The coffin kerfuffle wasn’t the first time he kicked up a little dust. The author of “50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know” and the forthcoming “The Disinformation Book of Lists” (both published by The Disinformation Company) found himself on the front page of The New York Times last year when he digitally uncensored a heavily redacted Justice Department report on workplace diversity efforts. Then he obtained and posted more than 2,000 pages of 9/11 transcripts containing phone and radio communications at the World Trade Center and LaGuardia Airport as well as personal accounts of police officers who responded on the day of the attacks. And earlier this week Kick, 34, published screen captures from video footage documenting abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military personnel.

Kick, who says his Web site is currently receiving up to 5 million hits a day, has also started a blog as part of his crusade to uncover and release information that has been suppressed, distorted, brushed aside or quietly forgotten. He recently spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Brian Braiker on the phone from his home in Tucson, Ariz., about the joys of FOIA and the decline of investigative journalism. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: So who are you anyway?

Russ Kick: I’m a full-time writer and editor. I have eight books published.

How has the response been to your new blog?

It’s become one of the most popular parts of the site, based on the statistics. I think people are using it, not quite as much as the home page, because whenever I put anything up on the main site, I also put a notice of it up on the blog. It’s pretty much all you need to do–tune into the blog part to be caught up.

You have asked insiders, whistleblowers and journalists to send you juicy information. Have you gotten a lot of response to that?

I’ve gotten maybe a handful of things, but none of them are really looking very promising at this point.

Do you have another FOIA out there that you’re waiting for?

Oh, yeah, just dozens of them.

Without spoiling your own scoop, can you tell us what they are?

I’m trying to track down and get released the footage of [American Airlines] Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon, because we know that there’s actually several pieces of footage that show this. They’re either in the possession of the Pentagon or the FBI, and I’ve been trying to get those released with no luck. I keep getting the runaround.

Do you feel like you might be getting more resistance now that you’ve gained some notoriety from these FOIA requests? Is it harder to get information now that people know who you are and what you’re going to do with it?

It’s too early to tell. Today makes it two weeks since the whole thing exploded. It’s really too early to tell if that affected one way or another the kind of response that I’m going to get.

You’re not a journalist, yet you beat everyone to it. Is the media lazy in situations like this?

A lot of it is laziness. And also I guess part of it is the media is so deadline driven. FOIA takes a long time–it can easily takes months to get a response, sometimes years. It doesn’t really fit in with the overall trying-to-get-a-new-scoop-every-day-24/7-news-cycle now. The media definitely does not use FOIA as much as it should. Right before all this happened I was reading a survey that had been done a couple years ago about who uses FOIA, who files the most requests. It’s mostly lawyers in litigation and corporations who are checking up on their competition. Just [around] 10 percent of FOIA requests come from the media. It’s a really great tool. It’s obviously not perfect by any means. It should be used a lot more than it is.

What else have you received through FOIA that you are particularly proud of or that really accomplished something?

There was the Port Authority [of New York and New Jersey] transcript from 9/11. What had happened, of course, was that The New York Times sued over those and got them released. But then the Port Authority was refusing to send them to me even though they had been released–they only sent them to a few of the biggest media, who of course only ran tiny snippets. There was over 2,000 pages of material. So I wanted to put the whole thing up there. First I called the Port Authority and they said that they’re screening who they send it to, [that] I would probably have to get it from a media outlet that already has a copy. I formally invoked their freedom of information policy–they’re not subject to FOIA but they do have their own policy which is based on it–and was able to get all the transcripts and post them. That’s been one of the most popular posts of this site.

Have you gotten any negative feedback, complaints or even any threats?

Well as far as the coffins go, that’s what I got the overwhelming amount of mail about. That was pretty much 50/50. Half the people were just so happy that I did this and thought it was a great thing and were thanking me. The other half were furious with me, just calling me names that you couldn’t print. I mean, foaming-at-the-mouth furious about this.

Why did you release the coffin photos? Is it about getting as much information as possible out there? Do you have a political agenda?

It was really just an anti-government-secrecy statement. I read in October that the Pentagon had put out a new directive absolutely forbidding the release of these photos. The policy had technically been in place since ‘91, but it hadn’t really been enforced regularly. In March of last year when the Iraq war started, that’s when this new directive came out that these pictures were not to go out to the public or the press. Also the press was not to come in and take their own pictures. That came out in March, and it got reported on in October. When I saw that I immediately filed a request for it as a reflex action. That’s just what I do now.

How many have you filed over time?

Over 200 since I started the Memory Hole [in 2002]. Any time I see in the news that the government is refusing to release something–usually it’s a report or something along those lines–I automatically file a FOIA request for it.

So do you have a template on your computer and you fill in the blanks for the agency and the study or report or whatever it is you want?

Mm-hmm.

I love the picture you have of Henry Kissinger picking his nose. Where did you get that? [Laughs.] That had been taken by a news agency I think in Brazil at some international conference. It’s been published in a few places. The particular one I got was from “Washington Babylon,” one of Alexander Cockburn’s books [co-written with Ken Silverstein].

Serious investigative journalism is believed by many watchers to have been in decline over the past 20 or 30 years. Do you see yourself as filling that void?

I think investigative journalism has become a lot rarer because it takes time and it takes a lot of resources and it’s just harder to do. It’s a lot easier to do these quick easy stories. So, yeah, I do regret the decline of investigative journalism, and I hope what I’m doing can help with that.

So would you join a mainstream news outlet as an investigative journalist if given the opportunity?

No. I like remaining independent.