How to File a FOIA Request

What the law actually gives you

The Freedom of Information Act gives any person the right to ask a federal agency for its records. Not a citizen. Any person. FOIA.gov puts it plainly: "Generally any person - United States citizen or not - can make a FOIA request." You do not need a reason, you do not need standing, and you do not have to say why you want it.

What it does not do is just as important, because most wasted requests die here. FOIA reaches records that already exist. It does not require an agency to create a new record, do research for you, analyse data, or answer a question. "Was there a cover-up?" is not a FOIA request. "All memoranda between the Office of X and the Office of Y between 3 and 30 June 1974 concerning Z" is.

The whole thing runs on one statute, 5 U.S.C. § 552, and every federal agency administers its own piece of it. That single fact explains almost everything that confuses first-time requesters.

There is no central office. This is the part people get wrong

There is no national FOIA desk that takes your request and routes it. FOIA.gov is the government's central site about FOIA, and its own "Create a request" link does not open a submission form. It opens an agency directory. Each agency receives, processes and answers its own requests, under its own regulations, with its own portal and its own backlog.

So the first real step is not writing. It is working out which agency holds the paper.

• FOIA.gov agency directory: every federal agency, with each one's specific request instructions and any extra requirements for particular records. This is the page to start on.
• FOIA.gov search wizard: if you know what you want but not who holds it, this walks you to an agency.
• Search already-released records: do this first. Agencies post a great deal in reading rooms, and a record already released is a record you can have today instead of in eight months.

Getting the agency wrong is not fatal, since agencies will sometimes refer a request onward, but it costs you the clock. If two agencies might hold it, file with both. There is no penalty for parallel requests, and they are processed independently.

What a request has to contain

The bar set by the statute is low and specific: it must be in writing, and it must reasonably describe the records you seek. There is no official form for a standard FOIA request, and FOIA.gov says so directly: "There is no specific form that must be used to make a request."

In practice a request that gets answered quickly contains all of this:

1. A sentence naming the statute. "This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act." Say it explicitly so it is logged as one.
2. Your name and a mailing address. Phone and email are optional but speed everything up.
3. A description precise enough that a records clerk could go and find it. Names, dates, a date range, office or field office, case or file numbers, programme names, document types.
4. A fee ceiling. "I am willing to pay up to $25 for the processing of this request. Please inform me if the estimated fees will exceed this limit before processing." Without this, some agencies stop and write to you for authorisation, which costs weeks.
5. Your requester category. "I am seeking information for personal use and not for commercial use," or your claim to be news media, educational or scientific. This decides what you are charged.
6. Your preferred format, if you care. You may ask for electronic rather than paper.

A letter you can copy

This follows the structure of the FBI's own published sample, which is a reasonable model for any agency:

[Date]

[Agency FOIA Office] [Address]

Dear FOIA Officer:

This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

Date range of request: [e.g. 1 January 1972 – 31 December 1975]

Description of request: Please provide all records, including but not limited to correspondence, memoranda, reports, cables, meeting minutes, photographs and electronic records, concerning [precise subject]. [Add any file numbers, office names, or programme names you know.]

I am willing to pay up to $[amount] for the processing of this request. Please inform me if the estimated fees will exceed this limit before processing my request.

I am seeking information for [personal use and not for commercial use / as a representative of the news media / for scholarly purposes].

I would prefer to receive the records in electronic format where possible.

Thank you for your consideration.

[Name] [Street address] [City, State, ZIP] [Phone, optional] [Email, optional]

Keep a dated copy of exactly what you sent. If the request is ever appealed or litigated, the wording you used is the thing being argued about.

Filing digitally

This is faster, it is tracked, and most agencies now prefer it. The general shape is the same everywhere: find the agency on the FOIA.gov directory, follow its link to its own portal, create an account or file as a guest, paste your request text, set your fee ceiling, submit, and keep the tracking number. That number is how you chase it later.

Common portals for the agencies people actually want:

Agency	Where to file
FBI	eFOIPA portal: handles FOIA and Privacy Act requests, including about deceased people, organisations, policies and events
CIA	CIA FOIA Reading Room and its request page
NSA	NSA FOIA office
State Department	foia.state.gov
Homeland Security	dhs.gov/foia
National Archives	archives.gov/foia: for records already transferred to NARA
Anything else	FOIA.gov agency directory

Before searching the CIA by request, note that its Reading Room already holds an enormous released corpus. Search it before you file.

A word on the National Archives: once records are transferred to NARA, the originating agency no longer holds them, and a request to that agency will be slower or fruitless. For anything genuinely historical, check NARA first.

Filing by mail

Mail is slower and untracked, but it remains the right choice in two situations: when the agency requires an original signature, and when you are requesting records about yourself and must prove who you are.

The procedure:

1. Print the letter above on paper.
2. Sign it. A mailed request with a wet signature is what the identity rules below are built around.
3. If you are requesting your own records, attach a notarised statement or the certification form described in the next section.
4. Address it to the agency's FOIA office. The directory gives the address for each. For the FBI, the published address is:

Federal Bureau of Investigation Attn: Initial Processing Operations Unit Record/Information Dissemination Section 200 Constitution Drive Winchester, VA 22602

5. Keep a photocopy of everything, including the signed page.

One caution worth stating because it is still circulating: an older FBI FOIPA address at 170 Marcel Drive appears on a great many third-party pages and in old templates. The Bureau's current published address is the Constitution Drive one above. Addresses do change, so check the agency's own page the day you post, rather than trusting any guide, including this one.

Records about yourself, and records about other people

These are two different problems.

Your own records. This is where a form genuinely does exist. Requesting records about yourself engages the Privacy Act as well as FOIA, and the agency has to be sure it is you. The Justice Department's form is:

• Form DOJ-361, Certification of Identity (PDF, updated August 2024). Print it, complete it, sign it. It is also listed on the DOJ Reference Guide's forms page.

Most agencies will accept either this form or a statement signed under penalty of perjury; some, such as the Executive Office for Immigration Review, prefer their own equivalent. The point is the same everywhere: an unsigned, unverified request for someone's own file will be refused, and you will have lost the months it sat in the queue.

Someone else's records, living. Expect very little. Records about a living third party are generally withheld under the personal-privacy exemptions unless you provide that person's written, notarised authorisation, or you can show an overriding public interest.

Someone else's records, deceased. This is the route most historical research takes. Agencies will process a request about a deceased person, but you will usually need proof of death: a death certificate, an obituary, a published news report, or a Social Security Death Index entry. Attach it with the request rather than waiting to be asked; being asked costs a round trip of several weeks.

What it costs

Fees are the part that frightens people off, and mostly they should not. The Justice Department's reference guide sets out three categories of requester:

• Commercial-use requesters may be charged for search, review and copying.
• Educational or noncommercial scientific institutions, and representatives of the news media, pay for copying only, and the first 100 pages are free.
• All other requesters, which is most people, pay for search and copying, but not review.

On top of that, FOIA.gov notes that typically "There is usually no charge for the first two hours of search time or for the first 100 pages of duplication." For a tightly drawn request, that often means the whole thing is free.

Two practical rules:

• Always state a fee ceiling. It caps your exposure and it prevents the agency pausing to ask.
• Understand what a fee waiver is. Waivers exist, but they are for public interest: a showing that disclosure contributes significantly to public understanding of government operations. FOIA.gov is explicit that "a requester's inability to pay fees is not a legal basis for granting a fee waiver," and that requests for your own records generally do not qualify.

How long it takes

The statutory answer and the real answer differ, and it is better to know both.

The statute. An agency must respond within twenty business days. The Justice Department's guide specifies "twenty business days, excluding Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays." The clock can be extended in unusual circumstances.

Reality. FOIA.gov says agencies "typically process requests in the order of receipt," and that timing depends on complexity and the existing backlog. For a popular agency and a broad request, waits of months to years are normal and not a sign that anything has gone wrong. A narrow, specific request genuinely is faster. This is the single biggest thing within your control.

Expedited processing is available in two situations every agency must honour: where lack of expedition could reasonably be expected to pose a threat to someone's life or physical safety, and where there is an urgency to inform the public about federal government activity and you are primarily engaged in disseminating information. Agencies may add further grounds in their own regulations. If you qualify, ask for it in the request itself and say why.

If it goes quiet, every agency has a FOIA Requester Service Center and a FOIA Public Liaison whose job is exactly this. Use the tracking number.

When they say no

A refusal is not the end, and appealing is free.

Partial withholding. If material is redacted, the agency must tell you which exemption it applied. There are nine, covering things like national security classification, internal personnel rules, trade secrets, inter-agency deliberation, personal privacy and law-enforcement techniques. Read which one they cited. It tells you what argument to make.

Administrative appeal. You file this with the agency, in writing, and the Justice Department's guide gives the deadline as within 90 calendar days after the date of the component's response. FOIA.gov notes that "There is no fee or cost involved." An appeal is reviewed by someone other than the original decision-maker, and a meaningful share succeed, often because the original search was too narrow rather than because the exemption was wrong.

Say specifically what you are contesting: the adequacy of the search, the application of a named exemption, a fee category determination, or a denial of a fee waiver.

Mediation. If the appeal fails, the Office of Government Information Services at the National Archives offers mediation as a non-litigation alternative. OGIS is a genuine ombudsman and costs nothing.

Litigation. After exhausting the administrative appeal you may sue in federal district court. That is a real option and the reason the rest of the process has teeth, but it is a different undertaking.

Things that make the difference

• Narrow it. The commonest reason a request dies is that it was too broad to search. Dates, names, offices, document types.
• Ask for the index, not the haystack. Sometimes the efficient first request is for a list, log or index of records, then a second, surgical request for the ones that matter.
• File with more than one agency when more than one might hold it. They do not coordinate.
• Mention the file number if you have one. A request that names a file is a request that can be pulled rather than searched for.
• Keep everything: what you sent, when, the tracking number, every letter back. The appeal, if it comes, is argued on that record.
• Check the reading room first, every time. The fastest FOIA request is the one you did not have to file.

FOIA is slow, uneven, and administered by people with more requests than staff. It is also the mechanism by which a very large share of what is publicly known about the twentieth-century American state came to be known at all, including a good deal of what is documented elsewhere on this site. It works. It just works on its own schedule.