The Associated Press reported today that a federal judge has ordered the FBI to pay a Bay Area journalist’s legal fees of $470,000 after a years-long legal battle for the release of agency documents.
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen ruled Wednesday that reporter Seth Rosenfeld was entitled to the fees because he had to file two lawsuits starting in 1990 for documents the FBI should have turned over when he filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

The FBI finally ultimately turned over the documents related to the FBI’s covert operations connection to the 1960s protest movement at the University of California, Berkeley.
Rosenfeld used the documents to publish numerous articles and a recent book, “Subversives.”
The award will be paid to the First Amendment Project of Oakland, a nonprofit law firm that represented Rosenfeld.