Celebrating F.O.I.A. on Independence Day
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on July 2nd, 2014 11:08 pm by HL
Celebrating F.O.I.A. on Independence Day
On July 4, 1966, Lyndon B. Johnson surprised even some of his closest aides by signing the Freedom of Information Act. Johnson was said to have hated the “government-information bill”; he questioned the motives of the Democrat who was its chief architect, and was so disturbed by its passage that Bill Moyers, then L.B.J.’s press secretary, warned its supporters not to get their hopes up. With Congress in recess and the President vacationing in Texas, it was widely expected that Johnson would pocket-veto the bill.
Yet Johnson—possibly bowing to pressure from within the party, as well as from the American Society of Newspaper Editors—reversed course and signed the F.O.I.A. bill into law. His ambivalence was clear. There was strikingly little fanfare, especially considering the date. Johnson held no official signing ceremony, and the statement that he issued made no mention of the Fourth of July, leaving observers to ponder whether the timing was a symbolic flourish or simply a practical matter, determined by the pocket-veto deadline. His comments dwelled nearly as much on the limitations of the new law as its potential to transform the relationship between citizens and their government. The people, he said, should have as much information as possible—or, rather, all “that the security of the nation permits”:
