Statewide testing conducted last year shows that hundreds of public schools across Massachusetts, reported high levels of lead in their drinking water, putting thousands of students at risk for long-term health effects. However, despite the danger, these tests remain optional under current law.

A 1975 memo from Henry Kissinger uncovered in the Central Intelligence Agency archives details the then-Secretary of State’s talking points for an upcoming Oval Office meeting with Edson Arantes do Nascimento, the Brazilian soccer phenom better known as Pelé.

Last night, MuckRock hit a major milestone: Two million pages of government records released, many of them for the first time, through the platform. Thank you to the thousands of requesters who have made this repository possible.

In 1978, a JFK assassination hoax emerged that continues to fuel conspiracy theories and accusations against the Central Intelligence Agency. Two news stories began to circulate claiming that the House Select Committee on Assassinations had obtained an alleged 1966 CIA memo placing Howard Hunt, of Watergate infamy, in Dallas on the day of President John Kennedy’s assassination. Some conspiracy enthusiasts have tried to use the two articles to corroborate each other, unaware that they shared the same source. A review of over 1,000 pages of documents and testimony gives the story of - and dismantles - the HSCA memo hoax.

If you’re up and running with an Assignments, it’s now easier than ever to review the results and flag interesting items as they come in. If you’re not using Assignments, there’s never been a better time to give them a try!

According to the Laramie County Sheriff’s Department in Wyoming, a request for its contract with inmate phone service provider Inmate Calling Solutions (ICSolutions) cannot be made public because the agreement itself is consider a “trade secret.”

Thanks to FOIA, more Mnuchin came out this week, but this time they also showcase Mitch McConnell’s golden touch. See them and read other FOIA stories, plus take advantage of the last chance to win free swag and MuckRock requests by digging through Donald Rumsfeld’s memos.

In response to a FOIA request back in February, the Federal Trade Commission released 101 pages of documents regarding conversion therapy, a majority of which concern the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act of 2017.

In the early days of MKULTRA, while the Central Intelligence Agency scrambled to defend against the alleged “brainwashing” programs of foreign countries, and to create its own, Agency staff responsible for the program responded to a report describing reported Soviet brainwashing efforts. In a letter formerly classified SECRET, CIA staff dismissed the Soviet techniques as “police tactics which would not be condoned in a democratic country.” The tactics described in the report not only mimic tactics which have been used in Guantanamo Bay and in CIA black sites, proved to be a source of inspiration for some post-9/11 interrogation programs.

Last Friday, policy analyst Jesse Franzblau joined on MuckRock’s Slack channel to talk about his work with Open the Government and his recently published guide to FOIA collaboration.

After several stories about the Federal Communications Commission abusing FOIA exemptions to avoid releasing embarrassing emails, the agency appears to have switched tactics, demanding a requester provide personal information not required under the law and charging hundreds in search fees.

A recently-released contract for prison phone services in Bartow County, Georgia shows that the County receives a commission of 77% from its current provider of inmate communications, ICSolutions.

Wisconsin State Patrol policies regarding domestic violence extend the law all the way to the womb, where the unborn children of Wisconsin women may be at risk.

The National Archives and Records Administration’s recent announcement that there will be no Barack Obama Presidential Library was met with understandable outrage from historians and transparency advocates, who saw it as a blow to a functioning democracy. However, as the National Security Archive’s Nate Jones was quick to point out, this discussion needs to be understood in the larger context of NARA’s current failings in the presidential library system, where FOIA requests can take years, even decades.

This past week we’ve launched an improved composer window, more improvements to our crowdsourcing tool Assignments, and a few API tweaks for those who want to build transparency resources on top of MuckRock.

Following a FOIA appeal, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has released ten new pages of their investigation into links between the PROMIS scandal, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, and the mysterious death of Danny Casolaro. FOIA lawyers and experts are divided as to whether this new release implies the Bureau previously improperly cited the “open investigation” exemption, or whether it had stopped being applicable between the initial FOIA response and the appeal.

This week, Representative Pramila Jayapal from Washington and Senator Kamala Harris from California filed the legislation, dubbed the ‘‘Detention Oversight, Not Expansion Act’’ or ‘‘DONE Act.”

This week’s FOIA roundup ties together the past and present with some fascinating documents. Plus, see the latest results from the #RummysSnowflakes crowdsourcing campaign.

As we’ve written about before, Ernest Hemingway’s relationship with the Federal Bureau of Investigation would charitably be described as “strained.” Hemingway would tell anybody who’d listen that he thought the Bureau were a bunch of Nazi mediocrities, and the FBI in turn dismissed Hemingway as a drunken phony. As his file shows, however, all of that changed when Hemingway finally did something the Bureau agreed with: he died.

Founder of Techdirt and the Copia Institute, Mike Masnick joined us last Friday for a talk on government ownership of copyrights.

Among the many fans the child star earned as the Curly Top cutie was one of the most notoriously tough G-Men in the whole law enforcement apparatus: Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover, himself.

Formerly SECRET meeting minutes uncovered in the Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified archives show the Agency on the receiving end of an incredibly specific crank call.

Back in 2016, MuckRock celebrated our 100th article in our ongoing project to release the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s files on prominent figures with an interactive timeline of the FBI’s history. Now, over a 100 articles and thousands of pages later, we’re launching a new and improved version of the timeline, making it easier than ever to explore who and what the Bureau was investigating, and when they were doing it.

Changes to the Massachusetts Public Records Law went into effect in January 2017, but much like the old version of the law, the new rules are only as effective as those charged with enforcing it will allow it to be. MuckRock is launching a newsletter to keep residents and journalists informed about the various public record request debacles requesters run up against.

Despite the growing number of reported abuses against adults with disabilities in Massachusetts, the agencies responsible for responding to complaints haven’t been able to staff up at a comparable rate.