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."
Background 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.
Career 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.
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. 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.
For his night job and over his lifetime, Lazar filed more than 9,000 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. He amassed a "600,000-page online and paper library — stored at his home and in a warehouse." 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.
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).
Death 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.
Legacy Before his death, Lazar estimated that more than 3 million people worldwide had mined his various online archives. He inspired many authors, researchers, academics and others to use the Freedom of Information Act as a way to gather material form government sources.
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."
References
External sources Ernie Lazar FBI files at Internet Archive Lazar FOIA collections at Archive.org: Ernie Lazar FOIA collection Ernie Lazar FOIA collection: general files A-Z Ernie Lazar FOIA collection: FBI files Guide to the Ernie Lazar FBI FOIA files on anti-communism and right wing movements TAM.576 (NYU Tamiment Library) Ernie Lazar FOIA collection (H-Net) Ernie's Lazar's extensive bibliography of academic theses and PhD dissertations on the American Right (Berkley Center for Right-Wing Studies)