The Central Intelligence Agency published more than 12 million declassified documents online Tuesday after years of restricting access.
The documents, dated from the 1940s to 1990s, surround everything from the overthrow of foreign governments to the CIA’s mind-control efforts.
Originally declassified by former President Bill Clinton in 1995, the documents were only available after the year 2000 on computers hosted at the National Archives in Washington D.C.
Joseph Lambert, the CIA’s director of information management, told Buzzfeed’s Jason Leopold publication ensures the massive cache can be accessed by anyone “from the comfort of your own home.”
“We’ve been working on this for a very long time and this is one of the things I wanted to make sure got done before I left,” Lambert added.
In 2014 the CIA had originally told media outlet MuckRock, who filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in order to obtain access to the archive, that at least 6 years would be needed to release the entire database. In a court filing last November the CIA informed MuckRock it instead anticipated that only a year would be needed before the “database will be publicly available online.”
Some of the more eyebrow-raising documents, as noted by Leopold, include files on media outlets and the CIA’s “Star Gate” program.
“There are also secret documents about a telepathy and precognition program known as Star Gate, files the CIA kept on certain media publications, such as Mother Jones, photographs, more than 100,000 pages of internal intelligence bulletins, policy papers, and memos written by former CIA directors.”
Those interested can search the entire database at the CIA Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Electronic Reading Room.
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