"Comic Relief" from the Curious Public by Jon Elliston Dossier Editor pscpdocs@aol.com Even the secretive CIA is subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a law that helps citizens pry records from the government's classified holdings. Sometimes FOIA requests turn up scandalous information on CIA abuses; and sometimes the requests just confound and amuse the agency's information officers. Dossier recently discovered an internal CIA report -- "The CIA Meets the American Public" -- that reviews some of the strangest FOIA requests ever received by the U.S. spy agency. "In any public relations job," the report notes ruefully, "the public is both your customer and your nemesis." The author, CIA Information and Privacy Coordinator Lee Strickland, was (and still is) responsible for answering FOIA requests, and is therefore in a position to know how difficult it is to answer public probing when a major purpose of your agency is to keep things under wraps. Strickland's report, which appeared in the Spring 1989 issue of the CIA's in-house journal Studies in Intelligence, offers numerous examples of how the FOIA can be "a source of comic relief." Documents were requested on a baffling array of topics, from "The three most deadly karate blows," to "All information on John Lennon, Richard Daley, and Bigfoot," to "The exact country, county, state and address where the prophet Ezekiel lived." Another biblically minded requester asked for "records on our covert plans to re-enact the Apocalypse, as described in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, and for other records which may discuss his being the next Messiah." One citizen wrote for information concerning his experience as "one of the men involved in the sexual behavioral programs of the CIA." Beginning in 1953, the CIA sex slave reported, he "noted a marked surge of personal sexual activity, which continued until about 1962." The problem, the requester explained, was that since then "my sexual drive has diminished sharply." He then asked the CIA to fill him in on the aphrodisiac they had allegedly dosed him with, and to help "determine where I may purchase more of it." "My wife is aware of this letter and approves of my request," the requester added (perhaps pointing out the obvious). Another choice request came from a man who asked for his own CIA file, then offered a witty tip on where to find it: "It may help for you to know that most of my file is probably buried in your spook equivalent of the Nuts & Cranks section. From what I've seen of the way y'all operate lately, maybe you've consolidated it with your Personnel folders by now." The letters Strickland quotes provide "a looking glass into the public's perception" of the CIA, he contends. Being a secretive organization often associated with cloak and dagger dirty tricks, the CIA is unlikely to escape the widespread impression that it is up to no good. Eighteen years after Strickland's report for Studies in Intelligence, the CIA is still receiving FOIA requests which illustrate that many citizens truly believe the agency is capable of anything. A list of selected requests logged at the CIA in 1997 includes "all records concerning cattle mutilations," "a copy of the manual or record on how to kill people in traffic incidents," and "a list of all unsolved mysteries." (Click here to read selections from the CIA's FOIA case log. For help with filing your own requests, visit ParaScope's FOIA Help Center.) You might be surprised to find that even the all-powerful CIA gets harassed sometimes. Granted, off-the-wall FOIA requests probably cause only minimal annoyance -- it's hard to imagine Strickland's office spending much time on a search for records regarding Bigfoot or Ezekiel. Clearly those files will remain classified forever! (For more stories about the little-known art of pestering government spies, see another report from CIA files discussed in the Dossier feature "The Kooks and the Spooks.") © Copyright 1998 ParaScope, Inc. Document: "The CIA Meets the American Public" Document: 1997 CIA FOIA Request List Dossier: Covert Ops & Secret Documents