Introduction by Michael Ravnitzky:

APBnews.com Freedom of Information Act Wish List

The Memory Hole has located a list of Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the award-winning and now defunct news organization APBnews.com between 1998 and 2000. This list can be used as an idea-generator or roadmap for those who want to obtain interesting material from the US government.

About two-thirds of the FOIA requests listed here had been processed--and in many cases used for news stories--but the remaining requests were still pending at the time of the bankruptcy. When the government agencies which received the requests found out that the APBnews.com had declared bankruptcy, they simply cancelled all pending requests. The company's assets were purchased by another company which itself went bankrupt; the disposition of the files released to APBnews.com is unknown. A few FOIA requests were continued or re-requested by individual reporters.

While a few of the subjects of the requests may sound fanciful or frivolous, APBnews.com found that government agencies did maintain files on the majority of the subjects that were requested. For example, the receipt of the FBI file about the television show Hawaii Five-O led to an interesting story about government influence on the content of television programming.

This list represents a unique opportunity for reporters and researchers to request some of these files or videotapes. For those unfamiliar with making FOIA requests, the National Security Archive has an excellent guide.

APBnews.com staff who filed the requests included Hans Chen, Janon Fisher, Michael Ravnitzky, Mark Sauter, and Tami Sheheri, and also Jim Edwards and Todd Venezia.

Before being scanned by The Memory Hole, this list survived only as a single print-out. As you'll notice below, the subject fields of some lines were cut off when the list was printed.

front page | newest additions | index + search
about | contact | donate