From Bloomberg:
As I started each of my three books — about Lazard Freres, Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) — I submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the appropriate government agencies (the Securities Exchange Commission, the State Department and the Federal Reserve) to obtain whatever documents, memos and e-mails they had about these companies and their senior executives.
[…]
Sadly, getting this information in anything like a timely basis — say, before my books were finished and published — has been nearly impossible.