Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Government agencies are so
Speaker 1: unbelievably secret. If you know this right, I mean, they
Speaker 1: don't want to relinquish any information.
Speaker 2: That's my colleague, Jason Leopold.
Speaker 1: I feel it's my job to try and get as
Speaker 1: much information out of the government as possible.
Speaker 2: Secrecy seems to go hand in hand with American policy
Speaker 2: and politics. That's nothing new. Think back to the Watergate scandal,
Speaker 2: when journalists revealed that President Nixon had tried to cover
Speaker 2: up a plot to steal top secret documents from the
Speaker 2: Democratic National Committee. But so much has changed since Watergate.
Speaker 2: When Nixon left office, Pew Research found that only thirty
Speaker 2: six percent of Americans trusted their government. At the time,
Speaker 2: it was a record low. Now that number is down
Speaker 2: to sixteen percent. As for journalists who held nixonto account,
Speaker 2: Americans don't trust them either. According to a Gallup poll,
Speaker 2: back in Nixon's day, almost seventy percent of Americans said
Speaker 2: they trusted the media. Today that's hovering around thirty percent
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 1: The public has such a low opinion of journalists and journalism,
Speaker 1: and I feel that documents and getting the receipts, so
Speaker 1: to speak, is a great way to show our work
Speaker 1: and to bring readers into the reporting process.
Speaker 2: So Jason has made it his mission to claw as
Speaker 2: many documents as he can from the US government's hands.
Speaker 2: Between twenty one and twenty twenty, he sued the US
Speaker 2: government for information more times than any other individual in
Speaker 2: the country. The only entity that has him beat the
Speaker 2: New York Times Company and Jason's weapon of choice, the
Speaker 2: Freedom of Information Act. He says he does this all
Speaker 2: to show people.
Speaker 1: Here you can read the document for yourself. It just
Speaker 1: helps win that trust from readers. But in addition to that,
Speaker 1: I mean, I have to say that I really do
Speaker 1: enjoy the battle.
Speaker 2: This week, we go inside that battle for transparency with
Speaker 2: Bloomberg investigative reporter Jason Leopold. How did a Cold War
Speaker 2: era law ensure the right to transparency from the US
Speaker 2: government and how are journalists like Jason using that today
Speaker 2: to hold it accountable? From Bloomberg's Washington Bureau, This is
Speaker 2: the Big Take DC Podcast. I'm Salaiah Mosen. Jason Leopold
Speaker 2: is not just any investigative reporter. He's a champion of
Speaker 2: requesting records using the Freedom of Information Act FOYA for sure, I.
Speaker 1: Have filed more than nine thousand Foyer requests, and that's
Speaker 1: on the state and federal level, and I have sued
Speaker 1: the government more than one hundred and fifty times.
Speaker 2: I believe his persistent probing of the US government has
Speaker 2: even earned him a special nickname that he includes in
Speaker 2: his bio on X.
Speaker 1: When I was filing one request, I had heard within
Speaker 1: the FBI that they had referred to me as a
Speaker 1: FOYA terrorist. Since then, the National Security Agency has said
Speaker 1: that I have weaponized the FOYA. The Department of Justice
Speaker 1: said it in an email that I was a member
Speaker 1: of a Foya posse and perhaps that should be my
Speaker 1: band name. Not too bad of a band name, maybe,
Speaker 1: And I found out through a Foyer request on myself
Speaker 1: that the FBI sent an agent out to investigate one
Speaker 1: of my Foyer requests.
Speaker 2: Jason, you and I are both reporters, and so to
Speaker 2: talk about such a nerdy topic as investigative journalism and
Speaker 2: foya's is super fun at least for me, but for
Speaker 2: the everyday person. Can you explain what is the Freedom
Speaker 2: of Information Act?
Speaker 1: The Freedom of Information Act is a half century old
Speaker 1: law that allows anyone anywhere in the world to request
Speaker 1: all sorts of records from the federal government. You can
Speaker 1: ask for emails, you can ask for text messages, you
Speaker 1: can ask for photographs, you can ask for audio files.
Speaker 2: Can I get the President's text messages?
Speaker 1: No? So when the Freedom of Information Act was passed
Speaker 1: and signed into law, Congress exempted themselves from the Freedom
Speaker 1: of Information Act, and then the White House was exempt
Speaker 1: as well. So this law exists to essentially keep the
Speaker 1: public informed about what its government is up to, how
Speaker 1: its tax dollars are being spent. But there's limitations and.
Speaker 2: FOYA hasn't been around that long. How was it that
Speaker 2: the Freedom of Information Act came about?
Speaker 1: Lyndon Johnson signed it into law back in the late sixties,
Speaker 1: and it was based supposed to be a check on power.
Speaker 1: There were many different lawmakers who felt that government agencies
Speaker 1: were just being far too secretive. There was the FBI
Speaker 1: surveilling various anti war groups the Cold War, and a
Speaker 1: lot that the government was doing at the time that
Speaker 1: was being revealed through various Senate hearings, and so this
Speaker 1: was something to offer up the public to keep them
Speaker 1: informed about what the government was up to.
Speaker 2: And what's behind your keen interest or even obsession behind Foyeang.
Speaker 1: I'd spent years as a national security reporter, so I
Speaker 1: was covering CIA and all the intelligence agencies, and everything
Speaker 1: in that world is secret. It's either classified top secret
Speaker 1: or at even a higher classification level. So any kind
Speaker 1: of information that I would obtain from sources would always
Speaker 1: be attributed to an anonymous source. And I just feel
Speaker 1: right now that it's crucial for us as reporters to
Speaker 1: provide the public with as much documentary evidence as we
Speaker 1: can obtain when we're reporting our stories, and to back
Speaker 1: up what we're reporting.
Speaker 2: You say you'll enjoy the battle. Tell me about your
Speaker 2: process and what this battle is. Let's say you want
Speaker 2: to look into something, pick a topic, and take me
Speaker 2: from A to Z on it.
Speaker 1: Sure, I don't just fire off requests. What I do
Speaker 1: is I conduct a extensive amount of research into the
Speaker 1: topic I'm covering. I'll try to source up either at
Speaker 1: the agency's Freedom of Information Act office or people who
Speaker 1: work at the agency and ask them what kinds of
Speaker 1: documents are there, what's the date on a document, what's
Speaker 1: this subject line? Where would these records be stored? All
Speaker 1: of that information you need to go into a freedom
Speaker 1: of Information Act request. It has to be kind of
Speaker 1: a blueprint that will instruct an agency FOYA officer on
Speaker 1: exactly where to go to look for records. So, for example,
Speaker 1: when Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank failed last year
Speaker 1: and we saw regulators quickly moving to take action as
Speaker 1: a result of that, I wanted to obtain documents about
Speaker 1: what took place behind the scenes at the FDIIC, the
Speaker 1: Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department and find out what was happening,
Speaker 1: what led up to this, what were these officials discussing
Speaker 1: prior to the failure of the banks, Where there any
Speaker 1: bank officials that were communicating with regulators.
Speaker 2: And how do you actually file the request?
Speaker 1: Believe it or not, there are still some agencies that
Speaker 1: accept faxes. You can fax a request to the agency.
Speaker 1: The CIA is kind of notorious for that. You can
Speaker 1: put a stamp on an envelope and mail it, or
Speaker 1: you can email it. Increasingly, agencies are using secure portals
Speaker 1: online where you could submit your request there and by law,
Speaker 1: they have to respond to your request in twenty calendar days.
Speaker 1: That means they've acknowledged your request. Maybe if you're a journalist,
Speaker 1: they've granted you a fee waiver, and then some time
Speaker 1: passes and you get records. You know, consider this a footnote.
Speaker 1: If you try to file a request with any of
Speaker 1: the intelligence agencies, it will take years and years before
Speaker 1: you get anything back.
Speaker 2: Once you get the record, is it just easy from there?
Speaker 2: It's all written there, easy for you to read and
Speaker 2: figure out.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no no, that's where the fun begins.
Speaker 2: Coming up, Jason gets some mail and the fun begins.
Speaker 2: I'm talking with Foye fiend Jason Leopold about what comes
Speaker 2: next when he receives information back from the government.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of work. Oftentimes records will be redacted
Speaker 1: and they will contain just as an example, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at a record right now from the Office
Speaker 1: of the Director of National Intelligence. It's an email partially redacted.
Speaker 2: On here, and so yeah, I see black marks all
Speaker 2: over it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So these reactions refer to names. So that means
Speaker 1: that I have to now sleuth out, to the best
Speaker 1: of my ability, what's under those reactions. So I read
Speaker 1: these documents very carefully because even though they're redacted, there's
Speaker 1: still lots of good information that you can glean from documents.
Speaker 2: Jason, what's the biggest story that you've broken, but the
Speaker 2: world didn't know about. The the world needed to know about,
Speaker 2: and it was the Fourer request from you that brought
Speaker 2: that into the public domain.
Speaker 1: There's a number of different ones, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: use some of the records that I obtained from the
Speaker 1: CIA as an example. So, as I mentioned, I spent
Speaker 1: many years covering national security, and I had been investigating
Speaker 1: the CIA's enhanced interrogation program, the torture program that they
Speaker 1: implemented when they captured high value detainees after nine to eleven.
Speaker 1: I was able to completely lay bare the money that
Speaker 1: was spent on the contractors to stand up a portion
Speaker 1: of that program. Also, one of the big document scores
Speaker 1: that I got from that was how the CIA was
Speaker 1: heavily involved in the production of Zero Dark thirty, the movie.
Speaker 1: They were invited in to CIA to basically tell the
Speaker 1: CIA narrative about the immediate aftermath of nine to eleven
Speaker 1: and what happened at one of its black sites. They
Speaker 1: allowed the CIA to read scripts and to make notes
Speaker 1: on the scripts. And it also showed that they had
Speaker 1: showered these CIA officers with gifts Prada and Pearl earrings
Speaker 1: and dinners, and that was a pretty big story at
Speaker 1: the time. To be clear, zero Dark thirty and the
Speaker 1: CIA's role in it, I wouldn't equate that to the
Speaker 1: biggest story I got out of FOYA, but it was
Speaker 1: sort of the body of work around the CIA's post
Speaker 1: nine to eleven interrogation program, and there were about twelve
Speaker 1: or thirteen stories within that body of work that all
Speaker 1: relied on documents.
Speaker 2: Why is it the governments make it so hard? You
Speaker 2: talk about how you've had to sue governments from information
Speaker 2: you've waited for a year. I just saw a tweet
Speaker 2: of yours from a couple of days ago that says
Speaker 2: that a for your request you'd filed a decade ago,
Speaker 2: you just got the response on that. Why is it
Speaker 2: so hard?
Speaker 1: Such a great question. I wish I had a better
Speaker 1: answer than they just don't want the public to know.
Speaker 1: You know, the government agencies will say they don't have
Speaker 1: enough staff to process these requests. They have an enormous
Speaker 1: backlog of requests that they're dealing with. The federal government
Speaker 1: just reported last year that they received more than a
Speaker 1: million Freedom of Information at requests, more than any other
Speaker 1: year that they've been tracking this. But they haven't increased
Speaker 1: the number of people that they need at these various
Speaker 1: agencies to process the request. They haven't added any money
Speaker 1: to the budget to hire additional people to get additional resources.
Speaker 1: That's why when I'm filing requests for certain records, I
Speaker 1: know exactly what I want.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're giving them a lot of clues. Jason, even
Speaker 2: newsletter now where you share the latest records that you've
Speaker 2: gotten from all your Foyer requests. Can you tell me
Speaker 2: why people should care about the work that you do.
Speaker 1: I am informing you about what takes place behind the
Speaker 1: scenes at federal government agencies and how your taxpayer dollars
Speaker 1: are being spent. These are issues and subjects that you
Speaker 1: didn't even know existed, and it can really provide you
Speaker 1: with amazing detail on how the sausage is made.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to The Big Take DC podcast from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News. I'm Salia Mosen. Jason Leopold's newsletter, Foyer Files,
Speaker 2: comes out every Friday. You can subscribe at bloomberg dot
Speaker 2: com slash Newsletters. This episode was produced by Julia Press.
Speaker 2: It was mixed by Ben O'Brien and fact checked by
Speaker 2: Audreyanna Tapia. It was edited by Aaron Edwards. Naomi Shaven
Speaker 2: is our senior producer. Wendy Benjaminson and Elizabeth Ponso provide
Speaker 2: editorial direction. Nicole Beemster Bower is our executive producer. Sage
Speaker 2: Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Please subscribe and review
Speaker 2: The Big Take DC wherever you listen to podcasts. It
Speaker 2: helps new listeners find the show. Thanks for listening. We'll
Speaker 2: be back next week.