FOIA Bootcamp

The federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and its state equivalents hold the government accountable to the governed by opening agency records to public inspection. Yet getting your hands on the right records isn’t always easy. Yale's FOIA Bootcamp aims to help journalists, activists, and citizens learn how to draft requests, negotiate with agencies, and litigate claims. 

FOIA director for The Washington Post, Nate Jones, and journalist and criminal defense investigator Nathan Tempey will share tips and tricks for making the most of FOI laws with a Q&A to follow. Dinner will be served.

Register to attend in-person or attend virtually via Zoom. 

Speakers:

Nate Jones is the FOIA director for The Washington Post, where he works with reporters to target documents to request, appeal, and sue for. He works with reporters to obtain local, state, and federal records and to think strategically about public records in all formats. He gives FOIA training sessions and advises reporters on how to write, refine and track requests, navigate delays and overredactions, and overcome other bureaucratic resistance. He is also author of the "Revealing Records" column which describes The Post's battles for public records. He has served two terms on the Federal FOIA Advisory Committee and holds a JD from the University of the District of Columbia. He previously was the director of the FOIA Project for the National Security Archive, where he used FOIA to write a book on the 1983 Able Archer nuclear war scare.

Nathan Tempey is a journalist and criminal defense investigator. Nathan's writing has appeared in Vice, Gothamist, The New York Daily News, and elsewhere. Nathan's reporting has largely focused on housing, criminal justice, and power in and around New York City. He contributed research to a forthcoming podcast called The Burden about disgraced NYPD Det. Louis Scarcella and the group of imprisoned men who exposed his misconduct and freed themselves in the process. His work with the MFIA Clinic on the deaths of people in Connecticut Department of Correction custody serves as the basis of ongoing reporting by The Connecticut Mirror. Nathan's investigative work recently led to the exoneration of a man named Wayne Gardine, who spent 29 years incarcerated for a murder that the Manhattan legal system now agrees he did not commit.