Excerpts:

"When the Senate took up its version of the 2014 FOIA reform bill, co-sponsored by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy and Republican Senator John Cornyn, it was much stronger than the House's version. Importantly, the Senate bill would have transformed the most overused and abused FOIA exemption — there are nine total — that government agencies routinely cite to deny requesters access to records: Exemption 5, also known as the deliberative process privilege, which covers "inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters," drafts, and attorney-client records.

Exemption 5 is referred to by open government advocates as the "Withhold it because you want to exemption."

The discretionary exemption has been cited to justify the withholding of countless documents, such as a half-century old CIA history of the Bay of Pigs invasion and an internal CIA study on the agency's torture program, on grounds that they are not "final decisions." The reform bill would have authorized the release of records that fell under Exemption 5 after 25 years and it would have introduced a "foreseeable harm" standard, requiring government agencies to demonstrate the harm that would result from the disclosure of records; currently, they need only cite a specific FOIA exemption to justify the withholding of records. It too was unanimously passed by the Senate.

But everything died in the House in December 2014 after then–Speaker John Boehner failed to bring up the final version for a vote. Rumors soon began to surface that the DOJ, the SEC, and the FTC, prodded by banking lobbyists, worked behind the scenes and lobbied lawmakers not to bring the legislation up for a vote. The DOJ used the same talking points to sound alarm bells about the Senate bill."

"VICE News filed separate FOIA requests with the DOJ, FTC, and SEC seeking documents about conversations officials may have had with members of Congress about the 2014 FOIA reform bills. It took more than a year to obtain responsive records from the agencies. In the case of the FTC, it required VICE News to file a formal appeal challenging the integrity of the agency's search after the FTC initially turned over just a handful of documents. Eleven months after we lodged the appeal, the FTC said it found an additional 900 pages of emails and produced those.

As if to underscore why Congress has been aggressive in its attempt to reform Exemption 5, the FTC redacted 95 percent of the emails — citing Exemption 5."