FOIA, or the Freedom of Information Act, was introduced in 1967 and allowed the public of the United States the right to request access to records from any federal agency. Mind you that is only request, under certain circumstances the government is allowed to deny those requests to information.
One recent FOIA request interested me because of the way it was handled. A woman by the name of Emma Best requested information on Operation Mockingbird which according to the CIA was an effort to wire tap the telephones of certain reporters, however due to various leaks it is believed that Operation Mockingbird was actually an attempt to control certain news media for the purpose of propaganda.
What was interesting about this request is that because the Mockingbird files were under the holdings of the presidential library before the presidential records act (PRA) they are actually not subject to FOIA, but rather the mandatory declassification review (MDR). As it turns out the files had already been released to the public so a FOIA request was not necessary anyway, the files can be found at muckrock.com.
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