FBI destroying irreplaceable historical records

Those of us who file FOIA requests with the FBI on a regular basis have run into this inexcusable situation. It’s great to see an article in Slate shine a spotlight on it.

The Department of Forgetting

How an obscure FBI rule is ensuring the destruction of irreplaceable historical records.

By Alex Heard

… At the time, I was new to the weird science of FOIA requesting, so I didn’t know the FBI was allowed to destroy files routinely. Dismayed, I looked into how the Records Retention Plan works, with help from several generous FOIA experts. What they described sounded more like a Records Destruction Plan, since it allows the FBI to discard roughly 80 percent of its files at any given time.