And nobody seems to do it as obsessively as Mr. Leopold. In an era of ideologically driven news, Mr. Leopold says, publishing government documents is perhaps the most neutral form of reporting. A recent scoop, a defense intelligence agency document that said the government had estimated that Mr. Snowden had taken 900,000 Defense Department documents, was seized on by supporters and opponents of Mr. Snowden to make their own points, he said.

“I would love to have somebody drop a million pages of documents on me,” Mr. Leopold said, referring to leaks. “But even if that does happen, it’s not going to happen every day, every week, right? So I have to figure out how to do this work.” He has studied the law in its entirety, about two dozen pages, and follows each legal and administrative development that affects it. His submissions requesting information are so detailed that they sometimes run to 10 pages, he said.

He has thousands of requests outstanding, he said. Every day he comes home and checks his mailbox. When he sees the envelopes, and thinks they may contain documents he wants, he drops everything he is holding and rips them open like Christmas presents.

The rush of adrenaline, he said, can be compared to a cocaine high. Mr. Leopold would know. He has written, in a book entitled “News Junkie,” of his addiction to the drug and his felony plea for stealing CDs to feed a $300-a-day habit.

Mr. Leopold has also been through a series of scandals, including accusations of plagiarism and improper sourcing (which Mr. Leopold disputes). He was fired from The Los Angeles Times in the early 2000s after threatening to rip off another journalist’s head after the colleague had complained of his loud music.

A decade ago, he was an outsider, trying to break news on smaller websites from his house. Until he joined Vice News in 2014, he used a credit card to pay thousands of dollars required for lawsuits, an essential part of forcing documents out of government archives and into public view.

“I love the score,” he said. “So maybe there’s this drug-ish thing in me that still exists, maybe that was always part of my personality. I love the score. I love the score! Particularly when it is from the government! I just got you to give me your own documents, you know!”