Jon Wiener, Ph.D.
Professor of U.S. History at University of California, Irvine Los Angeles, CA Firsthand expert on the FBI VS Lennon controversy Used FOIA to sue the FBI for not releasing files on John Lennon and won the suit (Wiener v. FBI) Advocate for transparent government Author of Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files Transcript of Video Interview March 27, 2014 |
- Why do you think FOIA is important?
[The] Freedom of Information Act is a key part of democracy because in a democracy not only does the government belong to the people but the government’s information belongs to the people. And the only way that people can find out what the government is doing if the government is not telling them all about it is through the Freedom of Information Act. It’s the key way to find out about government misconduct, government abuse of power, things that governments prefer to keep secret, which it turns out all governments do. - What is your opinion on the FOIA exemptions?
I understand the rationale for the exemptions. I understand that there may be some national security secrets which we don’t want our enemies to know. I doubt there’s very many, but I think there probably are some. I understand the need for protecting the confidentiality of sources who have been promised confidentiality. The government should keep its promises. I understand that the government thinks some of its methods need to be kept secret; I think we all know a lot about what the government’s methods are, and that this is a way that the government protects its secrets, but there may be some justifiable methods that need to be kept secret. So, it’s not so much the actual exemptions, it’s the way they’re defined and the way the law is administered, which I think is much too broad. - Do you think the FOIA functions as it should, theoretically?
There’s no secret about the changes that need to be made in the way the Freedom of Information Act is administered. First of all, it takes way too long to get the material you are seeking. The time to answer a request is way too long, the time to respond to a request is way too long. Second, there’s way too much classification by the American government. A million people are classifying documents. And they are doing it for illegitimate purposes, they’re doing it just as a matter of routine, things that should never have been classified secret, and then it’s very hard to get them reviewed. The third thing we need is a serious enforcement of the time limits. Everything should be released after whatever, 10 years or 20 years, 25 years, whatever the government decides. There are such rules now, but they really aren’t enforced and too much is withheld for many decades when the justification for it has long since expired. - How did the government justify classification of the John Lennon files, and how did you get the government to ultimately release the files?
With the John Lennon files, there were two main claims the government made for withholding them. One was national security, that releasing these documents about a rock star who died in 1980 would somehow endanger the national security of the United States today. That seemed ridiculous, but I was lucky enough to get the ACLU of Southern California to ask a federal judge to review the case. Eventually, it was the last days of the Clinton administration that they finally negotiated a release of most of the national security documents. The other documents that we were seeking, they were refusing to release because they had been compiled by people who had been undercover agents. They had been promised confidentiality. And they said that not only the identity of the sources had to be kept secret, but the actual information provided by the sources, they said, had to be kept secret. We said, we were okay - we didn’t ask for the names of the undercover agents, but we thought the information they provided shouldn’t be a secret, and eventually they released virtually all of that too. - Do you think the government has the responsibility to provide citizens with information? At what point do you think that they have the right to withhold government information?
Yes, and they are entitled to withhold information for several legitimate reasons that I describe in the book, such as national security.