The Memory Hole Used FOIA to Publish Coffin Images the U.S. Government Kept Out of Public View

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The Memory Hole Used FOIA to Publish Coffin Images the U.S. Government Kept Out of Public View

The Memory Hole website; Russ Kick / 2000s

Russ Kick launched The Memory Hole on July 10, 2002, as an online archive for government files, corporate memoranda, court records, police reports, congressional testimony, photographs, and other material that was difficult to obtain or at risk of disappearing. The project framed information suppression through the Orwellian “memory hole,” focusing on records that institutions preferred the public not to see or remember.\n\nThe site’s most consequential publication was a collection of several hundred photographs showing coffins containing U.S. service members killed in Iraq. Kick obtained the images through a Freedom of Information Act request, turning a government-records disclosure into a national controversy over war imagery, public access, and the government’s handling of visual evidence of military casualties. The source does not establish that the images were unlawfully withheld or identify a specific official responsible, but it documents the political conflict surrounding their release. The Project on Government Oversight awarded the site its 2005 “Beyond the Headlines” Award. The original site was hacked in June 2009 and published its last post on May 11, 2009; Kick later launched The Memory Hole 2 on June 16, 2016, which remained active until January 17, 2018.