>> what she spends all the inauguration coverage including the historic swearing-in and donald trump takes office as the 47th president of the united states . c-span: democracy unfiltered. >> be up-to-date in the latest in publishing with

book tvs podcast about books . with current nonfiction book releases plus best seller lists as well as industry news and trends through insider news. find about books on c-span now, our free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. >> consumer advocate and former presidential candidate ralph nader joined law professors and others to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1974 freedom of information act. he addressed the history of the law, government transparency and the difference between state and public information was . hosted by the center for study of responsive law, it is just under four hours. >>. [background noises]

>> hello, welcome everyone and thank you for being here. thank you c-span and all the n media present for sharing the celebration of the 1974 amendment to the 1966 freedom of information act. i am teresa armato and i'm delighted to serve as your moderator for this exciting for our agenda with speakers who are fierce advocates for transparency at all levels of government. please refer to their distinguished bios and think of questions you would

like to ask them. throughout the program we will try to save 10 minutes at the end of every panel for everyone's questions. now, various speakers here today may refer to this national legislation as foia or foia and each state in the country has its own version of the access to government health information statutes. these freedom of information laws are used by many . national historians, journalists, people in the media, policy advocates or individuals . indeed the number one user our businesses. some of you may have already heard about this legislation or used it for various state versions to learn what our government isdoing on a variety of matters of public or even personal concern . the legislation does not provide access to all the federal government . it does not apply to congress or even to the courts. nonetheless the agencies of the united states government ec

are subject to the law and there are vast repositories of all kinds of levers . data, documents, film, audio recordings, email, maps and the like . whether they have been created by the government or are just possession control of the government. that means we have access to them with some wonderful exceptions. what surprised me when i first learned about the federal access to information laws is that you do not even have to be a united states citizen to gain access to information . other countries and their citizens may request to see what records the united states has about that. my first experience came far too late in my life . it was 1991. somehow i managed to go through all of high school , college and law school and had not heard much or even used the freedom of

information act until my mid-20s when thanks to alan morrison who's joining us today and president joan cleburne i became the director of the us freedom of information clearinghouse. public citizen litigation group was started by with ralph nader and alan morrison in 1972 and it ran . alan who is legendary as an advocate for government transparency had a small but mighty swat team of lawyers working on a wide array of consumer and civic oriented litigation. i had the great fortune to run into him and every single single one of my colleagues about how to bring litigation. we were also playing attention to what was happening with information laws or the lack thereof worldwide in the early 90s. shortly after the berlin wall fell and the soviet union

dissolved in 1991, many more countries were seeking to learn about government transparency and media access through information laws. i had a chance to talk around the world about how the process works and what needed to be fixed in the united states in our laws and how similar legislation may not necessarily work in other countries without an independent judiciary able and willing to hold other branches of government accountable. to this day i still permanently hold our judiciary will hold power in the other branches of the government accountable and continue to provide government health information. i started a lawyering organization in the western n suburbs of chicago. for more than 30 years the community lawyers and citizens who have sought our citizens have used

illinois foia and studied enforced and strengthened that foia and i will touch on that as we go into our last panel talking about it at the state and local levels. now to all here at the national press club and to those watching or listening around the country and the world please fasten your seatbelts because you are in for a fascinating historical ride about the extraordinary use of legislation that can benefit our understanding of what government at any level does or does not do in our name and with or without our consent. it is my great privilege to first introduce the incomparable ralph nader, consumer advocate and founder of many citizen organizations . his unparalleled vision about the legislation and protocols and practices needed to build democracy has played and continues to play

for decades a pivotal role in strengthening this incredible civic tool to benefit all of us. take it away, ralph. >> ... >> or john. or francesco. >> good morning, welcome. i'm ralph nader. it's often said information is the currency of democracy but really it's a lot more than that. as it matures into knowledge and then into judgment, it becomes the raison d'ctre of free speech, petition and assembly. it also is a basis for sound legislative policy

. for regulatory policymaking, for the public's access to justice or government and corporate accountability. there was an example there by the way early on when we obtained reports from the department of agriculture on nursing homes inspections which of course unleashed a lot of media and helped enact legislation. so there's always that nexus that we have to be aware of in our recognition of the importance of freedom of information act . at the federal or state level. looking back in the 1974 and before in the years of struggle it's really remarkable how how how

omnipresent the opposition to any freedom of information legislation by the executive branch agencies in congress who is almost unanimous. they all had their hobbyhorse but the securities exchange commission, justice department and department of defense, cia, the department of agriculture, department of commerce, department of the interior. and just a blizzard of opposition. as commerce will describe to you in detail because he was right there at the time. the opposition was always couched in general terms like these are proprietary information. and we couldn't get that information from the business community unless we protect the privacy . whether they

use the privacy argument or the national security argument, the one example was quite notable that for years the navy department would not provide any existing air pollution agency in the executive branch at that time with information about the volume of sewage disposal from their naval bases. their argument, that some of our antagonists overseas might be able to use that data in order to estimate the number of sailors at the nato base. thus the extent to which the excuses dissented. the opposition always wanted exemptions or dilutions for waivers . the banking

industry was a big success unfortunately in that kind of successful effort. protecting secrecy of bank examination. as i said tom sussman will talk about the details of how the great champions of the 74th amendment, the great john moss congressman from california, democrat senator ted kennedy from massachusetts, democrat. they were very sinequan on champions and of course john marsh was the all-time champion. he worked several years just to get to 1966 . the 1966 act which i participated in supporting a time as well in a very modest

way was in law that didn't really have any sanctions. it wasn't specific enough and of course it didn't have the strengthening methods of the 1974 act which provided judicial review by petitioners rejected in their petition to get up file or report. it provided attorneys fees. if the petitioner won the case, against the government it provided more than specifics of course and modest sanctions against what was called the vicious bureaucratic assumption, sanctions very rarely use could suspend government officials for egregious obstructions for 30 days

without pay. the speakers today will recount and recommend many items of importance about the freedom of information act and how it's been administered up till now and what long awaited updated improvements that need to be made . following what we hope to be long and thorough congressional hearings. in a few minutes i have i want to focus on the facts that the freedom of information act is a special form of law. and it's not enforced by the executive branch agencies. it is enforced by the citizens who use it. and they can feel internally and if that is impacted they can take the case to court and there have

been many cases since 1974 in court as alan morrison will point out. the effort to get the freedom of information act was an exhausting one. you just can't believe the blizzard of opposition that the media was not active, that had a stake in it course but they weren't that active because there are times sensitive operation and they didn't want to spend the money on lawyers as well. to pursue these cases. though while they liked the results of the freedom of information act as you can pick up on they work really front and center with few exceptions. the business community was the biggest abuser and still is because they love to get it for all the obvious reasons, one of their best requests is of course the fda. what the

executive branch agencies do is administer the requests . they're supposed to have the resources and the compliance attitude to administer the act charitably and the burden of proof to dispose is on the government.it's not on the citizenry which is one of the new features of the 1974 act. the aspect here is not many people know about the act can be used by anybody in the world. it can be used by people in brazil, china, denmark, canada . in fact we had an interesting situation where canadians used it to get information on how we inspect

slaughterhouses because they wanted to get information that was rejected by the federal drug administration about how they inspect their slaughterhouses and they said look, here's information that's available . washington under the freedom of information act made available autos which at this time didn't have a freedom of information act. the exceptions in the 1974 freedom of information act been used and abused to this day. by the federal agencies . litigation after litigation by the citizens has had to contend with these obstructions . in virtual hearings and amendments are virtually required, especially with the incoming trump regime which

is likely to be even more secretive and suppressive than was the case under the eight years of the reagan administration which was seriously obstructive and determined to pursue secrecy to the utmost limit. my second suggestion is the creation of citizen groups that voted exclusively to petitioning for specific information under the freedom of information act. i think that's an urgent need because not only are business groups the biggest users but the citizen groups who use it usually related to a specific program or issue that they are dealing with . what these new groups could do is recognize the overall general right to know by the citizens. and file innumerable requests for information across the board.

only the tip of the iceberg has been accessible by these freedom of information requests thus far. the freedom of information act has got to be used not only with huge areas of traditional information and secrets being withheld but also the new technologies and the new databases that are proliferating everywhere. i think there could be these citizen groups and if anybody feels they are capable of determining with the records and stamina to be part of these citizen groups please let us know. and that's true at the state level as well. with the freedom of information act at the federal level on the state freedom of information act which in some cases has permanent sanctions and are

stronger than the federal . the news reports over time a few citizens here and there who may foia requests, they made it their preoccupation. they became very skilled and had a lot of know-how. that request illustrates what the potential of an overall civic effort. and of course when why not have a national foia state so we can focus more on my next suggestion which is teaching it in the schools. from middle school to high school from college graduate school it should be a little time set aside for instruction in how to use the state federal information act. there are nice templates available online , free of charge that will guide the

instructor step-by-step and the students can actually sign a particular request that reflects their own interest they think the government should be divergent. in fact, our high school for years has had a freedom of information course and class and actually a content contest to see who would write the best freedom ofinformation request . and hopefully we would get a response in time before the school year was off. that raises the issue of the interminable delay and lack of enforcement of the 10 day period after which the agency is supposed to respond to requests. that is almost never observed and the worst observer is the date department. the state department thinks it is an institution of privacy and diplomatic secrecy stand get

off its back. we have a freedom of information act filed earlier this year that you get the information that we know the state department has but we better excavate the huge number of fatalities and the state department began to engage in the usual delaying maneuvers and then when we thought we were going to release some materials they said we won't be able to get this done until august 2025. so delay, delay delay, more rejection and should be recognized as such in terms of the appeal .following the delay . it needs to be remembered that according to bill moyers who was a special assistant to lyndon johnson lyndon johnson had to be dragged into signing this 1966

freedom of information off. he hated it with every fiber of his being according to bill moyers . and believed the government secrecy was an entitlement entitlement but he finally did sign . on the other hand pres. gerald ford vetoed the 1974 amendment. and all for the good old days, the house and senate overwhelmingly overrode this veto. with republicans and democrats participating. i can only wish that support for strengthening these amendments in the coming months and years would be so overwhelming. let me just conclude on this note . the lobby for the 74 amendment was not just done by me and a few other civic

advocates . from other groups. but we had young lawyers, many of them right out of law school who became so proficient in this that they were asked to testify before congressional hearings. donald morrison who is one of them, ruben robertson was another, joan clayborn was another. ron butler of course was another. and harrison well for. and robert vaughn who was later to become a professor of law at american university and expert on the whistleblowing laws which were encouraged by more freedom of information disclosures that located dissenters inside these federal agencies and departments, another collateral benefit of these

freedom of information laws. it was a time when congress was more open and trying to get a spot on a congressional hearing now much less at a young age as a lawyer . so i'm glad that all of you are here in the audience. i hope the questions will be good and i know that the video of these four hour or so session will be assigned to educational and civic institutions all over the country in order to increase the support for strengthening the act in congress and in state legislature. and above all to increase by millions of people the use of these state and federal freedom of information laws. so that the public's right to know is practiced day in and

day out . thank you very much. class tom sussman. tom is a champion of a freedom of information act and he's going to explain some of the strength between the 1974 freedom of information amendment. strategic advisor for global programs and government affairs, welcome tom. >> we're getting ready for this, he wanted me to go through six options. a little walk down memory lane which i look forward to sharing with you. before i get into the 74 amendment's history i want to provide a

little history because i have a confession to make. i'm a freedom of informationact junkie . i arrived in washington 1968. i've never heard of the public information or anything having to do with it. but i went to work in the justice department and obviously legal counsel assistant to frank, atty. gen. and as some of you, well some of you will remember in 1968 the justice department prepared the atty. gen.'s memorandum on the information sections, public information section of the administrative procedure act . keep in mind it wasn't called the freedom ofinformation act for a few years thereafter . at that point we were advising agencies about how to comply with this new strange law.

it did not have enforcement mechanisms but agencies new that they needed to do something different and they were kind of the justice department. the first case i got involved with involved consumers union request for hearing aid test data for the veterans administration. and we were straight lawyers in the justice department. we said here are the exemptions, we don't see any exemptions for this factual information you've generated after testing hearing aids. you need to get it out. consumers union, general counsel that you can't do that because the companies that make these hearing aids for free for testing, if we give out the data that shows some of them aren't very good they will stop giving it to us. okay. we got sued, they lost. and

agencies started listening a little more closely to the department of justice. now, i mentioned the atty. gen.'s memorandum of on the fringe information freedom act, there were two notable things. one as i mentioned the term for freedom of information never appeared at that point. the second was that the atty. gen.'s interpretation tracked the house report on the act very closely y . not so much the senate report, not so much the language of the senate for that matter. and in fact prof. kenneth davis wrote the first law review on the freedom of information act in the chicago law review and he said the legislative history of the act is so confusing and inconsistent that you have to look to the statutory language for it to mean anything. the justice department's positions shouldn't be surprising because as ralph indicated

pres. johnson was prepared to veto the legislation. he was at the ranch over the fourth of july and had veto measures but bill moyers persuaded him that his press was pretty bad because of his activities related to the vietnam war and johnson felt he needed something positive on his resume so he used an alternate dip statement that was quoted often about how important government is. he probably had to swallow his heart before issuing that statement . olc office of legal counsel l became the responsible organization within government for advising agencies. and still is today injustice, is now the office of information policy. after the election, my boss was recalled to his law firm

in houston. pres. nixon took over. and i decided to look for another job and wound up on capitol hill working for senator kennedy. one afternoon ralph nader who i met at the justice department, we been introduced by a consumer council who was in the atty. gen.'s office at the time . and i had certainly known ralph from his reputation, saw him on television testify before congress. a lot of publicity for unsafe at any speed back then, nader's raiders so it was a great pleasure and honor for me to have a chance to meet ralph and so when he called and asked if he could meet senator kennedy about the freedom of information act i thought that was a great idea. and the reason i was working on the hill on that subject was because i was the only one that had heard of the freedom of information when i

was on staff. so senator kennedy took over this new subcommittee on administrative practice and procedure . we call it adprac this morning and he knew we had a responsibility to do something . the senator wasn't personally involved early on, not terribly secure but ralph persuaded him that we should do something to strengthen and clarify the statute. as ralph said congressman john moss had held hearings and developed the initial basis for enactment of the freedom of information act. carlos morehead as a subsequent chair of that subcommittee held a number of days of oversight hearings, developing extensive record on the shortcomings of the

original freedom of information act and ralph mentioned a number of them. at the same time a law review article by joan katz in the texas law review was entitled the games bureaucrats play. hide and seek under the freedom of information act of the most influential article was in harvard civil rights law review . entitled freedom from information, the act and the agencies. his father, you guessed it, ralph nader. i love these quotes. after three months of exploring the frontiers of the freedom of information policy in several agencies ralph talked about this i've reached the disturbing conclusion government officials at all levels in many of these agencies have systematically

and routinely violated both the purpose and specific provisions of the law. these violations have become so regular and cynical a seriously block citizen understanding and participation in government. as you can see this has become a comment and echo he repeats often and is still true. thus it does the act designed to provide citizens with tools of disclosure has been forced into a shield against citizen access . so when senator kennedy decided yes we should do something i was off and running. but i wasn't off and running alone. there were very persuasive lobbyists who were the ground troops for a form. within the nader realm, ron plus her and mark ranch. constantly advocating for support and reform legislation. john check at the aclu, david:, leadership for consumersand john at the american bar association . dick who represented the american society of newspaper editors organized close to a

dozen media organizations to blanket capitol hill on the need to reform and strengthen the freedom of information act. in 1973 that had practice subcommittee joined with senator irvine's subcommittee for a series of hearings, he explored freedom of information, classification systems and executive privilege. we had 11 days of hearings, the books were too thick for me to bring up today. we had three volumes of testimony and submissions. and senator kennedy in his opening statement probably i created some of his articles said the limited exemptions in the freedom of information act have been flagrantly abused by bureaucrats whose onlyconcern is to save themselves and their agencies for embarrassment and exposure . the door of governance been slammed shut in the face of the average

citizen . that's pretty good actually. congressman morehead had already held 14 days of oversight hearings and he introduced a bill in the next congress 1973 and held legislative hearings on hr 5425. the freedom of information act.io that year 1974 senator kennedy introduced 2543, s 2543 the year i became chief counsel of the subcommittee so the issue took on a little more importance. we were doing other useful things that year as well. that was the year the subcommittee was having oversight hearings of the airline industry harvard professor on leave stephen breyer that led to airline deregulation. so we have a few things going in the ng subcommittee at the time. i recall drafting the senate report, i had a smith corona electric typewriter and did a lot on it that night . just

knocking it out and while senator kennedy deferred to be on the details i found it in my basement quite wonderful a copy of the draft of the committee report . on the freedom of information act from the senate and if you open it up those of you up close can see there are lots of markings on it . this is senator kennedy's, such things as beef it up. explain this. clarify. some examples . so he took seriously what we were doing in this area. and gave me directions about how to proceed and what to do differently . this would go in somebody's archives, probably tom blanton by the way the national security archives has 28 boxes of material on information , freedom of information that i collected during 12 years in the senate and it's all been, log so any

of you who want to dictate on this subject, gw national security archives. our bill after the hearings moved rather quickly through the senate, in a bipartisan way and focused on procedural matters as attorneys fees, time limits. disclosure of segregated information and the like. we only have one proposed substitute amendment to the exemption. those of you will not remember that the original freedom of information act exemption seven excluded law enforcement, files compiled for law enforcement purposes. well, files. to the fbi that's their entire room. to most law enforcement agencies you have a request anything to do with law enforcement they have the seventh

exemption which was explained and it went to court and the agencies one because there was a lot of co-mingling a file is a file so we would place the word file in records. simple, one-word change. and in the subcommittee that went through and went up in the full committee, the full judiciary committee marks up those days were something, you've seen movies. smoke-filled room, those of you who been up in the senate know where the senate judiciary committee is, the back room now that was the room where the executive sessions were held because they were not public. just the senators, majority staff member and staff member from the full committee and staff person handling whatever legislation was being considered by the committee at the time. which was allowed in the room and it was a tough room. the senator kennedy all liked to smoke cigars.

probably why you hear a little rasp in my throat right now. during that market we had hoped the agreement between minority and majority would hold. the subcommittee and the bill would go to the it floor. under time limit without amendments and sail through. that was not to be.senator mcclellan from arkansas proposed an amendment, simple, one-word change. the word records back files. seventh exemption. and i was sitting next to him behind senator kennedy, he had a piece of paper which he read from clearly prepared by the fbi. arguing that they needed that ability to make broad exclusionary decisions when faced with freedom of information act requests. it was debated and the subcommittee bill was sustained . the mcclellan

memo was rejected . the result of that was that it was open season on the floor of the senate when the bill came up and there were in fact other amendments. i do want to mention a couple of amendments that were considered but not adopted back then. and they continue to raise their heads, one of them was a release from one is released to all. it's an amazing thing, we still aren't there yet but we discussed back in the senate staff. it was a bridge too far for republicans. the other was the creation of a foia ombudsman to hear administrative repeals. i know i hear my friends from ogs smiling. again, we got i guess the third of the way there with the office of information services but

still no central agency within the government. the amendment had all of the procedural amendments that ralph mentioned and went to the floor of the senate. at that time there were a couple of additional amendments proposed and that's where the fun began that led to the veto by pres. ford. the first amendment was by phil hart to further amend the seventh exemption. and that would not just exempt records compiled for law enforcement purposes but only to the extent that it would interfere with law enforcement proceedings or some other enumerated arm in the exemption.

senator roman roscoe who was ranking republican on the judiciary represented the administration vigorously opposed . there was a strong debate interesting debate. i was able to come through some of the debates back then they were substantive. they were to the point. fortunately the heart amendment prevailed. by a vote of 56 to 29 . a number of senators absent back then. then senatormuskie took the floor. with an amendment to the first exemption. again , those of you who are students of history would recall one of the early supreme court cases brought by patsy make where the supreme court said information that's classified on its face is exempt under the first exemption. the court needed look no further than the stamp on the front of the document. senator muskie who would preside over our hearings on classification proposed the amendment that would allow

courts to examine the propriety of classification by looking at the records . under the day noticed standard and as you might guess all the national security agencies at the white house, justice department vigorously opposed back again senator roscoe was their leader and once again the amendment was adopted, this time 64 to 17. now all this was taking place during the watergate era. and so the issue of secrecy was important. but i recall the administration, the president would not release information on water coolers at his house. things like that, that around the media attention clearly no justification but secrecy was a big deal. and so the republicans in the tsenate were hesitant to make any

public strong statement that could be interpreted as supporting secrecy in government. what was clear is that the two substantive votes in the senate were not along party lines. don't we yearn for those days. for example, republican senators like brooke hatfield, they all voted for the amendments and for final passage. republicans were joined by dole and scott in the final vote and the democrats benson, cannon, johnson, along voted against the amendments to final passage. that level of polarization that we see today in congress wasn't around then it's one of the reasons why the legislation was enacted. that kind of bipartisanship

was lauded in a book that i enjoy reading about this ms. harris by ira shapiro called the last great senate, courage and statesmanship in the china crisis . but the bill was passed but it still had to go to conference because as i said senator morehead had passed the bill and the provisions were different so on to conference committee. you ever heard of those? we don't see those much anymore either. these days staff negotiates and changes in secret, brings them back to the members and decisions made whether to go or no go. back then we were in an e ornate room in the capital . members of the representatives from the senate subcommittee, the legislation had been coming from the house subcommittee . staff prepared side-by-side .

it was all public, open to the public. the negotiations began and then they were delayed for a week . because we had a new president, pres. ford took office during that time.the main points of contention were exemptions 1 and 7 but the exemptions provision ralph mentioned was also very controversial. and where did we get that idea of exemptions? the testimony of ralph nader before the senate subcommittee. i worked with him to develop fairly strong language that said the agency employee who was responsible for withholding without reasonable basis of law if a

court makes a finding it shall direct and appropriate official of the agency should suspend such officer and employee without pay for a period of more than 60 days or take other appropriate disciplinary or corrective action against him . this was a lightning rod in the senate bill. the conferees did amend that section, softened it a bit. other sections because of administration concerns were minor amendments were made in explanations in the report but the sanctions provision remained in the bill. it's true as ralph mentioned he said seven seldom resolved in the sections, never resolved in the sanctions but i wanted toadd sort of a footnote, i think it was still worth doing for two reasons . one is that these amendments were new. they were tough on agencies and i think the agency officials at the time

were probably more attentive to compliance than the consumers union had been because the officials involved didn't want to have to worry about being suspended for 60 days. the other thing is it led to the creation of the association, american society of access for educating government officials involved in foia administration. they are in existence today and a strong force force for professionalizing foia administration. pres. ford sent a letter to the conferees threatening a veto, pointing out problems he had and records obtained by the national security archives and by me from a request to the fbi give us a little bit of the backstage during that time.

pres. ford had a hand written notation on the first legislative briefing document that reads a veto of this bill presents problems, how serious are our objections? white house aide can call responded quote, there is little question the legislation is bad on the merits . the real question is whether opposing it is important enough to face the political consequences. obviously there is a significant political disadvantage to vetoing the freedom of information bill especially just before an election when a new administration can't approve. he's right about that. throughout the conference, the fbi and justice department continued their constant efforts to undermine

the legislative efforts to get the bill enacted. the justice department ever was quarterbacked by assistant attorney general named antonin scalia. you might recall he later wrote an article called the freedom of information act has no clothes and he had long been an opponent of transparency in government. i suspect he maintained those positions to his death. i was in the american bar association council meeting with antonin scalia when we were proposing amendments to the law because the ada had been involved in 74 amendments and thereafter trying to strengthen the act and scalia fought back even in his private role when he

was a professor of law. in any event i met with fbi officials on two occasions. they were very concerned about the law enforcement exemption and when i observed there was little chance of changing the language of the memorandum reporting on our meeting read as follows. there can be no doubt he, that's me and others of like mind will oppose any move which will give the fbi and other such agencies meaningful relief . there is of course tremendous overtones of pure politics involved in this matter . the liberal democrats would be pleased to force the president to veto this legislation since the see it as a big campaignissue . the last ditch effort to get some changes, the white house counsel for pres. ford was a harvard law professor, called his old buddy stephen breyer

working for me on the subcommittee and wanted to talk and i went up to talk to prof. arita and made fairly clear by that time that we were certain about being able to get a strong bill out of conference and the only question was going to be what would happen if the president vetoed it. a few weeks later a memorandum was sent to pres. ford from roy ash sending out three options. one, veto the bill. 2, continue to negotiate to get changes . 3, sign the bill. guess what? you guessed it. about a few days later his advisers filed recommendation, option one with a comments quote, our best course is to load up the bills objectionable features in hopes of gathering sufficient votes to suspended

and sustain a veto. that particular strategy didn't work. the house had passed the foia amendments first they were the first to vote to override the veto and override the day. in a media blitz that was beautiful to behold all the various media organizations plus the lobbying groups i had mentioned blanketed the house and the house final vote was 371 to 31. to override the veto. like ralph said, i think he used the word overwhelming. that was quite an exaggeration from the senate. it was much closer and in the senate a two thirds vote majority needed to override and that target was barely achieved . in fact after the vote i think it was to vote margin senator hughes got what who was minority leader told senator kennedy that had his vote made a difference he

would have voted to sustain the veto. so effectively there was like a one-vote margin in the senate. with that however november 21 november 21, 1974 the archivist and rolled the bill without a presidential signature. that didn't end my relationship with the freedom of information act. i kdon't know if ralph is watching this, i hope he is because in the fall of 1980 i was coming back from bwi airport on a bus to dc and ralph sat next to me. we chatted about all manner of things, we'd worked on other consumer related legislation . and i told ralph i was leaving the hill. actually i needed to move on and i was going to work for a large boston law firm. and i expected there would be

some congratulations and good luck. i see a lot of ralph people going like that. he called me a traitor. maybe that was some incentive for the next few decades of my activity . engaged in the cause for the last 40+ years representing public interest groups in pro bono litigation . lobbying in favor of improving amendments . serving on the advisory, on the foia advisory committee for 4 terms, i finally got off that one and traveling around the anworld to proselytize for the

government, argentina, even china. it's great to see all of thesesupporters . and probably many of you share my addiction to foia. we're going to have a lot of work . it will be a rocky road and one that we may have less help than we had in the past . daniel shuman wrote an article earlier this week on how the foundations have pulled out of funding open government work. so those of us who are involved with organizations, media organizations, advocacy groups are going to have a tough 4 years ahead in terms of maintaining the momentum that we've had for the past 50 years since 1974 amendments to increase transparency for the federal government. thank you.

[applause] >> questions. okay, who would like to start? >> i have a question. >>. [inaudible] >> congress and moss conceded his bill and carried it almost single-handedly for about a decade before everybody else got involved with it. you didn't talk about him with these amendments. was he involved? >> he had moved on to chair the much more interesting oversight committee of the house . and the subcommittee

that developed those amendments was taken over by congressman morehead so moss legacy is certainlythere. he did create the foundation for freedom of information . starting in arthe 50s and wonderful books have been written on the history of the freedom of information act but when it came to the 74 amendments congressman moss was not there. >> line up. >> anybody who wants to have their questions heard must use the microphone. thank you. >> mike rosenberg and tom, that's a wonderful presentation. i wanted to ask you about another significant development in the congress of 1974 because what always struck me as rka