Stuff You Should Know - How FOIA Works

Episode Date: September 26, 2017

In the 60s, Congress worried the White House was operating too much in secret and passed the Freedom Of Information Act, opening the government to public questioning. It has been an ongoing struggle to pry those secrets loose ever since. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We've got guest producer Matt over here.

That makes this Stuff You Should Know. Sunshine Edition. The storms are gone. Well, plus they say sunshine is the greatest disinfectant. Oh, really? Yeah, you shine a light into dark corners and it reveals truth. Gotcha.

Plus, you know, people are less shady in the sunlight. So this is part, episode two of our recording sesh of Freshly Being Without Power, Irma going through Atlanta, Dead Cats. 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.

Song's Child. Oh, really? Wow, you're vacationing vacation? Yeah. Wow. Not frustratingly running around trying to get sand out of sunscreen. Right, yeah.

Of a small child. That's a losing proposition. Yeah, man, can't wait. Good. Well, enjoy yourself. We were originally going to Folly Beach, but it was damaged. Sure.

The house was. But this one was not. No. So they moved us. I've never been to Isle of Palm. Is it shaped like a palm like in Dubai? No. It's just one of Charleston's,

I don't know what they call them, Low Country Border Islands? Sure. Maybe? That's what they call them now. Right next to Sullivan's Island. Mm-hmm. And James Island and Folly Beach

are all kind of right there. I got you. Great area. Charleston's amazing. Yeah, we're going to go in for dinner and stuff. Yeah. They're trying to throw a little money at their economy, but I think they had some really bad flooding,

so I hope everyone's all right there. Yes, I think like three or six feet storm surge or something. And they were on the outskirts of Irma. Yeah, it's true. They were not even in the path in the end. Not good stuff. No, not good. Well, I'm glad Charleston made it.

And I'm glad you're going to Charleston. Man, can't wait. I'm going to eat so much seafood. Yeah. All right, so Chuck, as I was saying, sunshine is the greatest disinfectant. Let's hope. 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 Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press. Nice. 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. OK. 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 smoke and mirrors. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was not a very open administration either. Well, you know what they say, politics is politics. Who says that? Is that Isle of Palms thing? Yeah. Yeah.

Politics is politics. Have another crawfish. Yeah, past the Frogmore stew. Is there a frog in that? No, that's just like a low country boil. I got you. Frogmore stew. Yeah, I love low country boil.

I'm going to make that. I think you should. My own self. I think you should bring some back here for me. Yeah. I don't know if it, I guess it would keep. It depends. I want to be like, here's a week old Frogmore stew, Josh.

I'd probably still eat it. I know you would. So the idea of government giving up its secrets, right? It's actually fairly new here in the States. For sure. There's a time, not too long ago, where if you wanted classified information or any information from the federal government,

you have really no way to ask for it. And even if you could figure out who to ask for it from. They would say no. They would say no. And then you would 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, there was a guy named representative John Moss from California. He was a congressman back in the 60s. And he became concerned that 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 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, what, 13 or so years after 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 in 1953. Kind of surprising to me, it was that early that they were kind of ringing the bell for this. Sure, but I think the Cold War, almost immediately, the development of the bomb and the Cold War

really drove 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, win and doubt, classify it. Because not only does it obscure what you're doing from, say, like your enemy, it also obscures what you're doing from your citizenry.

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 could elect somebody who could do it better.

And 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 druthers, they would operate in complete, isolated secrecy. Yeah, well, they're trying. Like 100%, like you wouldn't even have press conferences.

Like they would just shut it down and say, don't you guys worry about anything? We have it covered. Just go about your day. Go about your business. So Moss went to fellow Democratic president, fellow Democrat, President Lyndon Johnson, and said, I think we should change the way we're doing things

here, and Johnson said, I don't know about that. It's pretty good, Johnson. Johnson, he's a very interesting, I think conflicted dude. We should do a show on him at some point. I'd be happy to. 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 was a domestic guy, huh? I never realized that he didn't know about foreign policy. It was not his specialty. I got you.

I think he wanted to do great things for this country in his heart. But 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 to him. I didn't see the movie version, but I saw the play.

All the way? That's what it's called? I think so. I think that's like a. No? Todd Reed John Ritter film or something like that. Now, that's let's go all the way. Oh, OK.

Oh, man, I miss John Ritter. Sure. He was the best. So anyway, Johnson said, I don't know about that. All the federal departments and agencies said I definitely don't know about that bad idea. But it was the bell had been rung in 1966, 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 voted 307 to 0 to pass the Moss Freedom of Information Act, the FOIA. And Johnson signed it and 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, well, we'll sign it. But maybe people don't know about it. They won't go off. We don't have to. We don't 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. 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 open the door for that second part of the first sentence is 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. And you said that it was heartening to hear that Congress unanimously passed the FOIA Act, right? Yeah, 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 2014, which we'll talk about later, they did. 2014, with John Boehner at the helm of the House, and Obama in the White House. The Congress divided as much as it's ever been. House came together unanimously for this FOIA act, or Amendment Act. There was also a time when Gerald Ford was president,

where Congress overrode a veto of his as far as FOIA. So FOIA is this one thing. Because 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, OK?

So Congress very frequently comes together and is 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, it's not just like the White House.

There's tons of federal agencies that fall under the executive branch, including the FBI, or the CDC. Basically, any federal agency is probably under the purview of the executive branch. So therefore, FOIA would apply to it as well. Correct. That's very nice to point that out,

because you confused even me off mic. Sorry about that. So I think this bears reading this quote. There's a journalist named John Wiener or Weiner, who he tried for 14 years to get John Lennon's FBI files through FOIA requests. And he very succinctly wrote this. 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 their elected representatives. Classified files and official secrets lie at the heart of the modern government bureaucracy.

I have such a hard time with that word. That's a tough one. It's almost impossible to spell, too. Oh, I don't even try. And permit the 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 Ryle the Peacot.

You don't want to rile up a journalist. 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 stuff. That's one of the main roles of the media, right? Yeah, journalists are 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. But early on, the journalists were largely in support of FOIA.

The Congress was like, sure, why not? It'll probably make the president who we don't like look bad. And now we have, as of the 1966 act, the Freedom of Information Act, right? Yeah, which officially, I mean, people know what this is. This is the ability 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. And along with that act, originally in 1966, I said these are available to the public with nine exemptions, which we'll go over later, that will protect the agency under certain circumstances. And if you were denied, there is also now a process in place to appeal that denial.

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, right? That's kind of went for a while. Yeah, until Watergate. The Watergate scandal really changed people's relationship

with government big time. It changed government's relationship to government. Yeah. And one of the things that happened was there was an update to FOIA and a strengthening of FOIA so that there were greater sanctions if you didn't follow through 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 Congress puts this FOIA amendments or updates on Gerald Ford's desk to sign. And he's like, no. Well, he looked around the room and said, what should I do?

Right. And the two people that piped up were Donald Rumsfeld, 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 FOIA. Right, I think in the very easily manipulated version.

Right. Yeah. But when it came time to give a teeth. Right. And he said, no, don't. And so Ford argued that it was unconstitutional. And Congress said, you're wrong, and we're overriding your V2. That does not happen very.

Yeah. You say to two. That doesn't happen very often, that a veto is overridden. I don't ever done one on vetoes. No, we totally should. We 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.

We're just getting heated up here on this one. And as you'll see in the coming segments, FOIA changes. Gets more teeth and less teeth over the years, depending on whose office. And we'll be right back with Ronald Reagan. MUSIC On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor,

stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up

sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it, and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step.

Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart

radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Ronnie, he's here. Skipper, remember? That's right. Ronnie's the weirdo. So like I promised, over the years, Foya has had more teeth and less teeth, depending on who is running the show.

Sure. Probably not so surprisingly, when Ronald Reagan got into office in 1982, or in 1982, he created, he made it much tougher to get information, made it easier for agencies to withhold stuff. Yeah. Bill Clinton comes along, relaxes things. Right.

Kind of goes like that in our country. Well, Reagan also, one of his things was, he definitely helps spearhead that classify everything mentality under his administration. Yeah, he said print. He said, manufacture as many classified rubber stamps as you can. Right.

Every office needs about 100 of them. And I think, especially during the Cold War, the Soviets served as a real boogeyman for keeping citizens in the dark. For sure. We don't want the Ruskies to find out, so no. Yeah. We don't trust you with this, because you

might hand it over to the Ruskies. Yeah. That was what they said. And they said Ruskies, too. They did. So like I said, Clinton comes along, and there were a few big events in his administration. But, Holden, think about it.

When Clinton comes along, no more USSR. Well, true. Yeah. No more boogeyman. Right. Good times, man. Less poverty. Did you like my Clinton?

Yeah, that was good. It was not. I think together we did the perfect Bill Clinton. He, during his administration, had a big impact on FOIA. We're calling it FOIA, right? Yeah, Freedom of Information Act. It's a perfect acronym, because it takes all words into account.

FOIA. Yeah, and it's not fake. No. No one just cooked up some weird word to throw in there to make it a word. Right, it's FOIA. So the release and archiving of Cold War, previously classified Cold War documents, was a big one.

And then in 1996, a really big sea change is when Clinton said, get with it and digitize all this stuff. Like, this is the future. We don't need everything on paper documents. Make it easier to file and store this stuff, A, and make it easier to distribute this stuff under FOIA. And also, they extended that timeline.

I don't think we initially said it was 10 days. Yeah, you had 10 days to respond to a FOIA request as a FOIA officer. Oh, yeah, officer. And then that was extended to 20 days, although it says in here that that wasn't so much of a big deal. Just gave them a little more time, basically.

No, because an agency that's not frequently contacted for FOIA information and is not running a backlog, is probably going to do it in about 10 days anyway, right? Right. An agency that is running a backlog is still not going to get in touch with you within 10 days or 20 days. So it really had no effect.

But it is on the books still to this day. They have 20 days to respond to you before you can appeal their lack of response. So George Bush, George W. Bush comes along, of course, and tightens restrictions again after September 11th. That was the perfect time to tighten the belt on FOIA. Again, the boogeyman is back. USA Patriot Act.

So after September 11th, the administration ordered thousands of documents and data removed from websites, agency websites, things like airport safety data, things like pipeline maps, environmental data. I've got to tell you, I don't disagree with all of that. This is a double-edged sword. This topic itself is to unpack this thing fully. 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 the world's police and having military everywhere and being interventionist and adventurous and just basically completely change the complexion of the modern United States

to be able to be fully transparent. And even then, it might be kind of foolish. Like Norway can be fully transparent. But even still, can they? Maybe somebody be like, well, I want to practice being a terrorist. So I'm going to start on Norway because they publish all their pipeline information. So maybe I'll just go see what happens when I blow that up.

Or the Great Wooden Shoe Scandal of the Hawks. Was it Norway or the Netherlands? I don't think they wear wooden shoes in Norway. Oh, I just think they all wear wooden shoes all over the place. But they don't. We have listeners there, man. They're going to 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? They were like gently correcting us that no one actually really drinks fosters in Australia. That's funny.

Bush also, what he made a move to do was limit access to records of former presidents, which was sort of a big move. And then in the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2002, he wanted to limit requests by foreign governments or international organizations. Right. So again, OK, I don't really disagree with all of it.

One of the other things that Bush did, too, was he expanded who could get cheap or free access to FOIA. Yeah. Journalists, I think, is part of the Watergate expansion or maybe the Clinton expansion. Journalists were offered expedited and cheap, if not free, FOIA requests. Yeah.

We should point out you have to pay for this stuff. And if you're free, the journalists get a break. They say that, and apparently, there's not a standard fee. It's just that as part of the law, an agency can recover costs directly associated with the search, right? So it could be $11 an hour. It could be $200 an hour, depending.

Journalists get faster expedited service, paper at least, and then they get their fees waived or else pay a reduced fee. And then what Bush did with the changes to FOIA under his watch were to expand who qualifies as a journalist. It now included independent investigative journalists, bloggers, and then public interest groups. Apparently, it had always been included in that, too. I just like thinking of W saying the word blogger.

I get the feeling that he didn't even know what that was. And not because of intelligence. He just always struck me as like a loof. 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 do I work this thing?

Just sort of old school. Right. Rootsy, he didn't know what a blogger was. Maybe not. Come on. Maybe not. Or a vlogger. Boy, you want to blow his mind?

I agree with you. You definitely didn't know what a vlogger was. At any rate, it was the honest leadership and open government act. It was a good thing. And of course, Harry Reid is who introduced the bill. See, that's what I'm saying. Congress is like, we don't like this president.

We're going to make him look bad and force some new FOIA 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 back the curtains. That's right. Then Obama gets on his. 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. 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. How great would that have been if he literally did that? Like Ronald Reagan. You probably did. In 2009, he, very first day in office, he said, here's a memo. We're going to be the most transparent government. That was my Obama.

In American history. And everyone went, yes, that's awesome. And he went, you think people bought that? Yeah, he's like, oh my gosh, they did. Yeah, he said that he wanted to adopt. He wrote a memo, like you said, the first day in office. Very first day. And he said that federal 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, who was running the DOJ for him, I guess that make him his attorney general, right? Eric Holder was attorney general, wasn't he? I think so.

And he said, figure out how to codify this. And he did. They came up with guidelines for the federal agencies to become more transparent. Yeah, and a lot of it, this was in 2016. No, that was in 2009. Oh, yeah, yeah. By the time 2016 rolled around, the exact opposite was going on.

Yeah, 2016 is when the FOIA Improvement Act was put through. And 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 shorted over the years from what I understand. Yeah, it was also an attempt to take that codified presumption of disclosure that the DOJ had come up with and put it into law, like make it part of the FOIA Act.

And a FOIA request revealed lobbying by the Obama administration, intense lobbying by the Obama administration, to prevent that codification. That administration had come up with to prevent that from becoming part of FOIA 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.

And the thing that caught everyone's attention, or at least the people who filed these FOIA requests to get this information, is that in 2014, Congress, well, the House passed a bill that had this in it, 410 to nothing, unanimously passed it. And then it was never brought up for a final vote. John Boehner never called for a final vote. It was just allowed to die.

That's pretty suspicious. So when they finally got to the bottom of it, they saw that the DOJ and the Obama administration, and then later on, the FTC, the Trade Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, were all very much lobbying against the expansion. Because one of the things that it serves as an exemption to FOIA 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 2016 FOIA Act would have expanded that, but that got lobbied out. So disheartening.

It is quite disheartening. I mean, yeah, like the Obama administration being the most transparent administration of all time, it's just such bullocks. It's just completely untrue. And yet it's a myth 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 created, and I think the beginning of the 20th century, 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 maybe we should. All right, we will be back, and boy, I still feel like we're heating up here. Got a lot to cover. We'll be back with how you can follow one of these things right for this. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called

David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll wanna be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to

when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody

about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so as said before, you can be a foreign national. You can be a US citizen if you want to file a FOIA request. You can be a corporation, you can be a news outlet, most,

well, probably most times, you're a journalist. And we already kind of went over the fees, but what you do is, if you want to request documents, if we want to release, just fill this out in triplicate and get it back to us. To request documents, you appeal 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 no, I think you legally have to go to that agency and through the FOIA office. OK. I think you have to do both when that's taken. Maybe not, but it's a good idea. Well, each agency has its own FOIA office.

Right. OK. So, well, yeah, that bears pointing out, like that's part of the FOIA Act and all the improvements over the years is there is somebody at every office that heads this up. Right. At least one person.

And 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 their FOIA. The easy form? Yeah, exactly. What are you pissed about?

Right, exactly. That's the first question. What did we do to your family that you want to know about? Exactly. That you just fill out these different fields and you can submit a FOIA request like that? Yeah. Depending on what you're after will determine

how long this takes or if you get a response at all initially. They say it's first come, first serve. If you're, it 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 to look at you with a smile and then they'll ride their little horse away. Everyone's riding horses. Be safe with fire. If you're looking for 600 pages from the CIA, good luck. It'll take a little while. You will undoubtedly end up in federal court probably finally complaint in that case.

Yeah, because FOIA requests very frequently turn into FOIA lawsuits. Yeah, it just happens. Yeah, it's nothing personal. 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 FOIA request.

You wait 20 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 20 days following that, you can then go take it to federal court.

And you can also, and this gets a little funny, you can also file a FOIA request about your FOIA 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 the behind the curtain process of the stuff. Right. So we came across some tips from George Washington University's

National Security Archive for filing FOIA requests. Good tips, I think. Yeah, it's pretty straightforward, but it's good to know. One of the ones that stood out to me was don't be an aggressive jerk to the FOIA officer. In a lot of cases, the FOIA 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 FOIA is stupid and is a threat 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 they're probably not the most popular person at their office.

So ticking them off is not the best idea. So treat them with courtesy, with respect, be direct, don't include tons of supporting information and emails. You want to give them as much information as you can. But these are synced. 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. Well, and the more this is what I'm looking for specifically. Yeah, and the more likely it is to overlap with other agencies, which is just going to complicate things further. They say don't include a lot of narratives, even if you think your story is important.

Like 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 a good way to get started. 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 do first is to look to see if this information is already out there. That is huge. And I would not have thought that either. There is 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 says in here, and this is very true. I've done it. Congress has just tons and tons of material about public policy online that you can find. So it might already be out there. 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 an article about a woman in Oregon who the Intercept wrote an article on. 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 100,000 pages of internal documents and memos

and stuff from lawsuits that they're now scanning and digitizing and putting onto the web. But she would be a great person to go to for those specific art, 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 2016 amendments said that 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 agencies will maintain a FOIA reading room on their site, which will have all the documents that have been publicly released through FOIA.

Yeah, I thought three was a pretty heartening number, actually. Yeah, I thought so, too. If it would have said 300, I would not have been surprised. So the fact that it said three, it was like, all right. That's legit. It's a magic number. So there's a lot of loopholes to this, right?

Oh, yes. And I mean, also, you've got to step back here and think about what you're doing. 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 to. 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. It's a little Orwellian, to say the least. It is. OK, but there's a lot of loopholes associated with this that will keep government agency 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 are not guaranteed anything. This is a request that you're submitting. Things that you definitely cannot do or get physical objects like you can't request evidence from the JFK shooting to be sent to your house. Send me the magic bullet. Private information about an individual, which

gets a little hinky, that's over the years they've gone back and forth on really at the basis of it. And we'll get to 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. And then information that's covered under the nine exemptions that I think we kind of have to read through these, right?

I think so. All right, go ahead. The first one is any information that's classified for national security purposes, pretty straightforward. 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. Yeah, probably so. Like no break room rules, CEI break room rules. Right. Shall be posted. What are you doing in the break room? I hadn't even thought about that. Clean up your coffee.

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 think of. Documents that protect trade secrets or contain information that could damage a company's business. You're like, you can't petition Coca-Cola for their secret formula.

Or anything that would show that the telecoms were working with the NSA for the Prism Project or something like that. Right, and not Coca-Cola, obviously, but petition the government for Coca-Cola. Right. 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 basically any documents that contain personal opinions, recommendations, or conclusions. Which is to say all documents. Right, and it's ostensibly meant to protect legal documents, so attorney-client privilege. Right. And to promote a tone of frankness

among interagency and intraagency communications. Basically, if you are emailing your colleague and you're worried about somebody reading it on the outside, you're not going to be as open and frank, and it's going to freeze free speech within the agency. It's so broad, so vague, and everything falls under it that number five is the exemption most frequently used. Like all they really needed is number five.

Basically. Personal privacy, things like social security numbers, phone numbers, addresses, stuff like that. 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, procedures for investigations or prosecutions,

or anything that endangers a person's life or safety. Right. 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. 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 are those just been tweaked over the years? I believe those are the original nine, and they're still in use.

All right. So there is this really good point made by a journalist named Philip E. Ile, E-I-L. And he says that if you are an editor who is being approached with a story about how another journalist is being stone walled 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 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 you might as well not have foyer. That it's just basically a role 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 file a foyer 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 if stone walling is going on from foyer requests. All right. So we promised a couple of landmark court rulings. This first one is good.

1976, Philippi v. the CIA. I think usually when you're v. the CIA, we know which way that's going to work out, right? Probably not in Philippi's favor. 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 nonexistence of X.

This is where that came from. And the original case was in 1968. There was a Soviet submarine sunk off the coast of Hawaii. And the CIA said, who should we partner with to build a ship to go look for the thing? Howard Hughes, of course. We needed to do an episode just on that. On Howard Hughes or the Glomar Explorer.

Yeah, totally. And that ship was called the Glomar Explorer. And to salvage the submarine, so there was a Rolling Stone reporter, filed a FOIA request. And the CIA very famously said, we can not confirm. We refuse to confirm or deny any such document. And he went, well, what does that even mean? I'm like, no one's ever even said that before.

And the CIA went, hey, nice work. I think we flummoxed everybody. And it did. And it did work. So eventually it went to federal appeals court. And they said, CIA wins. And now that is known as the Glomar response that you hear over and over and over.

Right. That's where it's origin lies. Pretty neat. There's another one that was pretty big. It actually came into play pretty quickly after it was ruled, I guess. So 2016, US Court of Appeals said that if you have work-related federal agency emails, a personal account,

you can't get around a FOIA request. Yeah, who would do that? And that was used for a long time, including most famously by Hillary Clinton, who her whole email scandal came out of a FOIA request. There were a whole bunch of people who had filed FOIA requests dating as far back as 2012. I think the Citizens for Responsibility in Ethics

in Washington crew filed one of the first ones. And the State Department just kept losing them or said they weren't aware of any FOIA requests or whatever. And then a FOIA reporter, he's a self-styled FOIA terrorist, I believe. Self-styled? He dresses himself?

I think so. Jason Leopold filed a FOIA request for Clinton's stuff as well and then was in talks, I believe, with the State Department for getting that FOIA 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.

Yeah, he eventually had a sue, I think, even. Oh, yeah. Yeah, almost out of the gate. But that's another point, too, is that, again, a lot of these things quickly become FOIA lawsuits, which, if you're a journalist with a big organization that's willing to spend money on FOIA lawsuits, that's great. But if you're just an independent journalist

or a responsible citizen's group or something like that, you might not have the money to go to court. And the government knows that. So a lot of FOIA 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's Mr. FOIA, Dr. FOIA.

He has probably filed more FOIA lawsuits than anyone. In fact, it says so, more than anyone except for the New York Times over the years, in the 15 years he's been. The entire New York Times. Yeah. And he worked for Vice for many, many years and now works for BuzzFeed. And 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, well, he sued for Clinton's emails. He's the one that got information on Guantanamo. He's the one that got information on NSA and Snowden'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 NSA after the Snowden emails,

or the Snowden revelations came through. Which is to say he's a great researcher. He has 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. Sure. I'm sure he'd take us up on it right away. We'd be like, we need you to look into crayons.

You got anything else? Nope. OK, well, if you want to know more about FOIA, you know what, send a FOIA request. That's the best way to get acquainted. Figure it out. Go do it. Let us know how it turned out.

Well, since I said FOIA request in there somewhere, it's time for Listener Mail. I think this is anonymous. I never heard back from this person. OK. But it's a good one, because we got a legit psychopath. Yeah, I think this one's probably anonymous. Yeah.

Sorry, I'm just looking to see. No, did not hear back. Hello, guys. Love your show. 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 at a young age, after many lockups, fires, arrest,

trouble, et cetera, I know I didn't act to react like normies or normal people. I realized at 13 I had to learn to play nice with others, so I would be locked up. I became a student of human behavior, cry when others cry, show shock when others do. I'm a successful and good family man, a father of two college-aged 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. Normies 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 scary sometimes. Some of us on the spectrum are safe, and dare I say necessary, some of us can learn to care and feel.

I have learned through much trouble and strife that I can care through 20 years of AA and NA. So a very interesting, revealing email. Yeah, it sounds like a pretty thrilling life, too. Yeah, and 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. Yeah, or they'll lock me up. Right, and we talked about the spectrum, and it's just fascinating to me. That was a good episode. Yeah, I like that one. Despite our weird pronunciations. Well, thanks a lot, Anonymous, for writing in.

We appreciate you. And if you want to get in touch with us, Anonymous, or otherwise, you can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.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 joshumclark.

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