Freedom of information laws have been instrumental in discovering unlawful experiments conducted by governments on unsuspecting citizens, on prisoners and on their own soldiers, and in reforming agencies involved in such practices.

Although the United States and the American NGO² community have over the years played a crucial role in establishing the use of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and defining a body of international human rights law, certain U.S. government agencies have at times demonstrated a blatant disregard for the fundamental rights of both American and non-American citizens. Through its persistent use of the FOIA in the United States, churches of Scientology have been able to alert the public to abuses and to safeguard against similar human rights violations in the future.

For example, in 1979, the Church’s investigations uncovered that nearly 7,000 people had been given various experimental drugs at a U.S. Army arsenal from the 1950s to the 1970s, including 2,490 soldiers tested with the hallucinogen, BZ — a drug nearly 100 times more powerful than LSD that can cause delirium for days. According to Army records, BZ was so potent that the amount stored in its inventory — 50 tons at the time of the Church’s investigations — could kill every person in the United States four times over or incapacitate 10 times the world’s population. The Washington Post of July 18, 1979 stated that “The Army’s problems with its BZ stockpile came to light recently when a group called American Citizens for Honesty in Government, an affiliate of the Church of Scientology, began a campaign to locate persons who had been tested with BZ by the military during the 1960s.”

The U.S. Army had maintained the position that there had been no follow-ups on tests involving BZ because the drug had no long-term effects. But in late 1979, it announced its own programme to find and notify all persons who had been unwitting participants in these covert operations.

An even greater surprise was the discovery under U.S. FOIA that many European countries had also developed and stockpiled dangerous chemical weapons including BZ. It was revealed that after World War II, the U.S., Britain, France and Russia had dumped 300,000 tons of hazardous chemical weapons in the world’s oceans, including a British drop 20 miles west of the Irish coast and another, amounting to tens of thousands of tons, in a trench 25 miles east of the Norwegian coastal town of Arendal.

2: The term “NGO” (non-governmental organisation) came into use with the establishment in 1945 of the United Nations. Article 71 of the UN Charter provides for the Economic and Social Council to “make suitable arrangements for consultation with non-governmental organisations which are concerned with matters within its competence.” NGOs exist for a variety of different purposes, such as improving the environment, bettering the welfare of the disadvantaged, and encouraging the observance of human rights.