The first batch of secret service documents about Aaron Swartz has been released amid a legal battle to publicly share the 14,500 pages the government has amassed in its investigation of the internet activist.

A report of his suicide, evidence documents and a memorandum of an interview with an unidentified acquaintance are included in the 104-page cache published by Wired's Kevin Poulsen on Monday.

Swartz was federally indicted on 13 charges including computer fraud, theft of information and wire fraud for downloading 4m articles from the JSTOR database through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer network. He was facing up to $1m in fines and 35 years in jail for these charges when he killed himself in January.

The documents show that the secret service was interested in a document penned by Swartz and others calling for open information – the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto. Some, including a congressional aide, believe this document was used to establish "malicious intent" in the government's case against him.

A considerable portion of the documents are evidence logs detailing the equipment seized by the government or handed over by Swartz, including computers, storage equipment and earnings statements from Google and Harvard University.

Swartz was present for at least one search of his Cambridge apartment, according to a February 2011 document that reads: "While the search was conducted, Swartz made statements to the effect of, what took you so long, and why didn't you do this earlier?"

Nearly every page included in the release is redacted in some way, primarily obscuring names of investigators or those who were interviewed by government officials about Swartz.

Two groups that have impeded the release of the documents, JSTOR and MIT are not mentioned in the released files. The groups are seeking approval to get an advance review of the documents, following a court order for the files to be released.

It is unusual for a private group to interfere in a request for government files, though MIT released its own report on Swartz two weeks ago. Poulsen, whose request for the files to be released initiated the court case, said his lawyers are in discussion with the two groups' lawyers.

The US secret service initially denied Poulsen's Freedom of Information Act request for files it had on Swartz, along with an appeal. With attorney David Sobel, Poulsen filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the secret service's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.

Poulsen is a former hacker and had worked with Swartz on the Deaddrop project, an open-source drop box for leaked documents unveiled in May.

The government said it will take six months to process the documents, which are being released on a rolling basis.