The Freedom of Information Act has been the most consequential legal tool in UAP research — responsible for virtually every major document release in the civilian record: (1) THE BLACK VAULT: John Greenewald Jr. has filed thousands of FOIA requests since the late 1990s. His CIA campaign took years — the agency eventually produced a CD-ROM claiming it represented their “entire” UAP collection. Greenewald purchased it in mid-2020 and spent months converting thousands of documents to searchable PDFs at theblackvault.com. The CIA made no voluntary disclosure — it took sustained legal pressure. (2) PROJECT CONDIGN (UK): Dr. David Clarke at Sheffield Hallam University filed UK FOIA requests that extracted the 460-page Secret “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defence Region” report in 2006 — a document that had been completed in 2000 and shown to “only a handful” of people. Without FOIA it would not have been released “for another 25 years, if ever.” (3) NSA: Released 239 UFO-related documents via FOIA — including signals intelligence documents with extensive redactions. (4) THE PATTERN: Agencies claim FOIA completeness, then more surfaces. The CIA claimed its CD-ROM was complete. The NSA claimed it had released all relevant documents. Greenewald has documented systematic underproduction across agencies. As NARA Record Group 615 rolls out under the 2024 NDAA, the same pattern will likely apply — publicly available records will represent a fraction of what actually exists in agency vaults.