Editor's Note: Kenn Thomas publishes Steamshovel Press, the conspiracy theory magazine. Four issue subscription: $23; single issue: $6, from POB 23715, St. Louis, MO 63121. An anthology of back issues, Popular Alienation (Illuminet Press, 1995), is also available.

A newspaper recently quoted me as saying that "people who teach history often teach bullshit. Post office workers, some of them quite devoted conspiracy students, have collected files reflecting a lot more truth. What someone does for a living hardly has any bearing on the quality of the information that he or she has added to the historic record."

In addition to making that description a little less scatological (the quote came from an informal conversation), I would otherwise qualify it now by adding that "some" history teachers teach bullchips--from unfocused survey courses on one extreme to overly focused, narrow academic course work on the other--but that the overall response to the topics and research concerns that drive Steamshovel Press generally have been snubbed by academia.

Certainly, some history teachers are impassioned and eloquent transmitters of some historic truth, but how many have pooh-poohed the passions of students that have had new angles on political assassinations, an interest in UFOs or things like the possible laboratory origins of AIDS?

More often than not, work in these areas falls to non-credentialed, non-academic researchers pursuing their own intellectual passions: average people who have taken it upon themselves to be the independent caretakers of the alternative archives.

Two tools that have at times assisted this independent effort include the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act (FOIPA) and the National Archives. Both involve research processes accessible to anyone, and both have yielded much information concerning US history that has been neglected or actively suppressed by the government and institutional education. Two good examples of the effective use of the Freedom Information Act can be found in The COINTELPRO Papers by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1990), which documents FBI surveillance of domestic political dissident groups; and The UFO Cover Up by Lawrence Fawcett and Barry J. Greenwood (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1984; previously titled Clear Intent), which documents government interest in the UFO experiences of its citizenry. Both give a good look at the kinds of primary source material (as distinguished from second-hand accounts like books, newspaper reports and stories passed person-to-person) that Freedom of Information & Privacy Act searches have wrested from the government's secret vaults.

To be sure, the very nature of clandestine and surveillance government precludes the possibility that everything, or even the most interesting material, will ever surface.

FOIPA researchers invariably encounter the redacted documents report or memo with marker scratches over the important stuff. Even with the FOIPA mandates, the real skinny often will be withheld in this manner, or in its entirety for the sake of national security. That excuse has always begged the question of how a people can be secure if they do not know their own history, but it is the standard by which government agencies block access to the most important secrets. Agencies, of course, do not have to release documents they claim do not exist, thereby excluding them even from being tagged as protected by national security concerns.

The government is a large monolith, however, and FOIPA can cut out chunks of its treasures when wielded correctly, as the Ward/Wall and Fawcett/Greenwood books demonstrate.

When I began a Freedom of Information & Privacy Act search on Wilhelm Reich in 1991, I discovered that multiple requests for the same material can bring about fresh leads. Jerome Greenfield had used a FOIPA request as the basis of his excellent history of Reich's trial, Wilhelm Reich Vs. The USA (New York: W.W. Norton, 1974), and yet Steamshovel Press has used material from my search results in new articles. Much has yet to be done about Reich's handwritten prison memoranda, also released as part of my request. Long after my initial request had been fulfilled, in fact, the Immigration and Naturalization Service released to me another file detailing an FBI report of an agent trying to get Reich to fink on old European friends suspected of subversive activity (the report appears in SP #12). Although I later learned that Greenfield had traveled to the INS office in the early 1980s and looked at the report for an article in the Journal of Orgonomy, the version that appeared in Steamshovel included the name of one of the people that the FBI would have had Reich snitch on had he known him, a Mr. Feuchtwanger (pronounced FOISHT-vahn-ker). The name is redacted in the rest of the report. So, mistakes happen and new information emerges.

Mine had been a second-party request. That is, I had asked for Reich's file and not my own, which led me to encounter a roadblock that others may do well to anticipate before starting on a FOIA research. Second party requests require either the permission of the person being researched or an obituary of that person. Stonewalling is reflexive with the FBI and the CIA; my request was delayed for months until I forwarded an obituary of Reich from Time. That simple precaution and the language for a good request letter can get a researcher started on a FOIPA search right away, although libraries all contain reference works that instruct researchers in detail on how it's done. Two that come recommended: How To Use the Freedom of Information Act (Washington DC: Washington Researchers Publishing, 1986) and the comprehensive Guidebook To The Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts (Clark Boardman Company Ltd, 1987), compiled by Justin D. Franklin and Robert F. Bouchard.

In the cyber-environment, FOIPA kits can be found at the 1999 Hyperreal Drug Archives. A newsgroup entitled alt.freedom.of.information.act also exists.

Short of studying FOIPA's nine exemptions (privacy, confidentiality, national security, etc.) and other nuances in these reference works, researchers can begin their researches with a letter similar to the following, my letter to the FBI concerning Wilhelm Reich:

Dear Madame/Sir:

Under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, I request access to all records pertaining to the Bureau's investigations into the career of Dr. Wilhelm Reich from 1947 to 1959. Dr. Reich was born March 24,1897 in Dobrzcynica, Austria and died on November 3, 1957 at the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiarv in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. On Februarv 10, 1954, the U. S. attorney for the District of Maine, Peter Mills, filed a Complaint for Injunction against Dr. Reich after an investigation of his medical practice by the Food and Drug Administration begun in 1947. Dr. Reich was convicted of violating the injunction on May 7, 1956. I believe that Dr. Reich's activities during this period also led to the opening of an FBI file on him. I seek access to this file.

I am willing to pay for copying expenses that do not exceed $35.

If any part of this request is refused, please explain the specific exemption justifying the refusal and direct me to the legal appeals procedures.

Thank you very much for your attention. I look forward to hearing from you soon.