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Steve Tetreault, FOIArkansas Project

WASHINGTON — It was like finding a piece of buried treasure back in 1992 when Sandra and Tom Tokarski began sorting through a pile of Department of Transportation documents obtained through the federal Freedom of Information law.

There it was, a handwritten memo from a government environmental engineer working to design the proposed Interstate 69 through rural Indiana — a highway the Tokarskis and a handful of their activist friends were trying to stop.

The memo said motorists would save only eight minutes driving from Indianapolis to Evansville on the multi-million-dollar highway leg compared to taking an alternative route. Furthermore, the engineer seemed to be suggesting that piece of information be kept out of an I-69 environmental impact statement.

The Tokarskis, who live about 15 miles southwest of Bloomington, Ind., took the memo to the media. The information harvested a banner story in The Evansville Press and built credibility for their grassroots group.

“We were pretty happy about that,” says Sandra Tokarski. “Since then, we’ve been taken much more seriously.”

After the initial splash, the Tokarskis continued to file for I-69 documents under the federal law, but grew frustrated after a time. They had trouble getting paperwork they felt certain existed. They grew weary of waiting for responses to their requests and the inevitable followups that needed to be filed.

These days, their mining of government information is done with help from an attorney who is more nimble working the law. “They seem to pay much more attention to him,” Sandra Tokarski said.

The experience of the Tokarskis seems to illustrate both the promise and the frustration associated with the Freedom Of Information Act, a landmark federal law enacted 33 years ago, on July 4, 1966.

“This legislation springs from one of our most essential principles: a democracy works best when the people have all the information that the security of the nation permits,” President Lyndon B. Johnson said upon signing the new law.

But, Johnson went on to say, “the welfare of the nation” may require some documents to remain unavailable.

Documents dealing with national security, trade secrets, certain law enforcement records and internal agency memos, and those that might violate personal privacy are allowed to be withheld or redacted.

The law requires all government agencies to make records available to anyone who asks. It sets deadlines for agencies to produce requested documents, although in practice the deadlines are rarely met.

The tug between competing interests over what should be disclosed, coupled with the time it takes for requests to be fulfilled — years in some cases — has dimmed the promise of the act for some people. Last year, 374 lawsuits were filed against the government’s handling of the law.

“I have filed hundreds of FOIAs for the past 10 years. I have never had what I considered to be a perfectly fair FOIA reply,” said Mary Beth Sweetland, director of research and investigations for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

“It’s a good law, and its operations are improving in some aspects,” said Evan Hendricks, editor of Privacy Times, a newsletter that follows FOIA developments. But he maintains the law has not reached its goal “of being an effective and convenient way for members of the public to get documents.”

Proponents of open government began working in the 1940s to develop the federal law.

Its roots are in the Administrative Procedures Act, a 1946 law that governs the dissemination of federal agency information. But the Administrative Procedures Act proved to be full of loopholes that allowed bureaucrats to deny legitimate information to the public.

On and off through the 1950s, congressional hearings were conducted on government information practices. An early champion of information disclosure was Rep. John E. Moss, D-Calif., who persuaded House leaders in 1955 to install him as chairman of a special subcommittee to investigate information policies of federal departments and agencies.

To set the tone, Moss invited newspaper editors and publishers to testify at the panel’s maiden hearing. Over the next nine months, he called in department executives to defend their information practices. Then, his subcommittee recommended that Congress “bring order out of chaos” by establishing uniform rules on information disclosure.

It was still eight years before support built to levels that ensured passage of the Freedom of Information Act. One episode that focused attention on the topic came in 1965, when the Post Office Department hired thousands of “economically disadvantaged” young people for summer work.

Postmaster General John Gronouski cited regulations allowing him to refuse to release the names of jobholders. He did so only after being pressured by Congress. When the list was released, it confirmed suspicions that many of the jobs had been filled through patronage.

Commitment to openness has varied from president to president.

In 1974, Congress strengthened the act, overturning a veto from President Ford in the process. It imposed deadlines for agencies to answer requests and permitted federal judges to review agency decisions to classify certain material.

The Reagan administration attempted without success to weaken the law. It won only a bill that broadened exemptions for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Russell Powell, a veteran FOI officer now at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, praised the Clinton administration’s handling of the law.

“This administration is very openness-oriented, and that has had a significant impact on policy,” said Powell. He cited a 1993 directive from Attorney General Janet Reno that agencies should not invoke an exemption to withhold information unless they can point to a “foreseeable harm” that disclosure might create.

The law most recently was amended in 1996, to clarify that electronic documents are subject to the Freedom of Information process. It also required agencies to make more records available through the Internet.

While she and her husband were unsuccessful in stopping highway construction and never came across another smoking-gun memo, Sandra Tokarski said her use of the Freedom of Information Act proved helpful in other ways.

“It helped us build our understanding a little teeny brick at a time,” she said. “It made us much more canny about dealing with the bureaucracy. There’s a lot of information out there and submitting an FOIA request is pretty simple even for people like us who have zero legal background.”

Sandra Tokarski, 53, works part time in an arts supply store. Tom Tokarski, 55, is a laboratory technician at Indiana University.

She advises tenacity in working with the law.

“Grab hold like a pit bull and never let go. Follow up on every little thing if you don’t get the information.

“It’s not easy; it’s frustrating, but there are real satisfactions in doing what you know is right.”