More Archive Resources on FOIA:
About the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
How to Make a FOIA Request
Government Guidance, Directives and Statistics on FOIA
United States Department of Justice Summary of Annual FOIA Reports for Fiscal Year 2000
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Washington, D.C., July 4, 2001 –
George Washington University's National
Security Archive, the leading non-profit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information
Act, today released its first
annual "State of Freedom of Information" report, 35 years to the
day after President Johnson grudgingly signed the U.S. FOIA into law on
July 4, 1966. The Archive study reported that:
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Federal agencies still resist obeying the letter of the law, especially
the requirement of a response within 20 working days (on one Archive request
filed in 1990, the
CIA took 9 years to deny in full 22 documents, and another 7 months
to deny the appeal);
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Public use of the Freedom of Information Act continues to rise, with 1,965,919
FOIA requests filed with federal agencies in fiscal year 1999, the most
recent data available from the Justice Department;
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Direct cost to the taxpayers for administering the FOIA amounted to $286,546,488
in fiscal year 1999, or almost exactly one dollar per citizen, according
to the Justice Department data and the Census Bureau;
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Documents released under federal, state and local freedom of information
acts sparked more than 3,000 news stories in 2000 and 2001 (according to
the Archive's searches of on-line databases), exposing data of major public
interest such as excessive mercury levels in canned tuna, enormous geographic
variations in the prescription rates for Ritalin, a projected $4 billion
cost overrun on NASA's space station, and the internal policy debate over
intelligence sharing with Peru prior to the shootdown of an American missionary
plane.
As part of the 35th anniversary report, the Archive posted today on its
award-winning Web site, the key
documents on the history of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act,
including:
- President Johnson's
half-hearted signing statement and excerpts from the Congressional Record
debates of 1966,
- President
Ford's veto statement on the FOIA amendments of 1974 and the ensuing
Congressional debates,
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Congressional Record floor statements on the 1986 FOIA amendments on law
enforcement and fee waiver issues,
- President
Clinton's signing statement on the 1996 "E-FOIA" amendments, and
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the most recent General Accounting Office assessment of the FOIA and E-FOIA.
Also included on the site are a User's
Guide to FOIA, sample
FOIA request and appeal letters, the addresses
of every major federal agency FOIA contact, and guidance
from the Archive's experts on how
to use the FOIA. The report features a detailed
analysis of eight key federal agencies handling national security
information over the past three years, and an itemized list
of 15 significant news stories from this year that cited
documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
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