Spurred by an invitation for then-director J. Edgar Hoover to appear on the show, the FBI’s surprisingly comprehensive file on journalist David Frost and his eponymous talk show is a master’s class in sixties establishment paranoia.

Lady Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton’s extensive FBI file reveals the philanthropist and socialite’s failed efforts to connect with J. Edgar Hoover.

Curtis Raye is that rare comic who turns to the FBI Vault and PACER in search of material. As every FOIA nerd could predict, he doesn’t have to look far for true tales of the absurd for his new NYC variety show. He just has to be patient. ‘FOIA Love’ mines funny from public records… both light-hearted and dark

By September 14th, 1960, Isaac Asimov had been a professor of biochemistry Boston University for 11 years, and his acclaimed “I, Robot” collection of short stories was on its seventh reprint. This was also the day someone not-so-subtly accused him of communist sympathies in a letter to J. Edgar Hoover.

The FBI file of James A. Hood, who led the push to desegregate the University of Alabama, includes a letter he sent to J. Edgar Hoover seeking reports about crime statistics, which the Director denied. A year later, the Freedom of Information Act went into effect to ground such requests in legal entitlement rather than an official’s good will.

We caught up with John Cook to talk about his FOIA past, leakers and tips for getting back documents.

In 1947, the FBI compiled techniques from seasoned investigators into a memorandum for agents in the field. Intended as a teaching tool, many of its suggestions for conducting interviews, obtaining confessions and training informants would today be considered unorthodox and illogical, if not outright racist or discriminatory.

Under J. Edgar Hoover, one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s top priorities was to keep tabs on the director’s critics. Unsurprisingly, the 35-page FBI file on Gore Vidal reads like an enumeration of the liberal author’s slights against Hoover, all of them reported by Bureau agents or Hoover’s fans.

The FBI file on avant-garde book publisher Barney Rosset reveals how J. Edgar Hoover’s Bureau played decency crusader on two continents in an attempt to keep Lady Chatterley’s Lover out of the hands of the public.

The career of Hunter S. Thompson, chronicler of America’s counterculture movement, was closely followed by the FBI - even going so far as to interview his neighborhood liquor store clerk.