Document requested under the Freedom of Information Act takes 11 years to arrive.

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By: John Greenewald, Jr.

ENCINO, CA – It was December of 1996.  I was a sophomore in high school, and I was just a couple months into beginning the biggest endeavor of my life… I just did not know it at the time.

I created TheBlackVault.com, what has now become the largest internet archive of government documents in the world.  The concept was simple; beginning at the age of fifteen, I began filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and scanning the documents onto the website for the world to see.

The requests went out by the hundreds, and the documents came back by the thousands. 

But unbeknownst to me, that December I would file a request to the Defense Technical Information center (DTIC) for a document entitled “Fireball Yields” that would challenge my views on the FOIA. 

Now, I’ll be honest.  I had no idea what the document was about.  One could theorize it was a document about the measurement of fireballs caused by nuclear blasts, but there was really only one way to find out.  Wait for the document to arrive.

Although the FOIA stipulates agencies had ten business days to respond to the request (which has now been changed to twenty) it took months before the request was officially acknowledged.   But even then, the request would go unanswered and unfulfilled, for more than a decade.

In fact, it was nearly eleven years before this document was finally released.  And you know, much of it is illegible.  How could a document, that takes about eleven years to arrive, not even be readable?  We call it Freedom of Information, but is it really?  If you ask me, we should save the tree!

(To see the document, head to: http://www.theblackvault.com/documents/nuclear/Fireball.pdf)

Look at only a few of the events that happened in the world while my request was being processed:

·         Bill Clinton had not even BEGAN his second term yet

·         George W. Bush had not taken office yet

·         George W. Bush nearly completed two full terms in office

·         “The events of September 11th” and “9/11” did not mean anything (it sure does now)

·         We lost the Shuttle Columbia

Should I go on? 

However, I do feel compelled to say that contrary to the problems I did have on this case, I am still a big advocate for the law.  I recommend everyone who has an interest in it, to definitely try it.  In most cases, the documents do arrive in a reasonable amount of time, and are legible. 

But it is the select few cases that really make you wonder.

John Greenewald, Jr. can be contacted via e-mail: john@greenewald.com and The Black Vault website can be seen at http://www.theblackvault.com

Authors Bio:
John Greenewald, Jr. - http://www.theblackvault.com

In 1996, John Greenewald, Jr. began researching the secret inner workings of the U.S. Government at the young age of fifteen. With targets like the CIA, FBI, Pentagon, Air Force, Army, Navy, NSA, DIA, and countless others Greenewald utilized the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to gain access to thousands of records.

With a pile of documents on the topics of UFOs, the JFK Assassination, chemical/biological/nuclear weapons, top secret aircraft and more, Greenewald began scanning the documents to the internet for the world to access.

In time, this online archive, known globally as The Black Vault, has grown into the largest private online collection anywhere in the world, totaling more than 460,000 pages.

John Greenewald has been featured on television networks such as The History Channel, Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, A&E, FOX, NBC, along with international networks such as the BBC (UK) and NTV (Russia).

In published media, Greenewald has been featured and quoted in more than one hundred articles, in papers such the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Daily News, the Baltimore Sun, and featured on the front page of Yahoo! as one of the top stories for the day.

In broadcast radio, Greenewald has been featured on stations worldwide, including Coast to Coast AM (Premier Radio Network - syndicated), the Adam Carolla Show (CBS Radio - syndicated), the Bob & Sheri show (Greater Media Radio syndicated), and many others.

At the age of twenty-one, Greenewald published his first book Beyond UFO Secrecy in 2002. This book has recently been put into a second expanded edition, and re-published by Galde Press in January, 2008.

Today, his path towards creating The Black Vault led him to a career in television production, as a supervising producer, writer, director and editor. Currently working at Weller/Grossman Productions in North Hollywood, California, his many shows can be seen on The History Channel, National Geographic Channel, and Discovery Channel to name a few.