| Ernie Lazar | |
| Birth Name: | Ernest Clayton Jammes |
| Birth Date: | 16 April 1945 |
| Birth Place: | Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Death Place: | Palm Springs, California, U.S. |
| Alma Mater: | California State University, East Bay |
| Years Active: | 1960s-2020s |
| Known For: | Ernie Lazar FOIA Collection |
Ernie Lazar (born Ernest Clayton Jammes; April 16, 1945 – November 1, 2022) was an American researcher and a prolific Freedom of Information Act petitioner who amassed a "vast digital and documentary archive of government records on political extremists," used by many scholars, who regarded him as a "hero of researchers."[1] [2] [3] [4]
Ernie Lazar was born Ernest Clayton Jammes on April 16, 1945, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Marjorie Jammes and an unknown father. His mother allowed the Lazar family to adopt him in Chicago. Lazar majored in history at the California State College at Hayward (now California State University, East Bay) but did not graduate.[1] [2] [4]
As a teenage freelance researcher, he read the monthly FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. At one point, he read how US Federal Bureau of Investigation director J. Edgar Hoover contradicted a John Birch Society supporter’s letter regarding the Communist Party USA. Hostile responses led to a lifelong interest in right-wing conspiracy theories.[1] [2]
For his day job, Lazar worked in the music industry as record promoter, disc jockey, and record store owner in San Francisco. He helped promote "Born to Be Alive" by Patrick Hernandez in 1979. Later, he worked more than two decades for the State of California's Board of Registered Nursing, Department of Motor Vehicles, and Office of the Secretary of State of California.[1] [2] [4] Lazar received mention in Billboard on June 11, 1977, for his music store "Disco Central" and its unique disco collection in the San Francisco Bay area.[5]
For his night job and over his lifetime, Lazar filed more than 9,000 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.[2] He amassed a "600,000-page online and paper library — stored at his home and in a warehouse."[1] [2] The Center for Right Wing Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, received a grant from the Southern Poverty Law Center to digitize some files, while Lazar crowdsourced for funding himself.[1] [2] [4]
Less than a year before his death, Lazar wrote to the Las Vegas Sun regarding the FBI and the John Birch Society:
In September 2022, Lazar made an unusual public announcement, which included acknowledgement of his nearing death for "renal disease." For reading, he recommended David Corn's American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy (2022) and Matt Dallek's BIRCHERS: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right (2023).[4]
Ernie Lazar died from kidney disease at his home in Palm Springs, California, on November 1, 2022. He was 77, and had no immediate family.[1] [2]
Before his death, Lazar estimated that more than 3 million people worldwide had mined his various online archives.[1]
"'Over the past 30 years, literally no one has made greater use of the Freedom of Information Act than Ernie Lazar,' David J. Garrow, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and historian, said."[1]
"To a generation of authors, researchers, academics and others, Mr. Lazar was a figure of heroic proportions. Through sheer perseverance and patience, Mr. Lazar became a kind of Zen master of the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, a provision enacted in 1967 that allowed the public a centralized way to request unclassified government material."[2]
Books citing Lazar as a source include:
In his 2016 book John Birch: A Life, author Terry Lautz wrote, "Ernie Lazar introduced me to important documents on the John Birch Society... Ernie Lazar has obtained and posted hundreds of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) documents on the JBS (including many newspaper articles) through the Freedom of Information Act."[6]