The Department of Forgetting: How an obscure FBI rule is ensuring the destruction of irreplaceable historical records

Alex Heard, the editorial director of Outside magazine at Slate:

But isn’t the FBI destroying only junk? I doubt it. Ernie Lazar, an independent researcher in California whose particular interest is in far-right groups, sent me a list of “destroyed” responses he’s received over the years from FBI headquarters and field offices. There are dozens. We’ll never know if they were significant—they don’t exist anymore—but they sure look interesting to me.