Ernie Pyle, the legendary journalist and war correspondent who died in Japan at the end of World War II, had a typically complicated relationship with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

MuckRock asked Russ Kick, the investigative archivist behind the Memory Hole and AltGov, to offer his thoughts on the Department of the Interior’s proposed changes to how it would handle FOIA requests - and what we can do to push back against it.

The occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building by the American Indian Movement resulted in lost and damaged property, and a number of documents being stolen from the building. The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated some of these thefts, including an alleged plot by journalists Jack Anderson and Les Whitten to pay for these records. The FBI file on the affair describes how a retired Justice Department senior official contacted the Bureau’s current staff to vouch for Whitten, referencing his history of cooperating with the FBI as a confidential informant.

Want to explore the cutting edge of public records, while helping reporters, researchers, and others get more out of these critical laws? Apply to be MuckRock’s Sam Whitmore Media Survey Fellow and spend eight months with transparency as your beat, tracking changing laws, developing new FOIA strategies, and working on reporting and resources that will help all requesters.

Included in the most recent batch of Federal Bureau of Investigation records regarding the Church of Scientology is the script for a play written by COS’s Ministry of Public Relations in order to counter the “inflammatory statements” being made by a “dissident church member.” Making light of what they call the “comic book flair” of the rogue ex-Scientologist’s claims, the play consists of an interview between him and “the greatest reporter of them all,” Superman’s alter-ego, Clark Kent - whose secret identity is safe, thanks to the Bureau’s redaction.

Last month, a federal court ruled that the Central Intelligence Agency can selectively disclose classified information while shielding its release from FOIA in order to protect “intelligence sources and methods.” That ruling ignores the Agency’s history of arbitrarily applying that label to everything from beer brands to cafeteria names and using it to hide behavior that was embarrassing, illegal, or both.

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.

Back in August, a handful of Nazis, White Supremacists, and “free speech advocates” came to Boston, where they were met by tens of thousands of counter-protesters. While the crowd was huge, only 33 people were arrested. And according to recently released incident reports, at least one of those was a photojournalist who tripped up a cop who might have taken the training wheels off too soon.

After decades as a West Coast leftist, Ramparts editor Warren Hinckle finally landed a place in the FBI’s files after his magazine ran a pro-IRA ad and credited a Michigan Senator for its creation.

Just months before the government’s first successful use of the Espionage Act against someone for leaking to the media, a declassified report written by then-Central Intelligence Agency Director William Casey argued that just such an act would be irresponsible.