The Military Spies Who Iced Out Ben & Jerry's Over DEI

Hi there, it’s Jason Leopold, investigative journalist at Bloomberg News and expert on gathering government records. Welcome to the debut of FOIA Files, a weekly newsletter about the Freedom of Information Act that will bring you behind the scenes as I battle government agencies, challenge their culture of secrecy, and unshroud documents they would prefer never saw the light of day.

As many of you know, I am passionate about the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, as it’s better known. Signed into law on July 4, 1966 by Lyndon B. Johnson during the Cold War, the FOIA was designed to be a check on power by granting citizens the right to request documents from executive branch agencies. Without FOIA we’d never know about the FBI’s illegal spying on Americans in the 1970s; details about the Federal Reserve Board’s secret loans during the 2008 financial crisis; and revelations about the CIA’s post-9/11 interrogation program.