
13M Pages of Declassified CIA Documents Posted Online - happy-go-lucky
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/13-million-pages-of-declassified-cia-documents-crest-archive-were-just-posted-online
======
JorgeGT
Tip: use the codeword "keyhole" to browse interesting satellite reconnaissance
photos: [https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-
RDP78B04560...](https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-
RDP78B04560A002000010029-2.pdf)

~~~
lallysingh
Ref:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyhole,_Inc](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyhole,_Inc)
and
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(satellite)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_\(satellite\))

------
mack73
The redacted parts in the documents have codes, e.g.:

(b)(1) (b)(3) NatSecAct

What are those codes refering to?

Are only names redacted?

For you who have trouble searching, here's a document I just stumbled on while
browsing through the content:
[https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/0006541525.pdf](https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/0006541525.pdf)

It is about interrogation techniques used by USA (power drills were
mentioned). Scary stuff.

I wonder, if you train a machine with content from major (all?) news sites,
could it then, in theory, predict what was redacted to some degree?

I have an itch to scrape this content. Maybe I shouldn't.

~~~
andrefrancisco
They are codes for FOIA exemptions.
[http://www.foiadvocates.com/exemptions.html](http://www.foiadvocates.com/exemptions.html)

------
SeaDude
Interesting searches of the cache include "LSD", "hacker", "Martin Luther
King", and "psilocybin". After those searches, the resource was suddenly
unavailable.

~~~
throwanem
It's federal IT. I'm going to guess overload due to extremely resource-
inefficient implementation before I guess "uh oh, somebody's curious about
MKULTRA, better pull the search".

------
hackuser
I hope someone downloads the contents quickly, before another administration
takes it offline or 'reclassifies' the information.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
I wonder if that's actually the motivation behind opening it up now rather
than weeks or months from now. There are apparently efforts underway at other
federal and federally-funded bodies (e.g. EPA, NOAA, NASA, some federally-
funded college departments) to get backups of raw data into safe places in
case Congress or the Trump administration orders it taken offline or even
deleted [1].

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-
environment/wp/20...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-
environment/wp/2016/12/13/scientists-are-frantically-copying-u-s-climate-data-
fearing-it-might-vanish-under-trump/)

~~~
leereeves
Funny that they only worry about that now that Republicans are taking over.

Reportedly, Obama ordered just such a deletion of records.

[http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-
security/268...](http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-
security/268282-dhs-ordered-me-to-scrub-records-of-muslims-with-terror)

~~~
knz
Is there anything in this article that actually links the deletion to
President Obama or explains why the deletion was ordered? Or even any evidence
that this happened?

Edit to be clear: I'm not implying the Obama administration did not do things
like this but this read more like an anecdote by someone with political
leanings. We also have no information about why they were deleted or modified
and don't know if the author had access to the full picture. Perhaps they were
merged with another record, therefore improving the "haystack" etc.

~~~
leereeves
The author made that connection: _" the Obama administration was ordering they
be wiped away."_

I haven't seen any followup on this story. Liberal media seems to have ignored
it entirely, conservative media reports it without further details.

The author, Philip Haney, has been a vocal critic, appearing on Fox and
writing numerous articles, so there's been ample opportunity for the Obama
administration to respond if there was indeed an explanation such as you
suggest, but I haven't seen any response.

~~~
wavefunction
I'm sure the Obama administration is just far too busy with finally getting
around to the FEMA camps and gun confiscation to answer every little
conservative conspiracy claim.

~~~
mistermann
Maybe he's too busy closing down Gitmo right?

~~~
1024core
You can't say he didn't try. But the Republican response was so over the top,
portraying the prisoners as some sort of supervillains with superpowers, that
it never happened. I don't know why the Republicans are so scared of these
prisoners.

~~~
leereeves
And sharing NSA data (obtained without a warrant) with the Justice Department?

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/obama-expands-
surveill...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/obama-expands-surveillance-
powers-his-way-out)

Can't blame that one on Republicans.

~~~
willstrafach
If you are actually interested in getting an understanding of what happened,
you may want to read the declassified source document instead of reading the
EFF's take on an incorrect portion of the NYT article.

~~~
leereeves
Or you could share what you know that you think the NYT writer did not.

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ChuckMcM
Well sort of:

    
    
       CIA.gov is Temporarily Unavailable
    
       CIA.gov is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the
       inconvenience. Please try again later.
    
       Posted: Aug 27, 2012 04:31 PM
       Last Updated: Aug 27, 2012 04:31 PM
    

That was the result of my search 'Nicaraguan contra'

~~~
retSava
Considering they went from about four computers accessing the db, to the
Internet, I'm leaning more towards the reddit/HN/whatever-effect :)

Here's to hoping the "someone who got called in to fix it" makes a tremendous
work in scaling it.

~~~
throwanem
Federal IT. Betting it's chock-full of easy wins for a savvy dev, and those do
tend to turn up with a GS number from time to time. They rarely seem to stick,
though, which I gather is part of what 18F is trying in a small way to change.

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elastic_church
They should put it in a torrent

~~~
yq
Since the landing page required everyone interested to enter a keyword to
search, the back-end server can record all query and ip-addrs.

I doubt if WikiLeaks.org use this exact same method to study what document
attract traffic|attention. WikiLeaks' new releases are not signed by PGP
anymore, I take that as either a Warrant Canary or some kinds of warning.

Of course, if everything packed in a torrent, then there's no way to conduct
such a study.

~~~
gruez
You can iterate through all the documents by going to
[https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/search/site](https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/search/site),
going through each year, and within each year, going through all the result
pages.

------
pizza
link:
[https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/collection/crest-25-...](https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/collection/crest-25-year-
program-archive)

Search function not working - redirected url is
"[https://www.cia.gov/$(SERVE_NS_)/library/readingroom/collect...](https://www.cia.gov/$\(SERVE_NS_\)/library/readingroom/collection/crest-25-year-
program-archive") ?

------
bootload
CREST has been available to the public for a while now, though not online.
ODCI/DI would be interesting to look into but I won't hold my breath finding
anything outlining the bastardly of the early 60s. [0]

First terms I looked up, "Budget Hawkeye" for 1963-64. Found some details,
hard numbers were redacted. NPIC ^grew^ a lot post '63 judging by the budget
requests. Lots of files referencing "Brass Knob" in '63 (daily Cuban flyover).
The other interesting details were NPIC monthly memos detailing the daily
operations.

Some interesting finds

\- David A. Phillips ('81)
[https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-
rdp90-0...](https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-
rdp90-00845r000201240009-0)

\- Howard E. Hunt ('85) [https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-
rdp90-0...](https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-
rdp90-00845r000201240009-0)

\- Jim Garrison ('67) [https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-
rdp90-0...](https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-
rdp90-00965r000402730006-3)

\- Film 'Executive Action' ('73)
[https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-
rdp88-0...](https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-
rdp88-01365r000300070003-7)

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12324273](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12324273)

[1] [https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-
rdp76-0...](https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-
rdp76-00183r000400030140-4)

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lostboys67
The declassified studies in indigence are an interesting read - I remember one
where they documented some of the kooks that wrote to the DCI.

------
BuuQu9hu
The printing hack was pretty nice :)

