Victory for transparency: CIA provides easy access to unclassified historical documents

In a significant step toward  transparency, the CIA posted over 12 million pages of unclassified documents on the internet. The documents are from the 1940s to the 1990s and include those concerning Nazi war crimes, mind-control experiments, the CIA’s role in overthrowing governments in Chile and Iran and publications such as Mother Jones that the CIA was monitoring. (BuzzFeed, January 17, 2017, by Jason Leopold)

The CIA had limited access to four computers in the National Archives between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. for “security reasons.” They recorded all visitors on surveillance cameras as a guard against who they claimed might use the information for evil purposes. MuckRock lawyer Kel McClanahan writes that it took a lawsuit and three years to debunk the CIA’s bogus claims and dismantle the roadblocks to convenient and expeditious access. (MuckRock, January 19, 2017, by Kel McClanahan)