The year 1975 was the beginning of FOIA’s golden age. “Applications under the Freedom of Information Act are slowly beginning to dislodge documents from the Central Intelligence Agency, and tidbits from the agency’s secret files are floating all over Washington,” wrote Nicholas Horrock in The New York Times in May 1975. “An amendment to the Freedom of Information Act that went into effect in February has vastly increased the number of documents that are being declassified.”

Nicholson Baker, Baseless- My Search for Sec…, loc. 214