I'm gonna help ToadyOne while he sleeps by trying to answer a couple of your questions based on my own experiences with the game and all I've read yesterday in this forum:
I think that getting well-known, and in high regard, by 100% of the population is one of the steps needed to win the game. You also have to raise public opinion to 100% on all of the issues too, I think. As for police raids, you can try to make them less often by staying as legal as you can, but sooner or later you'll have to make some illegal actions and changing hideouts becomes another way to avoid raids.
To publish documents you've found, simply buy a printing press in one of your locations (browse between your locations by pressing z on the main screen, and then press I to invest in this location (not available for the homeless shelter)). You can also pawn files to the pawn shop for some money (1000$ for regular files, 1500$ for CIA files), but I think selling these items increases the chance for a police raid.
You can find "important" people by walking by on locations where you have high-chances of meeting them: ie Latte Cafe, Corporate HQ, even sometimes the Internet Cafe, this kind of public places. Some people will be Corporate Manager, CEO's, Author, Anchorman, lawyers, judges, etc...
If you have some people that have been arrested and you go to free them (either in the Police Station, the Courthouse or the Prison, depending on where they are in the judiciary system), they will get back to your team. Freed people that are in good health will join your squad if there is room for them, or else they will simply join back the compound. If they were tortured or on hunger strike, then they will need someone to carry them in order to escape. So, if you have 4 arrested people, all tortured or on hunger strike, and your squad is only 2 people, you'll have to go there twice to free them all.
I agree with you that parts of a building that have been explored should remain so, but maybe the map could blur itself with time, so that you need to explore the building every now and then to keep the map fresh? This would cover the fact that some equipment/items could have been moved over time, but the building layout remains essentially the same.
I'd also love to be able to take a shot at the president, either in a setup à la JFK, or either by raiding the whitehouse. Raiding the whitehouse should be very difficult though, and needs a lot of firepower and preparation. It should be much harder than, say, powering off the nuclear station, for example.