CELEBRATING THE 56TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOIA

By DOJ/OIP. FOIA Post, June 30, 2022

This Fourth of July marks the fifty-sixth anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).  Amending the disclosure section of the Administrative Procedure Act, the FOIA transformed what had widely been considered a withholding statute to a disclosure statute that would provide the greatest possible access to federal agency records. 

The significance of this new law was emphasized at the very beginning with Attorney General Clark’s June 1967 memorandum on the implementation of the FOIA.  Issued to executive departments and agencies one month before the law took effect, the Attorney General declared:  “If the government is to be truly of, by, and for the people, the people must know in detail the activities of government.  Nothing so diminishes democracy as secrecy.  Self-government, the maximum participation of the citizenry in affairs of state, is meaningful only with an informed public.”

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