Over five hundred pages, detailing thousands of lost documents - and that’s just the initial release.

Following up on reports that FBI files had been damaged in last year’s flooding, MuckRock co-founder Michael Morisy requested an inventory of what had been lost. Last week, the FBI got back with their initial response, and it’s disturbing, to say the least.

There’s close to five hundred pages, each listing fifty plus damaged/destroyed documents. And again, this is the initial response.

At MuckRock, we believe that digitization is an important component of promoting transparency, both in ensuring dissemination of information, and guaranteeing the long term survival of documents. Incidents like this - and the staggering loss to both history and accountability they incur - are regrettable examples of why.

You can read the request and the response here. As always, we’ll continue to report as more information is made available, and once the complete scope of loss is made clear.

Image via Wikimedia Commons