Harry Hammitt is editor and publisher of Access Reports, a biweekly newsletter on the Freedom of Information Act, open government laws and policies, and informational privacy issues. He has written and edited the newsletter since 1985.

Hammitt has also written extensively on all aspects of the case law, legislation, and administrative practice. Besides Access Reports, he has written a monthly newsletter on access and privacy for Canada, and has served as the primary editor of Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws, a practice guide created for nongovernment users of FOIA and other federal access laws.

In addition, Hammitt has lectured extensively on access and privacy issues in the U.S. and Canada. He has served as president and as a board member of the American Society of Access Professionals, a Washington-based professional organization. He worked as an FOI contractor at the Department of State from 2009-2012, and he has updated the FOIA complaints for the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University since 2013.

(Updated April 2025)

Judge Beryl A. Howell has served on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia since 2011, including as Chief Judge from 2016 until March 2023. She took senior status in February 2024.

Judge Howell has worked in private practice, the legal academy and in all three branches of the federal government. After a clerkship for a federal judge in the District of New Jersey, she was a litigation associate at a New York City law firm, and then an Assistant U.S. Attorney and Deputy Chief of the Narcotics Section in the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York. She subsequently served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, where she worked for Senator Patrick J. Leahy, (D-VT), and did substantial work promoting the Freedom of Information Act, including work on the Electronic FOIA Amendments of 1996.

Following her 10-year tenure on the Hill, she served two terms as a Commissioner on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, after being appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, while also working as executive managing director and general counsel of a cybersecurity and digital forensics consulting firm. After her judicial appointment by President Barack Obama to the District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge Howell served as a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States and the Judicial Conference Committees on Information Technology and on Criminal Law.

She received her B.A., with Honors in Philosophy, from Bryn Mawr College and her J.D from Columbia University School of Law, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. Among her other awards, Judge Howell was inducted into the National Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame in 2001 and is the recipient of the 2004 First Amendment Award by the Society of Professional Journalists in recognition of “the important work she has done on behalf of all journalists and those who understand the significance of the government watchdog role the media must practice each day.”

                (Updated April 2025)

Patrice McDermott, director of the former OpenTheGovernment.org and current director of Government Information Watch, is a committed advocate for open access to federal government information. In Washington, she has worked both in the federal government, at the National Archives and Records Administration, and in the nonprofit field.

While at OMB Watch, she co-authored two studies of the implementation of the EFOIA Amendments of 1996, finding many failures and inadequacies. McDermott was also intensely involved in stopping the enaction in 2000 of what would have been the equivalent of an open-secrets act in the U.S.

At the American Library Association, she was deeply involved in ensuring that the move to electronic government would result in more, rather than less, public access to government information, particularly in the post-Sept. 11 environment.

McDermott additionally plays an informational role in keeping those concerned with public access apprised of developments in and threats to government information, including FOIA, privacy and records issues.

Kate Martin is director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, D.C. For the past 18 years, she has worked to protect open government and freedoms of speech and the press in the face of government threats and restrictions in the name of national security. Martin and the Center for National Security Studies were awarded the 2005 Eugene S. Pulliam First Amendment Award.

Challenging government secrecy in court, Martin represented the National Security Archive (for which she served as general counsel from 1995 to 2001) in 1989 and obtained the emergency court order that prevented the destruction of the Reagan White House e-mail messages. Martin also sued the CIA on behalf of the Federation of American Scientists to force the historic release of the intelligence budgets for 1997 and 1998. She successfully sued the CIA in 1995; it admitted to having a file on a librarian and agreed to expunge it.

Martin has frequently testified before the Congress on classification issues and intelligence-agency abuses. She helped lead the successful campaign against the proposed Official Secrets Act. She has defended the free-speech rights of former government officials, such as former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb, who was fired for criticizing the defense budget, and she has successfully lobbied for new protections for intelligence agency whistleblowers.

Martin’s writings have provided analysis and guidance for reconciling national security secrecy and democratic openness; e.g., “Safeguarding Liberty: National Security, Freedom of Expression” and “Access to Information: United States of America,” published in Secrecy and Liberty, ed. Coliver et al. (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1999). She is a graduate of the University of Virginia Law School.

From October 1998 to January 2001, John Podesta served as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. During that time, he helped pave the way for the veto of the “official secrets act,” which sought to criminalize the disclosure of classified information and effectively stifle public discussion on a wide range of foreign-policy issues.

Podesta began his work in the administration in 1993 as staff secretary. During his two years in that position, he negotiated the issuance of Executive Order No. 12958, which installed mechanisms to encourage agencies to declassify more national-security information. Podesta’s work to promote honest, open government led to his appointment to the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, chaired by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y. The first commission to examine government secrecy in 40 years, the group’s final report in 1997 issued comprehensive recommendations to both the legislative and executive branches on ways to reduce secrecy and promote an informed public.

Today, Podesta continues to champion open, accountable government. He is a visiting professor of law at Georgetown University Law School and president of the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank he founded in 2003.

As general counsel of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, Larry Scharff advocated strong freedom of information acts and led efforts to increase access to information through federal and state law on open records, open meetings, cameras in the courtroom and remote-sensing satellites.

His support of FOIA was largely focused on the legislative activities of news media representatives concerning the 1974 and 1986 amendments to the federal act, as well as the Privacy Act of 1974. On behalf of RTNDA, he took a lead in legislation-drafting sessions with task forces of news media representatives and in other meetings with senators, congressmen and their aides.

Scharff’s efforts on Capitol Hill helped enact the favorable congressional amendments of 1974. He worked closely with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and then-congressional aide John Podesta against proposals to restrict public access to law enforcement and national defense records in 1986. Beginning in 1981, he created and supervised the annual revisions of the RTNDA publication, News Media Coverage of Judicial Proceedings with Cameras and Microphones: A Survey of the States.

He is the author of numerous papers and articles, including “RTNDA Launches Congressional Initiative on Remote-Sensing from Outer Space,” in the April 1986 Communicator, and “Remote-Sensing Journalism: Resolving National Security Concerns Under the First Amendment,” presented before the San Diego Communications Council.

As chief of staff for Rep. John Moss’ Government Information Subcommittee in the U.S. House of Representatives, Samuel Archibald helped draft the original FOIA legislation enacted in 1966.

A former reporter with the Sacramento (Calif.) Bee, he was hired by Moss to come to Washington as an aide and became a key player in Moss’ investigation of government secrecy, which led to FOIA. Archibald rallied support, rounding up key journalists — such as American Society of Newspaper Editors members J. Russell Wiggins and James S. Pope — to testify on the need for legislation.

Archibald later became director of the Washington office of the University of Missouri Freedom of Information Center, rounding out his career as a journalism professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, his alma mater, where he became professor emeritus.

Samuel Archibald died on April 7, 2006, in Charlotte, N.C.

Both as a Washington Post reporter and as founder of the National Security Archive, Scott Armstrong set the standard for the aggressive and ground-breaking use of FOIA for investigative journalists throughout the country. His use of FOIA enabled him to probe a number of historical U.S. policy issues (the war in El Salvador, the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia, Iran-Contra, the Cuban missile crisis).

Armstrong first became aware of the importance of FOIA while researching The Brethren (1979), an investigative study of the Supreme Court written with Bob Woodward. Armstrong quickly became a “documents junkie.” With the aid of FOIA, he came to believe, journalists for the first time were able to trace the routes of policy, thus becoming better able to hold policy-makers responsible for their actions.

He left the Post to found the archive, which he ran from 1985-90. He has sued the Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton administrations for withholding records. The Reagan and Bush suits helped establish the principle that electronic information should not be destroyed.

Armstrong trains and advises other journalists in the use of the FOIA and strongly urges newspapers to sue when records are denied them. “Contemporary FOIA policy is developed out of those suits,” he says.

The co-sponsor, along with Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, of the Electronic FOIA, Sen. Hank Brown, R-Colo., was the principal Republican legislator identified with preserving the rights to freedom of information, which he championed throughout his 10-year career in the House and one Senate term.

Brown was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which had jurisdiction over EFOIA, an amendment to the Freedom of Information Act that reflected the reality of modern electronic recordkeeping.

Brown is currently senior counsel in the Denver office of the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. His prior work includes serving as president of the University of Colorado and president and CEO of the Daniels Fund.

Harold Cross is widely credited with being the author of the language of the FOIA. His 1953 book, The People’s Right to Know: Legal Access to Public Records and Proceedings, written as legal counsel to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, laid the groundwork for the legislation.

ASNE President James S. Pope lauded the book, the first ever published by ASNE, as presenting “a vision clearer than ours,” and a “potent manual-of-arms” for battle.

Cross was legal counsel for the New York Herald Tribune and served on the faculty of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. He was retained by the Society in connection with ASNE’s dealings with the House Subcommittee on Government Information chaired by Rep. John E. Moss. The committee itself came to depend on his knowledge and expertise greatly, considering him almost a shadow staffer.