Congressional Record: March 15, 2001 (Senate)
Page S2383-S2384
FOIA TURNS 35
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, James Madison said that if men were angels,
no government would be necessary. But because people and governments
are fallible, he added, ``experience has taught mankind the necessity
of auxiliary precautions.'' The Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA), a
modern improvement in American government, has proved itself as a vital
precaution that has served the people well in defending their right to
know what their government is doing--or not doing. Friday is the 250th
birthday of James Madison and, appropriately, this is also the day that
we commemorate FOIA's 35th anniversary.
I am not sure that we could pass FOIA if it were offered in Congress
today, but thank heaven it is firmly etched by now in our national
culture. Just this month a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court affirmed FOIA's
mandate of broad disclosure, noting that full agency disclosure would
``help ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a
democratic society.''
FOIA may be an imperfect tool, but as one foreign journalist
observed, ``in
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its klutzy way, it has become one of the slender pillars that make
America the most open of modern societies.''
In recent years records released under FOIA have revealed the
government's radiation experiments on human guinea pigs during the Cold
War, the evidence that the Food and Drug Administration had about
heart-valve disease at the time it approved the Fen-Phen diet drug, the
Federal Aviation Administration's concerns about ValuJet before the
1996 crash in the Everglades, radiation contamination by a government-
run uranium processing plant on nearby recreation and wildlife areas in
Kentucky, the government's maltreatment of South Vietnamese commandos
who fought in a CIA-sponsored army in the early 1960's, the high
salaries paid to independent counsels, and the unsafe lead content of
tap water in the nation's capital.
Five years ago we updated FOIA's charter with the Electronic Freedom
of Information Act that I proposed as a way to bring the law into the
information age, recognizing that technology is dramatically changing
the way government handles and stores information. The ``E-FOIA'' law
directs federal agencies to make the information in their computer
files available to citizens on the same basis as that in conventional
paper files. We also took this as an opportunity to encourage agencies
to use technology and the Internet to make government more accessible
and accountable to its customers, the citizens. For instance, we now
have the technology to translate government records into Braille
or large print or synthetic speech for people with sight or hearing
impairments, and the new law promotes that. Electronic records also
make it possible to offer dial-up access to citizens over the Internet
so they can have instant direct access to unclassified information
stored in government computer banks. This is far easier for Vermonters
than having to travel to Washington to visit an agency's public reading
room. Information is a valuable commodity, and the federal government
is the largest single producer and repository of data on topics ranging
from agriculture to geography to labor statistics and the weather.
Better and timelier access to this information helps lubricate our
economy.
FOIA today is healthy, but only constant vigilance will keep Congress
from needlessly whittling away its promise to the American people. We
fought back one such effort last year, and new carve-out proposals are
already in the air.
FOIA gives each American the power to ask--and the government the
obligation to answer--questions about official actions or inaction. We
can count on a government agency to tell us when it does something
right, but we need FOIA to help tell us when it does something wrong.
Of all the laws that fill our law libraries, none better than FOIA
breathes life into the first words in our Constitution, ``We the people
of the United States'' and into our First Amendment rights to petition
our government. This is a law to celebrate, to use, and to defend.
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