Voice of America Prepared Obituaries for Castro, Yeltsin, Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, Marion Barry & Others

Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Voice of America - the US government's news outlet to the rest of the world since 1942 - released its audio obituaries for two world leaders who aren't dead: Fidel Castro and Boris Yeltsin.

After receiving the cassettes, DC-area researcher Michael Ravnitzky asked for other advance obituaries, but VOA has refused to comply, saying that releasing their Castro and Yeltsin obits was a mistake. In fact, they will no longer send these two obituaries to requesters, a clear violation of FOIA law. However, they did provide a list of prominent figures for whom they've already written (and in some cases recorded) obituaries. Under FOIA in April 2000, the VOA released a list of other famous people for whom it had prepared obituaries in advance. (Note that in the intervening almost-five years, some of these figures have died.) Among many others on this are Louis Farrakhan, Marion Barry, Ron Dellums, Jesse Jackson, Kweisi Mfume and Ralph Nader.