Before 1966, American citizens could get information about the government only on an unclearly defined “need to know” basis. The
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) of 1966 provided the public with
access to many federal government documents. The act is based on the principle that, in a democracy, the public has a right to know what the
government is doing, unless that knowledge interferes with national security.
History of the act
The issue of freedom of information arose in the 1950s, when newspaper reporters and editors were frustrated by their lack of access to government information about which they believed the public had a right
to know. The American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) recruited
former newspaper attorney Harold L. Cross to write a book about the
nation’s limited access to government information. The resulting volume, The People’s Right to Know (1953), became the handbook of the
freedom of information movement.
The U.S. Congress took up the freedom of information issue in
1954. John Moss (1915–1997), a Democratic representative from
California, strongly championed freedom of information and initiated a
long government debate on the issue. After years of argument, President
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973; served 1963–69) signed the Freedom
of Information Act into law in 1966, almost twenty years after ASNE
had begun its campaign.
The act
The FOIA required government agencies to regularly publish certain
documents, including federal laws, presidential documents, administrative regulations and notices, and descriptions of federal organizations,
programs, and activities. The act also required agencies to make available
for public inspection and copying 1) final opinions made in court cases,
2) statements of policy and interpretations adopted by an agency, 3) staff
manuals that affect the public, and much more.
The FOIA was designed to help individuals obtain information
about the actions of government. It required that citizens be given access
to government records, unless releasing the records was prevented by law
or for purposes of national security. If a government agency denied an individual’s request for information, that agency had to give the individual
a reason for the decision within ten days, and the individual had the right to appeal it. Privacy Act amendments
The FOIA was particularly beneficial to journalists and anyone interested in investigating the government. A 1974 amendment called the
Privacy Act brought these benefits to individuals who wished to find out
if the government was investigating them. The Privacy Act came about
after the American public discovered that the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were
secretly spying on people simply because they disagreed with government policy.
During the 1960s, the powerful director of the FBI, J. Edgar
Hoover (1895–1972), stepped up the agency’s programs to investigate
and disrupt radical movements. By 1968, the FBI had established two
counterintelligence programs: COINTELPRO–Black Nationalist Hate
Groups was created to gather data on African American movements and
COINTELPRO–New Left was created to spy on student movements.
The tactics of COINTELPRO included extensive wiretapping and
planting listening devices in homes, hotel rooms, and meeting places of
various organizations. FBI agents posing as black or student activists
joined groups and purposely caused conflicts within the organizations.
At times, these agents encouraged illegal activities in order to provoke
public disapproval of the organizations, even going so far as to encourage students to participate in violent activities such as bombing buildings
and killing police.
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) was under
intense FBI scrutiny from 1961 until his death in 1968. Leaders of the
Black Panther Party and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) were also targets of extreme FBI activity.
Although the CIA has no authority to gather information regarding
domestic matters, that agency began collecting information on American
citizens in 1967 to determine the role of foreign influence in the
American peace movement. Some of the groups targeted for infiltration
by the CIA included the SNCC, the Women’s Strike for Peace, the
Washington Peace Center, and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
By the early 1970s, the CIA had accumulated open files on more than
sixty-four thousand citizens and a computerized index of more than
three hundred thousand individuals and organizations. In the mid-1970s, people became suspicious about the activities of
the FBI and CIA and filed lawsuits under the FOIA. These resulted in the
publication of a number of COINTELPRO files. The information in
these files, coupled with documentation implicating the CIA in domestic
intelligence abuses, prompted Congress to investigate the activities of
both agencies. Although many FBI and CIA files had been destroyed or
altered, the investigations revealed that both organizations had carried out
a number of programs intended to undermine, discredit, or destroy the
civil rights movement and antiwar movement in the 1960s.
Following the revelation of FBI and CIA abuses, there was a public
outcry for curbs on both organizations. In 1974, Congress created
amendments to the FOIA that would allow disclosure of documents to
individuals subject to investigation as long as their release did not pose a
security risk. Privacy Act amendments give individual Americans the
right to see the government’s records concerning themselves and to correct them if they are inaccurate. The amendments also determined that
individuals can sue the government if it releases records about them to
anyone not authorized to see those records under the act.