{"id":49461,"date":"2016-10-17T00:10:21","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T07:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=49461"},"modified":"2016-10-15T23:41:59","modified_gmt":"2016-10-16T06:41:59","slug":"freedom-information-act-came","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2016\/10\/freedom-information-act-came\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Freedom of Information Act Came About"},"content":{"rendered":"
The following is an article from Uncle John\u2019s Bathroom Reader<\/a><\/em><\/div>\n

\"john-e-moss\"<\/a>The Freedom of Information Act was passed in 1966\u2014and it was the very first law in American history that gave regular citizens the legal footing to compel the government to release internal documents. Before that\u2014not for you! Getting it passed was a long, tough battle. (And it\u2019s still going on.) Here\u2019s the whole story.<\/em><\/p>\n

MR. MOSS GOES TO WASHINGTON<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1952 a 37-year-old businessman named John E. Moss was elected to a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing California\u2019s 3rd congressional district, which included his home city, Sacramento. Moss had lived a tough life: His mother died when he was twelve, and his father, an alcoholic and an unemployed coal miner, left shortly thereafter; Moss and his brother, both still young teens, were left to fend for themselves.<\/p>\n

Then the Great Depression came.<\/p>\n

Somehow, Moss not only survived those difficult years, but by 1938, through his hard work, he was the owner of a successful Sacramento appliance store. In 1948, after a stint in the Navy during World War II, he was elected to the California state assembly.<\/p>\n

Over the course of two terms, Moss earned a reputation as someone who didn\u2019t play the game the way it was \u201csupposed\u201d to be played. He didn\u2019t go to lobbyists\u2019 parties; he didn\u2019t schmooze with party bosses\u2014he just went to work. The focus of that work, not surprisingly, given his background, was fighting for the little guy. In 1952, after winning election to the U.S. Congress, it was time to take that fight for the little guy to Washington.<\/p>\n

D.C.-CRETS<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Moss arrived in Washington in 1953, he quickly became acquainted with an issue that had been heating up over the previous few years: excessive government secrecy. During his first year on the job, 2,800 federal employees were fired for \u201csecurity\u201d reasons\u2014meaning they were suspected of being Communists, or of having Communist leanings. (This was the height of the McCarthy Era.) Moss, a relatively liberal Democrat, had unfairly faced such accusations many times himself, and asked to see the fired employees\u2019 records. He was refused. Those documents, he was told, were government secrets, and off limits, even to a member of Congress.<\/p>\n

In 1955, after being elected to a second term, Moss decided to make government secrecy the main focus of his work. That same year, as a member of the powerful Government Operations Committee, he talked the committee chief into forming a Special Subcommittee on Government Information. Amazingly\u2014for a still very junior member of Congress\u2014he got himself appointed committee chairman. And so began what would become an 11-year mission: to open up the government to the people.<\/p>\n

INFORMERICA<\/strong><\/p>\n

The struggle between government and citizens over access to information is as old as democracy itself. Which makes a lot of sense: The whole idea behind democracy is that ordinary citizens participate in the functioning of their government\u2014and they can\u2019t do that if they don\u2019t know what the heck is going on. America\u2019s founding fathers gave the average citizen a considerable boost in the battle over government secrecy. During the intense negotiations around ratification of the new country\u2019s constitution Patrick Henry, of \u201cGive me liberty or give me death!\u201d fame, and one of the most outspoken proponents of open and transparent government, wrote in 1788:<\/p>\n

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From these sentiments came such Constitutionally-enshrined rights as the freedom of the press and freedom of speech\u2014which gave regular citizens legally protected rights to inquiry and criticism of government. But the founders also gave Congress the right to withhold information about its proceedings from the public. The criteria for determining what could be kept secret: Anything that \u201cin their judgment require secrecy.\u201d (It really does say that in Article I, Section 5, Clause 3, of the U.S. Constitution.)<\/p>\n

FAST FORWARD<\/strong><\/p>\n

Remarkably, that was basically how things stayed for more than 170 years. The main reason for this, historians say, is that the U.S. government\u2019s structure remained fairly simple and relatively small, for so long. In 1900, for example, there were still just eight U.S. federal government agencies (Treasury, Post Office, State, Agriculture, Labor, Justice, Interior, and War).<\/p>\n

By 1940 the number of agencies had grown to 51. Because laws regarding public access to government hadn\u2019t progressed as the government grew larger, by the late 1940s, there were big problems. The U.S. government, now a gargantuan and labyrinthine maze of an organization, had become a virtual black hole of government secrecy. And now people were starting to get upset about it.<\/p>\n

MOSS GETS CROSS<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1951, four years before John Moss formed his committee, the American Society of Newspaper Editors commissioned Harold L. Cross, legal counsel for the New York Herald Tribune<\/em>, to investigate the issue of excessive government secrecy. In 1953 Cross\u2019s report was published as a book titled The People\u2019s Right to Know<\/em>.<\/p>\n

He wrote that virtually every part of American government operated under what amounted to an \u201cofficial cult of secrecy\u201d; that this secrecy had become a breeding ground for corruption; that it was leading to a rise in public mistrust in government; and that all of these things combined were doing serious damage to American democracy itself. Over the course of more than 400 pages, Cross made the case that Congress must craft new legislation that gave American citizens greater access to the inner workings of their government. In the early 1950s, The People\u2019s Right to Know<\/em> became a manual for the blossoming \u201cfreedom of information\u201d movement, and in 1955 that movement finally got the champion it needed from inside the government: John Moss.<\/p>\n

HEARING PROBLEMS<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Special Subcommittee on Government Information\u2014soon dubbed \u201cThe Moss Committee\u201d\u2014began its investigations with a series of hearings in November 1955. Moss issued subpoenas; berated bureaucrats; interviewed journalists, professors, and constitutional law experts (including Harold Cross); he wrote volumes of reports; and basically made a big congressional pain of himself for the next 11 years. He simply refused to give up, even when fellow members of Congress tried several times to close down his committee by cutting its funding.<\/p>\n

Here are just two of the many examples of excessive secrecy highlighted by the Moss Committee:<\/p>\n