NPR

Exhausting Effect Of FOIA Requests Evident In 'Baseless'

Nicholson Baker's book misses the mark in an aim to take readers on a quest to discover if the U.S. used biological weapons developed in the '50s — and to examine the failings of public records law.
<em>Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act</em>, by Nicholson Baker

Governmental secrecy not only permits evil, but also breeds it.

It's this concept that forms the backbone of Nicholson Baker's foray into the U.S. development of biological weapons in the 1950s. His book, Baseless: My Search For Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information has a promising concept, which is to use the topic as a way to examine the shortcomings of America's public records law.

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