Three Cases, One File, Four PDFs Asking The National Archives a question about a closed file generates paperwork. Asking about that paperwork generates more. By the time a third Freedom of Information request had run its course, the published record of how one Metropolitan Police file was handled had grown into four PDFs, three case … Read more
A 177-Page Document and a 54-Year Gap The file is a contractor report, completed February 1, 1967, 177 pages long. Bellcomm, Inc. produced it under contract NASw-417 for NASA’s Manned Space Flight program. Its report number is TR-67-600-1-1, cross-referenced in the NASA Technical Reports Server as NASA-CR-114025. Five Bellcomm engineers are named as authors: M. … Read more
A Formal Answer, Two Years in the Making On February 6, 2025, AARO (the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the Pentagon body responsible for investigating unidentified aerial and other phenomena) published a written technical analysis of the “Go Fast” footage. The document was unclassified. An updated version appeared on February 20, 2025. No case number appears … Read more
Three Hundred and Thirty-One Pages, Canceled The Joint Staff published Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Manual 3500.08, formally titled the “Joint Psychological Operations Task Force Headquarters Master Training Guide,” on May 26, 1999. Its purpose, as described by the requester who eventually obtained the full version, was to assist leaders in training their … Read more
What Was Published, and by Whom The record in question is a photographic gallery. The U.S. Department of Defense produced the images; John Greenewald of The Black Vault, an independent archive researcher who has been compiling government-released material since founding the site in 1996, assembled them into a single accessible collection and published it on … Read more
Six Pages, One Reference Number The record consists of two attachments to a single final report, filed under case reference 2107-0022-AS. Attachment A is the System Review Report; Attachment B is the Letter of Comment. Together they constitute the CIA Office of Inspector General’s external peer review of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Office of Inspector … Read more
Ninety Pages, Three Exemptions, Four Years The audit was finalized on December 10, 2014. Carol N. German, Assistant Inspector General for Readiness and Cyber Operations, signed the transmittal memorandum on behalf of the Office of the Deputy Inspector General for Audit. The report runs to 90 pages and carries the designation DODIG-2015-046. Its full title, … Read more
Four Agencies, One Date, One Version Number The primary document is a joint advisory titled “New Sandworm malware Cyclops Blink replaces VPNFilter,” published as Version 1.0 on February 23, 2022. Four agencies co-authored it: the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and … Read more
Three pieces of paper in a single file Four men wrote a letter in October 1941 that bypassed every level of the institutional hierarchy inside a classified government establishment. The letter went straight to Winston Churchill. File HW 1/155, held at The National Archives, is what survives of what happened next. HW 1/155 contains three … Read more
What Arrived in the File The document carries no date of composition, no author’s name, and no case number. Its title is straightforward: “U.S.–Soviet Discussions, House of Scientists, Moscow December 28–30, 1967.” Its classification marking, at creation, was Confidential, the lowest of the three standard tiers of U.S. classified designation, routinely applied to procedural and … Read more