from: http://arktimes.com/mara/051900mara.html ----- Snyder and your right to know By Mara Leveritt May 19, 2000 n At various times, I have used this column to holler about violations of the federal Freedom of Information and Privacy Act. Other writers, scholars, and historians have been raising the same cry for years. Many have resorted to lengthy, expensive lawsuits to try to force federal agencies, especially the FBI, to conform to the nation's laws concerning release of public information. My experience has been no less galling. Having filed two requests and having been lied to and stonewalled on each, I concluded that contempt for the law is rampant. The question then became: How do citizens compel their government to obey a law it will not enforce upon itself? Long before creation of the term "information technology," or recognition of the power it entailed, James Madison foresaw the importance of citizen access to government records. In 1822 he wrote: "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives." Yet almost a century and a half would pass before citizens finally won passage of the federal Freedom of Information Act. The FOIA, as it's called, codified the presumption that citizens -- and not the government -- own the information that's been gathered and held by the executive branch. Before 1966 and enactment of the FOIA, the burden fell on individuals to prove that they had a right to examine such records. Upon passage of the FOIA, the burden of proof was shifted. Citizens seeking access to information no longer had to establish a need for it. Instead, the "need to know" standard was replaced by a doctrine of the citizens' "right to know." Now -- according to law, at least -- the government must justify its attempts to withhold any information. Experience has taught us, however, that agencies and departments of the executive branch can effectively gut the law by stalling, prevaricating or simply ignoring FOIA requests. That's a particularly serious problem, since one of the functions of the executive branch is to execute the nation's laws. Unless some other branch of government holds the executive branch to the fire, the law might as well not exist. My own experience suggested that the FOIA was indeed such a sham. In formal requests to the FBI, I had asked to see records concerning two of its most highly publicized and controversial investigations in Arkansas. Specifically, I wanted to see its records on Barry Seal, the infamous cocaine smuggler, and on Don Henry and Kevin Ives, the teenagers whose murders were the subject of my recent book. The FBI's response was that it had "no records" pertaining to either request. Knowing that that was false, I filed appeals. They were ignored. Hoping to avoid a lawsuit, I wrote letters to members of Congress. One -- and one alone -- responded to my concern. For more than three years now, Rep. Vic Snyder and his staff have been quietly working behind the scenes to see that we citizens of Arkansas (and of this nation) get what is ours by law. Through a variety of channels, Snyder has urged the FBI to open records it would rather keep closed. As a result of Snyder's intervention -- and only as a result of it, I'm sure -- the agency's stance has slowly changed. Records that were nonexistent have been belatedly discovered. Some have been released. Other releases have been promised. Thanks to Snyder and his crew, within the next few days I will be posting hundreds of pages of FBI documents relating to Barry Seal on my web page, maraleveritt.com. These pages have been heavily censored, and they represent only about two-thirds of the agency's total file. My appeal for the entire file still stands. Still, the pages that have been released contain striking information. And they are now available at the click of a cursor to anyone in the world. As for the files on Henry and Ives: A flat-out, written denial that the FBI had any records on them has dramatically changed in the past few weeks-again thanks to Snyder. Last week, officials at the FBI reported that -- lo, and behold -- they have located files containing almost 17,000 pages relating to the Henry-and-Ives investigation. I appreciate the FBI's new spirit of helpfulness. It's nice to see compliance with the law at an agency charged with enforcing the law on us. And, of course, I'm anxious to see the files. "Knowledge," as Madison said, "will forever govern ignorance." We have a right to our government's knowledge. In this column's penultimate gasp, I thank Snyder for siding with his constituents in this tug-of-war over information that has been gathered at our expense. 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