Today's article about the old FBI investigation into the FLDS leadership relied on documents I acquired under the Freedom of Information Act. But the acquisition didn't go smoothly.

In January, 2007, I made my first request to the FBI asking for their files on LeRoy S. Johnson and Rulon T. Jeffs, two former prophets of the FLDS. They've been dead for years and files maintained by the federal government usually are subject to disclosure once the subject dies. (Check out the list of famous corpses in the FBI reading room.)

On March 29, 2007, I received a letter from the FBI saying it had no files on Johnson. Then, less than a month later, I received a telephone call from the FBI employee processing my request for Jeffs' files. She told me that in searching for Jeffs documents, she found pages discussing Johnson. The employee sounded annoyed that no one had found them earlier.

The first batch of documents arrived in July. The FBI redacted some names and omitted entire pages because they were concerned with violating the privacy of the people who are still alive. In some cases, the government said, papers had been destroyed years ago. But I used the information in the documents to make additional requests. I asked for the entire files referenced in the information about Johnson and Jeffs.

The back-and-forth continued until January, when the U.S. Department of Justice claimed it had no more documents it could give me. In all, I received a couple hundred pages.

-- nc

Labels: FBI, FOIA, Polygamy