John E. Moss, a Democratic congressman from California, is known as the legislative father of FOIA.

As chairman of the House Subcommittee on Government Information, Congressman Moss was the chief catalytic agent in Congress over the 11-year period of the bill’s development and eventual passage. Moss arrived in Congress in 1953 as no particular advocate of the news media’s right to know. Early on, though, he became a staunch convert when civil-service representatives testified that the Eisenhower administration had fired disloyal government employees and then refused to give out their names.

Irate at what seemed to him a blatant flaunting of executive privilege, Moss set up a new special subcommittee, installed himself as chairman and launched exploratory hearings into the issue of the availability of information from federal departments and agencies. The bill, when finally complete, went through the Senate first, then the House.

John Moss died in 1997.

While associate editor of the Detroit Free Press and American Society of Newspaper Editors president (1972-73), J. Edward Murray headed the campaign to strengthen the original 1966 FOIA with the 1974 amendments.

Along with William Hornby of The Denver Post, Murray pushed for ASNE members to assert pressure on Congress, and to run editorials in support. When President Gerald Ford vetoed the legislation as “unconstitutional and unworkable,” Murray stepped up his campaign for editorials and pressure; in November 1974, the veto was soundly defeated by 371-31 in the House, 65 to 27 in the Senate.

J. Edward Murray died in 2005.

Managing editor of the Tampa Tribune, an early advocate of federal legislation to limit government secrecy, Virgil Newton was credited with first bringing FOI to the attention of Sigma Delta Chi/Society of Professional Journalists.

He chaired the society’s national FOI committee from 1952-63, and served as Sigma Delta Chi national president in 1959-60. Former American Society of Newspaper Editors President James Pope praised him as “fiery and outspoken,” a man with a “built-in blaze of fury for concealers of public information,” whose speeches brought FOI to the attention of many public officials for the first time.

Known for his take-no-prisoners style, Newton displayed a “passionate and intense desire to run over everything and everyone who stood in the way of a free press,” according to later SPJ FOI chairman Clark Mollenhoff. Newton is credited with helping Rep. John Moss draft language for the original FOI bill.

Red Newton died in 1977.

Bio

Editor of the Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal, president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (1954-55), and chairman of ASNE’s FOI committee, James Pope began advocating the concept of the FOIA a decade before it was enacted.

Along with J. Russell Wiggins, he pushed strenuously for adoption of legislation, mobilizing editors through ASNE and testifying constantly before Congress. Pope and Wiggins rejected many attempts to create laws that did not live up to their dream, until satisfactory legislation emerged.

James Pope died in 1985.

Sheryl Walter has been an advocate of freedom of information both inside and outside the federal government.

While serving as general counsel of the National Security Archive from 1989-1994, she played a major role in successfully litigating FOIA cases that established major precedents for ensuring public access to the records of federal agencies and affirming the rights of authors, freelance writers, and publishers to have fees waived under the act.

Walter’s work helped establish the principle that electronic mail can be a federal record subject to FOIA requests and preservation under the federal records laws.

Now general counsel for the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, Walter also serves as president of the American Society of Access Professionals.

Former editor of The Washington Post and American Society of Newspaper Editors president (1959-60), Russell Wiggins was an early advocate of FOIA, and along with editor James S. Pope, one of the principal movers and shakers pushing for its adoption.

He testified extensively before the committee chaired by Rep. John Moss as it developed the Freedom of Information Act. Wiggins drew up the ASNE Declaration of Principles in 1957 to lay down the gauntlet.

“ASNE,” he wrote, “must stand guard for the right to know, fighting measures that restrict it at home or abroad, particularly withholding of information at local, state or federal levels.”

Russ Wiggins died in 2000.