With Sunshine Week just around the corner, we wanted to count down the days to our favorite time of year with a closer look at what’s going on behind the black bars: the nine federal FOIA exemptions. Today, one of the lesser-known exemptions: b(2), the … uh … lesser-known one.

A series of photographs uncovered by Emma Best in the Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified archives offers a guided tour of the CIA area of the Washington National Records Center - with a few notable omissions.

A review of a file released to MuckRock on Project MOCKINGBIRD sheds new light on a Central Intelligence Agency program of domestic surveillance that targeted a pair of journalists. In the process, it dispels old myths, highlights and clarifies an error in CIA’s Family Jewels and an omission in the Rockefeller Commission’s Report. The file also reveals that the CIA’s surveillance of the journalists resulted in recording phone conversations with members of Congress - possibly including the Speaker of the House.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation never conducted an investigation focused on acclaimed author Truman Capote, who was at work on his classic In Cold Blood when his name first appeared in the Bureau’s files. Though the agency declined to look into direct requests related to the writer’s safety and reputation, his file nevertheless stretches over 100 pages, in no small part because he was among those who supported, for a time, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

Army records unearthed in the Central Intelligence Agency archives settle the biting versus sucking debate once and for all.

With Sunshine Week just around the corner, we wanted to count down the days to our favorite time of year with a closer look at what’s going on behind the black bars: the nine federal FOIA exemptions. Today, we’re kicking things off with the big one: b(1), the national security exemption.

Forty years ago - in the aftermath of a very public American reckoning with the nation’s Intelligence Community that featured the Watergate scandal, the Church and Pike Committees, and the Rockefeller Commission - President Jimmy Carter signed Executive Order 12036 on January 24th, 1978, placing additional restrictions on the Central Intelligence Agency’s ability to operate in the United States.

Buzzfeed and Pacific Standard Magazine report on questionable meetings by the state of Missouri to acquire lethal injection drugs and industry groups influencing government officials regarding a bird species in peril. Plus, a tool often used in the movies for keeping people quiet can also serve as a method of redaction!

MuckRock Projects can help you organize FOIA projects, raise funding for original reporting, and make the most of your MuckRock account.

Back in December, in response to reporting of Treasury claims that the proposed Trump tax cuts would generate $1.8 trillion in revenue, we requested the reporting and analysis that led to that conclusion. In response, the Treasury produced a single-page memo, which appeared to be the exact same document referenced in the article included in our request.

During its 70 year history, a number of coffee-related controversies have gripped the Central Intelligence Agency - but perhaps none of them had such long-lasting impact on the caffeination of our nation’s clandestine service as a year-long inquiry into the legality of using government funds to buy CIA employees their daily pick-me-up.

Despite the attention garnered on social media, the Federal Communications Commission received only four complaints regarding the 75th Golden Globe Awards, according to a recently completed FOIA request. However, one of those complaints really manages to stand out as something special, and as such, we’re going to try something a bit different.

The Trump administration’s policies will be benefiting the bank accounts of the country’s largest for-profit prison operators and echo correctional policies that have been controversial since the ’80s.

MuckRock files requests to over 9000 agencies in all 50 states, and the overwhelming number of our interactions with those agencies is positive, sometimes downright pleasant. Then there’s agencies like the Lexington Police Department in Kentucky.

A month and a half before the White House Plumbers unit was established, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover contributed the paranoia that would lead to the Watergate affair when he passed political intelligence to a senior member of the Richard Nixon White House and Nixon reelection campaign. According to Hoover’s intelligence, a conspiracy was emerging between several key Democrats, the media, and a former senior FBI official. Hoover’s source for this deep state conspiracy? A rumor from a friend, two of Hoover’s critics speaking to each other, and a misrepresentation of the facts.

Thirteen years ago, the writer Hunter S. Thompson sat down at his kitchen desk - a typewriter at his seat and a Smith and Wesson Model 645 in his hand - and never stood again.

On February 9th 2017, officers from the Portland Police Bureau in Oregon shot and killed 17 year old Quanice Hayes. Hayes was unarmed, and had told officers as much. Want to get records involving this shooting, or any of the six officer-involved shootings the PPB had during the years 2014 and 2015? Be ready to cough up some cash just to get your request processing.

MuckRock has powerful filtering tools to browse your requests or the public archive, and now we’ve made it easier than ever to save your favorite advanced searches. Here’s how it works, and how you can help us keep building MuckRock.

A baker’s dozen of Federal Communications Commission complaints related to Super Bowl XLII recently released under FOIA show viewers were mostly annoyed by what they didn’t see, expressing frustration over spotty coverage and a notable lack of Janet Jackson.

EFF and MuckRock have a launched a new public records campaign to reveal how much data law enforcement agencies have collected using automated license plate readers and are sharing with each other.

FOIA is a great way to keep the powerful is check, whether they be federal agencies, their employees, or tech giants. This week, stories from the Daily Californian, RealLivePolitics, and Columbia Journalism Review about revealing attempts by the government and two leading tech companies to withhold information from the public.

Today is the 15th anniversary of 2003’s coordinated protest against the Iraq War. With attendance in the millions, at the time it was the “the largest protest event in human history.” Though we don’t have any records from that particular protest, Federal Bureau of Investigation files show that later demonstrations were under heavy Bureau surveillance, taking note of details as banal as a car bearing a pro-peace bumper sticker.

Last Thursday, MuckRock, along with Boston Hassle, held our first ever Public Internet Potluck There were lots of opportunities for those who came to get involved in local community activism, as well as organizational swag and plenty of reading material.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has made an initial release of its files on television executive Roger Ailes. Consisting largely of glowing background checks for a potential Presidential appointment under Richard Nixon, two interesting details have emerged from the file - the first is a 1974 arrest for felony firearms possession and the second is a brief interview documenting the minor role Ailes played in the FBI’s investigation into John Hinckley, Jr. following the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan.

The internal oversight of Inspectors General reportedly help to save 15 dollars for every dollar spent on their budgets. In the face of a new influx of money to the military, it’s unclear how much will actually get allocated to making sure taxpayer money isn’t being abused.