The Blue Ink On February 24, 1986, a civil servant named David Willetts sent Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher a memo pressing the case for urgent public action on AIDS. The document survives at the National Archives under catalogue reference PREM 19/1863. In the margin, in blue felt-tip pen, Thatcher objected to the phrase “risky sex,” … Read more
A government letter that describes a man and his partners as swindlers who “never dropped a victim until the victim was completely stripped” does not usually end with a recommendation for full presidential clemency. This one does, and the same eleven pages carry both statements. The Paper Itself The record here is a letter of … Read more
In 1962, the CIA broke into the old French Embassy in Washington, D.C. and removed documents as part of a counterintelligence operation. President Kennedy was told about it. So was his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. According to two FBI reports declassified in full on March 28, 2025, Robert Kennedy’s response, once briefed, was that … Read more
A spacecraft landed on the Moon in February 1966, survived the landing, and sent back pictures of the ground underneath it. Months later, an American intelligence office produced a short technical report about the camera that had taken those pictures. It is a document about a camera, measured from the outside, by analysts who never … Read more
A Placeholder Title in an Official File One document in the tranche of nuclear test veteran records now reaching the National Archives carries the catalog title “qwertyuiop.” That isn’t a code name. It’s what a keyboard produces when someone runs a hand along the top row instead of typing an actual description, and nobody goes … Read more
The Small Group A Pentagon spokesperson’s ordinary job is to manage how information reaches the public, not to decide what an intelligence office is allowed to investigate. A set of internal emails, released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the law that lets the public compel disclosure of federal records, shows Susan Gough doing … Read more
Two Filings, One Year Two sets of documents describe the same year from opposite directions. One set is public: comment letters filed with the Environmental Protection Agency, carrying the letterhead of trade associations, arguing that the agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program should not be repealed. The other set surfaced through a Freedom of Information Act … Read more
Two people asked the same Marine Corps office for records about the same ship, and they got two different answers, weeks apart, in 2022. One was told there was nothing to find. The other was handed a redacted slide deck. Both files are now public. Neither one explains why the office answered the way it … Read more
Two versions of the same year Roy Sawh wrote down what he wanted to say, then went out to Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park and, according to the men watching him, said something else. Both versions survive, filed together, at The National Archives. The reference is CRIM 1/4777, part of the Central Criminal Court’s records, … Read more
A Question With a Yes or No Answer Some Freedom of Information requests ask for a document. Request CAS-318518, filed with The National Archives at Kew, asked something narrower: a yes or no. Had any part of the parchment roll catalogued as C 53/102 ever been cut, trimmed, or excised? Did any conservation record or … Read more
