How, exactly, do you know that you are the "first and only"?
Brass Lamp:
Because on at least 4 separate occasions over the course of the past 30 years, I have asked the FBI to provide me with the names of all requesters who have made a request for either the HQ main file on the JBS (HQ 62-104401) or for FBI field office files on the JBS. I also asked for the date of such requests, and the number of pages released (if any).
FOIA statutes require agencies to notify requesters when the agency estimates that the total cost for responsive documents exceeds $25. Then the requester must explicitly agree to pay costs involved for making photocopies OR for copying documents onto CDROM’s.
100% of the individuals who made FOIA requests to the FBI for the HQ main file on the JBS, cancelled their request once they learned the estimated cost for 12,000+ pages, or they never responded to FBI correspondence asking that they guarantee to pay fees. Even the JBS itself had its request withdrawn once they learned about the total costs involved.
[Prior to about 4 years ago, the only option for requesters was to receive paper photocopies at 10 cents each page, so the total cost for the FBI’s HQ file on the JBS was about $1200. If a requester also wanted a sub-file which contained public source documents such as newspaper and magazine articles on the JBS) that added about $300 more.]
A handful of requesters narrowed the scope of their request to a few specific years, or, in some cases they only wanted one specific field office.
There are only four other persons (besides myself) who have received FBI documents on the JBS (HQ or field office documents).
The total pages released to each of those other persons, respectively, are shown below. Two requesters made separate requests and received documents on two different occasions. You may recognize their names because they subsequently wrote books which included chapters about the JBS (Lisa McGirr of Harvard University - and Jonathan Schoenwald of Princeton University).
Pages Released on JBS to other requesters:
131
134
664
683
1243
100
As a postscript to my previous reply to your question:
1. About two years ago, I submitted a new FOIA request to the FBI for their HQ file on the JBS so that I could obtain it on CDROM — which would then allow me to post it online as I have done with many other FBI files in my collection (posted on Internet Archive).
2. At that time, I was informed that the FBI had transferred their HQ file on the JBS to NARA. NARA (at that time) did not offer the option of receiving files on CD or DVD so I never pursued that further.
3. About 3 weeks ago, I contacted NARA just to see if their policy might have changed with respect to giving requesters the option of receiving files on CD or DVD. I referenced the file on the JBS as one I would be interested in getting. To my amazement, NARA stated that the FBI never sent them that specific file-—so I recently submitted another FOIA request to the FBI for their HQ file on the JBS. It will be interesting to discover if they made a mistake 2 years ago.
4. If the FBI does still have the FBI HQ file on the JBS, I will again ask that they provide the names of all previous requesters, dates when documents were released, and number of pages released.
5. Lastly, when I finally received all 60 sections of the HQ main file on the JBS (it took about 9 years in total for the FBI to process the entire file), I went thru it, page by page, and made very detailed notes. My notes total 118 pages of single-spaced text.
I am seriously considering creating a webpage so that I can post online all of those notes for interested researchers.