Some of our readers might be thinking: What kind of title is that? But rest assured, there is a reason behind that madness, and it's the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. Researchers and enthusiasts will have their hands full for years thanks to the release of some 12 million pages of content previously classified by the CIA. What's in those documents? UFO sightings, telepathy, MKUltra, war crimes, assassination attempts... where do we start?
It might be a good time to say Agent Mulder was right, but some expressions fall by the wayside when reality surpasses fiction. The CIA's methods, techniques, strategies, influences, actions, and effects spawned thousands of theories and conspiracies during its 69 years of existence. Men in black in the desert, flying saucers, mind control, experiments with drugs, special weapons, executions, funding of satellite states... everything the CIA deemed worthy of hiding from the public ended up with a huge "Classified" stamp and stored in a dark corner. But the 21st century moves to different rules, and requests for access to information generate much more pressure than before.
The CREST Database and Its Limitations
That led the CIA to release between 12 and 13 million previously classified pages for later publication on the web. It all began in 2000 with the creation of a database (under an order from Bill Clinton's government in 1995) called CREST, which only allowed searching the titles of documents, and anyone wishing to see the full content had to travel to Maryland to request access to one of the only four computers available. In addition to the brutal bureaucratic process, authorization also had a daily time limit, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
The Fight for Access
Faced with these obstacles, the non-profit journalism group MuckRock sued the CIA under the parameters of FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), but the agency said the full content of CREST could only be delivered in six years and 1,200 compact discs, as long as a payment of almost $110,000 was made to cover expenses. To this we must add the Kickstarter of journalist Michael Best, whose goal was to print the documents one by one.
With the possibility of being forced to absorb the costs of ink and paper, the CIA had an additional incentive to put all the material online. The agency confirmed that decision in November 2016, and even though it seems unbelievable, it kept its word. In short: there are half a century of declassified files waiting to be studied.
The JFK Files
Now, not all of them were subjected to that process, and technically FOIA allows the concept of retroactive classification (I don't know how well that would work with online files), but there is something much more interesting on the horizon: if health and time allow, this coming October we will see the release of files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
(Editor's note: As expected, the CREST search engine works erratically.)
