Steven Aftergood is a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, a nonprofit national organization of scientists and engineers concerned with issues of science and national security policy. He directs the FAS Project on Government Secrecy, which works to reduce the scope of government secrecy, to accelerate the declassification of cold war documents, and to promote reform of official secrecy policy. In 1997, he was the plaintiff in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency which successfully led to the declassification and publication of the total intelligence budget ($26.6 billion in 1997) for the first time in 50 years. He publishes the Federation's Secrecy News, a biweekly email newsletter on secrecy, intelligence and freedom-of-information issues, which features original reporting as well as links to web-based source documents. Through his newsletter, web site, and related project activities, he has helped raise the public profile of official secrecy as a problem awaiting a sound policy solution. He joined the FAS staff in 1989.

Rebecca Daugherty

Rebecca Daugherty has been director of the FOI Service Center, a special project of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, since 1987. She is an attorney and an editor of Tapping Officials' Secrets, a 50-state and District of Columbia guide to open records and open meeting laws. She is also the editor of How to Use the Federal FOI Act, a guide to federal access laws. The Reporters Committee regularly tracks changes and proposals for change in electronic records access and has published Access to Electronic Records in the States, now in its third edition. Daugherty is a past president of the American Society of Access Professionals. Before joining the Reporters Committee, she had worked as a reporter and a copy editor for various newspapers and as an FOI specialist at the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Donald Edwards is a retired congressman from California. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1962 and retired in 1995. A Democrat, he joined the House Judiciary Committee where in the 1970's he became chair of the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights — the subcommittee with jurisdiction over all major civil rights legislation, oversight over the FBI, and key civil liberties issues. During his entire career he was a strong defender of constitutional rights. He has always believed that the public is entitled to know what its government is doing, and when his subcommittee received FBI oversight jurisdiction, Edwards — who was a special agent in the FBI in 1940 and 1941 — ordered a General Accounting Office audit of the Bureau's investigative files. Despite strong FBI resistance, the GAO report revealed that fine recoveries in criminal cases had been enormously overstated, and that the FBI was actually making a profit. In public hearings the Edwards subcommittee also criticized the FBI for its Library Awareness Program, where the Bureau attempted to enlist librarians to report to the Bureau on any person who read books or periodicals containing information potentially useful to terrorists. In 1995, he was awarded the Roger Baldwin Award for Civil Liberties from the national American Civil Liberties Union.

John R. Finnegan Sr. retired from the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1989 as senior vice president/assistant publisher. He is president of the Minnesota Joint Media Committee, an organization composed of representatives of all major media organizations in Minnesota; it was formed to monitor FOI legislation in the state and support open government legislation. From his retirement to the present, Finnegan has chaired or co-chaired the Minnesota Newspaper Association legislative committee and appeared before the Minnesota Legislature supporting openness in government and defending First Amendment rights. At the Pioneer Press, he wrote numerous columns on First Amendment and freedom of access issues from 1970 to his retirement. He also authorized numerous court actions supporting the newspaper's right of access to records and government agencies' meetings. As editorial writer and associate editor of the Pioneer Press editorial page for eight years, he wrote many editorials and columns on First Amendment and freedom of access issues. He served as vice chairman of the American Society of Newspaper Editors FOI committee, chairman of the FOI committee of the Associated Press Managing Editors Association, and president of the First Amendment Congress. With a colleague, Finnegan drafted the first open meeting law in the State of Minnesota in 1957. He drafted and helped lobby for passage of the state's Data Practices Act in 1974 — its first open records law. He received the APME award for Defense of a Free Press in 1980 and the John Peter Zenger First Amendment award in 1986.

Harry A. Hammitt is the editor/publisher since 1989 of Access Reports, a biweekly newsletter on the Freedom of Information Act and open government laws and policies. He also edits Access Reports: Canada and Abroad, a monthly newsletter covering access and privacy issues in Canada. He has a masters degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, where he won the Clifton B. Denham Freedom of Information Award for the best paper published by the FOI Center. He also has a J.D. from George Washington University Law School. He has worked as an information specialist for the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a federal agency, and for FOI Services, a third-party requesting company. Hammitt has written and lectured extensively on access and privacy issues in both the United States and Canada. He has been a long-time faculty member and contributor to the ACLU's Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws. Besides editing the two newsletters, he is also a contributing editor to Government Technology, a monthly newsletter that covers technology issues of interest to federal, state, provincial, and municipal governments. He brought suit against the Justice Department challenging its withholding of a report written to support the Reagan administration's bill amending the FOIA. He won the case at the district court but was reversed on appeal by a panel of the D.C. Circuit. He is a past president of the American Society of Access Professionals and has conducted that organization's annual seminar on business information for more than 10 years.

Beryl A. Howell is the general counsel for Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Ranking Member on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. She is responsible for making policy recommendations and drafting legislation, speeches and articles on a broad range of issues, including the Freedom of Information Act, Internet policy, and online privacy and free speech rights. In prior Congresses, she has worked for Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., on the Technology and the Law Subcommittee and the Antitrust, Business Rights and Competition Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee. She has worked vigorously to promote Senator Leahy's interest in the Freedom of Information Act. She helped craft the Leahy Electronic FOIA amendments enacted in 1996 and, most recently, provided guidance to the General Accounting Office in preparing a report requested by Senator Leahy, and others, on the progress of federal agencies in implementing those amendments. The GAO report was scheduled to be released on National FOI Day, March 16, 2001. Howell has helped to carry out Leahy's defense of the FOIA against legislative proposals to impose new limitations on public access to government records. Before joining Leahy's Judiciary Committee staff, she worked in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York from 1987 until 1993, serving as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and the Deputy Chief of the Narcotics Section. She is the co-author of "Mail Fraud, Wire Fraud and Securities Fraud as Predicate Acts in Civil RICO Actions," Civil RICO, P.L.I. Handbook, 1985 & 1986 eds.

Patrice McDermott

Patrice McDermott is the senior information policy analyst for OMB Watch, a nonprofit research, educational and advocacy organization whose goals include promoting public access to government information and encouraging broad public participation in government decision- making to promote a more open and accountable government. McDermott co-directs OMB Watch's Agenda For Access initiative — a project to strengthen public access to government information through a proactive agenda that grows out of the problems, needs and experiences of the non-profit sector in the use of federal government information. She has lead responsibilities for promoting public access initiatives, monitoring information policy and e-government issues. She served as the assistant director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association, taught information politics at Clark Atlanta University, and worked at the National Archives and Records Administration. She has testified in congressional hearings and is a frequent speaker on public access issues. She is also a regular columnist on information policy for Federal Computer Week.

James Madison, who served as our fourth president from 1809 to 1817, is known as the "father of the Constitution." In particular, his role in writing and securing passage of the Bill of Rights forms one of the most enduring aspects of his legacy. Robert J. Morgan, one of the many authors who have taken Madison as their subject, wrote that Madison "had a clear and sensitive grasp of, as well as firm commitment to, the ideals of responsibility, accountability, responsiveness, and accessibility as essential characteristics of democratic political institutions." Madison himself penned what has become the anthem for access advocates: "A popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." Madison's commitment to the free flow of information between the governors and the governed has been recognized for many years in the designation of his birth date on March 16 as National FOI Day. It is particularly fitting that Madison be further honored on this 250th anniversary of his birth with induction into the FOIA Hall of Fame.

Kate Martin is director of the Center for National Security Studies and general counsel to the National Security Archive. The National Security Archive, a research library located at George Washington University, is the most prolific and successful nonprofit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and holds the world's largest non-governmental collection of declassified U.S. government documents. The center is a human rights and civil liberties organization that works to prevent claims of national security from eroding civil liberties or constitutional procedures. Martin frequently testifies before Congress on secrecy and classification of national security information as well as other issues. She has litigated cases involving the entire range of national security and civil liberties issues including successfully suing the CIA for disclosure of the intelligence budget and preventing destruction of White House e-mail messages. She has written numerous Supreme Court briefs on national security issues, including freedom of information and separation of powers. She participated in the drafting of the Johannesburg Principles on National Security and Freedom of Expression. With Paul Hoffman, she wrote "Safeguarding Liberty: National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information: United States of America," published in Secrecy and Liberty, ed. Coliver et al. She also wrote "Civil Liberties and National Security on the Internet," published in The Information Age Anthology, vol. II, and National Security Implications of the Information Age (CCRP 2000) as well as numerous opinion pieces.

John D. Podesta served as chief of staff to President Clinton from October 1998 to January 2001. In that role, he recommended, against the advice of the intelligence community, that the president veto the Intelligence Authorization Act which would have, for the first time in the United States, created what was tantamount to an Official Secrets Act. He first served in the Clinton administration from January 1993 to 1995 as assistant to the president and staff secretary. In that position, he worked with Attorney General Janet Reno to issue new litigation guidance and presidential guidance to strengthen the government's commitment to openness. He also served as a senior policy adviser to the president on government information, privacy, telecommunications security and regulatory policy. In 1994 and 1995, he played a key White House staff role in the issuance of Executive Orders 12937 and 12958, which reformed the government's classification system and led to the most sweeping declassification of government documents in history. Following his tenure as staff secretary, he joined the faculty of The Georgetown University Law Center, his alma mater, as a visiting law professor, teaching courses on congressional investigations, legislation, copyright and public interest law. In January 1997, he returned to the White House as an assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff. He was one of President Clinton's appointees to the Moynihan Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy and participated in the most comprehensive review of the government's security system and recommended that the system for classifying and declassifying documents be given, for the first time, a statutory basis. In 1991, as minority counsel on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, he worked with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and open-government advocates to turn back proposals that would have gutted virtually every major feature of the Freedom of Information Act.

J. Laurent (Larry) Scharff is a former partner in the Communications Group of the Washington, D.C. office of Reed Smith Shaw & McClay and former general counsel for the Radio-Television News Directors Association. Substantive areas of his practice included political broadcast and fairness doctrine law; libel and privacy law; law governing protection of reporters' confidential information; and freedom of information acts and other law regulating access to information through open records, open meetings, cameras in the courtroom, and remote-sensing satellites. His efforts in support of a strong FOIA were largely focused on the legislative activities of news media representatives concerning the 1974 and 1986 amendments to the Act, as well as the Privacy Act of 1974. On behalf of RTNDA, he participated in amendment drafting sessions with task forces of media representatives and other meetings with senators, congressmen, and their aides. Scharff's efforts on the Hill helped put over the favorable congressional amendments of 1974. He worked closely with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and John Podesta against proposals of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and others to restrict public access to law enforcement and national defense records in 1986. Beginning in 1981, he supervised the creation and 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," before the San Diego Communications Council.