The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) provides the public with the right to request records from federal agencies. Agencies are required to disclose any information requested under the FOIA, except for that which falls under one of nine exemptions or one of three law enforcement exclusions.
Most agency websites include a FOIA section, where the agency posts information such as:
Many documents, reports, and other publications not proactively published to agency websites are requested under FOIA by journalists, watchdog organizations, and others. There is no comprehensive collection of these, although many are uploaded to DocumentCloud, organizations' websites (such as those listed under "non-governmental collections" below), or embedded in online news articles.
Links below go to the agencies' main FOIA pages. From there, you should be able to locate information about requesting information via FOIA and links to the agency's FOIA "reading room" or "library" to read documents that have been released in response to FOIA requests.
A selection of non-governmental websites that provide access to documents requested/received under FOIA.
See also the Declassified Documents page on this guide to find related collections of previously-classified materials which have been made available online.