John E. Moss

Moss, a Sacramento Democrat, spent eleven years on the problem before the US Freedom of Information Act passed. Starting in 1955 he chaired a House subcommittee that collected thousands of examples of agencies refusing records, and he kept pressing even when presidents of his own party resisted. The act finally passed in 1966 with a young Republican co-sponsor, Donald Rumsfeld, and Lyndon Johnson signed it on 4 July with no ceremony and private misgivings. It gave anyone, not only journalists or litigants, the right to request federal records and to go to court if refused. Congress strengthened it over Gerald Ford's veto in 1974.