CIA Electronic Reading Room

August 8, 2005 12:10 AM

CIA Electronic Reading Room, thousands of formerly secret documents. A much better resource now that it was some time ago. This is straight via MoFi, but I found it so interesting I could not resist sharing it here as well for any researchers or people like me who are just curious (currently). Linked in a previous thread about something else but I think it deserved a mention of its own.
posted by keijo (8 comments total)

Fun link. Check out the top 25 FOIA search terms.
posted by Rothko at 12:21 AM on August 8, 2005

This leads to this which leads to bdsm-darmowe-zdje.cia which leads to this and this which really makes you wonder what the CIA is doing with a web server devoted to Communist Polish B&D/S&M pornography.
posted by nmiell at 12:47 AM on August 8, 2005

Search on "cocaine", click on "commitee on banking and financial services", find out that Arkansas isn't only the home of Bill Clinton and Walmart but also is home to massive international cocaine money laundering, WTF?
posted by 517 at 2:07 AM on August 8, 2005

thanks, keijo.
posted by amberglow at 6:54 AM on August 8, 2005

Seems like a nice collection of big black squares with a smattering of text here and there for flavour. Maybe what I saw was an exception? So, here is what I did:

I also checked the top 25 and selcted mind control (of course). One of the top articles is:

06/29/1961 -- SOUTH KOREA -- CURRENT INTELLIGENCE WEEKLY SUMMARY

Which is intriguing as I was expecting something more along the line of MK12 nazi LSD experiments. So I browse the article and then discover that there is really nothing to read, 3- 4 pages of black squares, and then a paragraph followed by more black squares.

They could hardly have been more forthcoming with their interface especially with the top search list but the actual info...they still seem a bit cagey about it. I think it won't be long before they realize that the service is being used by about 90% conspiracy theorists.

Still a brilliant link Rothko.
posted by randomnfactor at 9:21 AM on August 8, 2005

Fun link. Check out the top 25 FOIA search terms.


Now tell a story using those terms in that order.
posted by dreamsign at 11:10 AM on August 8, 2005

nmiell: No legitimate WHOIS that I can find knows anything about the .cia TLD, so I would assume it's just a propagation error from a misbehaving downstream DNS that Google somehow picked up. Note that not a single one of them resolves; half of them are inversions -- typos -- of legitimate CIA-related URLs.

That said, thanks! Polish girls are cute.
posted by dhartung at 9:56 PM on August 8, 2005

I think it won't be long before they realize that the service is being used by about 90% conspiracy theorists. - randomnfactor

I'm guessing they knew that'd be the case before they put it up. Maybe they were hoping to divert the theorists away from taking up as much of their time.
posted by raedyn at 9:30 AM on August 9, 2005