FOIbles: The Justice Dept's Forgotten FOIA Comic

By The Memory Hole 2, Aug. 26, 2016

During a brief moment at the beginning of the 1980s, the Justice Department published a single-panel gag comic about the Freedom of Information Act.  FOIbles was aimed at FOIA staff within the government, so it gives us an unexpected look at the mindset of those who process FOIA requests.

FOIbles ran in the newsletter FOIA Update, put out by the Justice Department's Office of Information Policy from late 1979 to early 1999. The cartoon ran in only eight issues (the first seven, plus the ninth issue).  The OIP has posted the complete text of FOIA Update here, but all images - photos, illustrations, and cartoons - were left out.  I scanned this forgotten footnote of FOIA history from original printed copies of the newsletter.  All FOIbles are reproduced below, in the order in which they appeared.

Read more here.