a modern saying, and that it encapsulated the modern insight that logistics was central.
The issue of logistics become much more pressing with the arrival of firearms (swords don’t require ammunition to reload), but people have worried about supply since time immemorial.
July 5, 2008 at 7:27 pm
urbino
Demand, though. Demand is a modern invention, right?
July 6, 2008 at 5:50 am
silbey
Demand, though. Demand is a modern invention, right?
Nothing is a modern invention. Well, okay, very few things.
July 6, 2008 at 12:32 pm
urbino
Durn.