This article is part of a series called How to Human , interviews with memoirists that explore how we tackle lifes alarms, marvels and bombshells.

A few years ago, Nicholson Baker was doing research for his book about the destruction of newspapers by libraries in a library when he came upon a book about Americas use of biological weapons. The authors of the book spent years trying to prove that the United States had conducted biological warfare during the Korean War, including the dropping of insects tainted by disease. It was all horrifying stuff not taught in history class, and Baker was shocked.

How could it be that the United States was doing such terrible things? Its the question that drove him to research and write Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act , which comes out Tuesday.

Researching the book sent him into a warren of government tunnels in search of documents that proved America was guilty of developing and using biological weapons. He used the Freedom of Information Act to acquire such documents, but the government wasnt always compliant in getting them back to him. Indeed he received many pieces of paper with redacted words, sentences and paragraphs, sometimes in black rectangles, other times in white, depending on the government agencys preference. This led him to file more FOIA requests in which hed ask for the redacted words to be revealed.

He still has FOIAs out there waiting to be returned to him, and he could be waiting decades more. Since life moves a lot faster than the government, Baker found a way to tell the story now. He decided to keep a diary in which he could spend several weeks writing what he learned. Isnt that what historians do? They sit down to write what they know based off of the evidence they have on hand.

In the end, he is now on a quixotic mission, hoping the government will declassify everything older than 50 years old. He believes, If we could learn from our mistakes and our successes, then I think we can maybe move forward about things that are happening right now.

HuiffPost spoke with Baker via a Google Hangout and FaceTime earlier in July. This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.

Would you describe what FOIA is and how it came to be?

FOIA [pronounced FOY-a] stands for the Freedom of Information Act, and its a glorious law that took a long time to come into being. It was something dreamed up by congressman John Moss. He had this idea in the middle of the 1950s that there was too much that was happening in the federal government that was not knowable. You cant have consent of the governed unless the governed know whats actually happening.

He started this long process, and he had hearings, and he had resistance. The Justice Department didnt like the idea and the newspapers did like the idea. It took him 10 years, and finally in 1965 this act came in. It said that anybody can ask to see anything; they have to put it in writing, and then in 20 days, that particular agency has to give some kind of response.

It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and he did not want to sign it, but it had to be signed. It had some ups and downs; there was a moment where it was very powerful, where suddenly it dislodged a lot of things that had happened in the 50s. Suddenly people thought, Oh my God, you did that? Then the Reagan administration changed the rules radically, and said that the CIAs operational files this was specifically about the CIA were going to be off limits. That meant basically all the stuff that is actually interesting that the CIA does, you werent going to be able to learn anything about it. Operations just means secret, sneaky, clandestine things that people do in other countries, that kind of thing.

Theres been ups and downs over the years, and gradually its gotten harder and harder to get things from federal agencies. Basically whats happened is that government agencies want to shield themselves from scrutiny.

I fully understand that, they want some privacy to do whatever they want to do. What is driving this book is that they want to keep private, keep secret stuff that happened 60 or 70 years ago, so long ago that its of historical interest and importance, but cannot possibly affect national security.