The CIA says the files cover CIA history, Cold War, Korean War and more
Published: Wed 18 Jan 2017, 9:54 AM
Updated: Wed 18 Jan 2017, 2:31 PM
After years of not heeding to the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requesters, the CIA has finally put out the largest collection of declassified records online. On CIA's website, approximately 930,000 documents, amounting to 12 million pages are available, dating back to the beginning of the Cold War.
With this release, the documents will not be bound by geographical boundaries and accessible globally.
The CIA tweeted further that the "Moving the CREST documents online highlights our commitment to increasing the accessibility of declassified records to the public. CREST collection covers myriad topics, such as early CIA #history, #ColdWar, #Vietnam, #BerlinTunnel project, #KoreanWar & the #U2"
Our repeated attempts to access the file failed as the CIA website seemed temporarily unavailable.
Prior to this release, the documents were available to the public on four computers at the National Archives in Maryland during the limited business hours. The CIA maintained the CIA Records Search Tool (CREST) at the National Archives, and it contained every historic record that was declassified, released after an executive order by Bill Clinton.
"We've been working on this for a very long time and this is one of the things I wanted to make sure got done before I left," the CIA's longtime director of information management, Joseph Lambert was quoted in an interview with BuzzFeed. Lambert will be retiring in a few months after 32 years of service.
Why did the CIA make the records online?
Muckrock, a nonprofit that helps people file Freedom of Information Act Requests, sued the CIA in June 2014, claiming that the CREST database, which was made public in 1995 by executive presidential order by the-then President Bill Clinton, was "technically public, but in practice largely inaccessible."
Following MuckRock's lawsuit, the CIA's previous estimate that claimed it would take almost 28 years to process and upload files was slashed to six years.
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