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The FOIA and President Bill Clinton
Unlike previous presidents, President William Jefferson Clinton
embraced the letter and spirit of the Freedom of Information Act, evidenced
in part by his directive to cabinet departments in the fall of his first
year. Nevertheless, Congress took the lead in dealing with endemic
problems in the implementation of the FOIA, such as lengthy delays and
extensive request backlogs at agencies. Sen. Patrick Leahy, long
a champion of the FOIA, introduced amendments to the FOIA for electronic
records in 1994, eventually leading to Clinton’s signature on the Electronic
Freedom of Information Act (EFOIA) Amendments in October 1996. In
2000, the General Accounting Office, at Sen. Leahy and others’ request,
began a review of the implementation of EFOIA at 25 departments and agencies,
which GAO released in March 2001. Below are these and other key documents
from the Clinton era concerning the FOIA.
Note: The following documents are in PDF format.
You will need to download and install the free Adobe
Acrobat Reader to view.
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