CIA Releases Controversial Bay of Pigs History

"The CIA today released the long-contested Volume V of its official history of the Bay of Pigs invasion, which it had successfully concealed until now by claiming that it was a “draft” and could be withheld from the public under the FOIA’s "deliberative process" privilege. The National Security Archive fought the agency for years in court to release the historically significant volume, only to have the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2014 uphold the CIA’s overly-broad interpretation of the "deliberative process" privilege. Special credit for today’s release goes to the champions of the 2016 FOIA amendments, which set a 25-year sunset for the exemption:  Senators John Cornyn, Patrick Leahy, and Chuck Grassley, and Representatives Jason Chaffetz, Elijah Cummings, and Darrell Issa.

Chief CIA Historian David Robarge states in the cover letter announcing the document’s release that the agency is “releasing this draft volume today because recent 2016 changes in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires us to release some drafts that are responsive to FOIA requests if they are more than 25 years old.” This improvement – codified by the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 – came directly from the National Security Archive’s years of litigation..."

Bay of Pigs

Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room

"The declassified President’s Daily Briefs (PDBs) from the Nixon and Ford presidential administrations in this collection include about 2,500 documents and 28,000 pages. As part of this release, CIA held a symposium, "The President's Daily Brief: Delivering Intelligence to Nixon and Ford, " at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, CA on 24 August 2016. The PDBs contain the highest level of intelligence on the president’s key national security issues and concerns. These documents were the primary vehicle for summarizing the day-to-day sensitive intelligence and analysis, as well as late-breaking reports, for the White House. As part of this declassification effort, the President’s Intelligence Checklists (or PICLs, pronounced “pickles”) and PDBs delivered to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson – some 2,500 documents and 19,000 pages – were released for the first time on 16 September 2015. The two collections show that the product was tailored – both in content and format – to the requirements of each president. President Richard Nixon, as a once practicing attorney, preferred to review the PDBs on longer legal size paper, and this format was carried into the Ford administration. Both collections were assembled as part of the CIA’s Historical Review Program, which identifies, reviews, and declassifies documents on historically significant events or topics..."
CIA's Freedom of Information

The World Factbook: 2016

"he World Factbook provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities. Our Reference tab includes: maps of the major world regions, as well as Flags of the World, a Physical Map of the World, a Political Map of the World, a World Oceans map, and a Standard Time Zones of the World map..."
World Factbook

CIA Releases Declassified Documents to National Archives

"Today, CIA released about 750,000 pages of declassified intelligence papers, records, research files and other content which are now accessible through CIA’s Records Search Tool (CREST) at the National Archives in College Park, MD. This release will include nearly 100,000 pages of analytic intelligence publication files, and about 20,000 pages of research and development files from CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, among others.

The newly available documents are being released in partnership with the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) and are available by accessing CREST at the National Archives. This release continues CIA’s efforts to systematically review and release documents under Executive Order 13526. With this release, the CIA collection of records on the CREST system increases to nearly 13 million declassified pages..."

CIA declassified documents

Declassified Documents Related to 9/11 Attacks

"Today, CIA has released to the public declassified versions of five internal documents related to the Agency’s performance in the lead-up to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The documents can be found at CIA’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) online reading room at http://www.foia.cia.gov/collection/declassified-documents-related-911-attacks.

The first of these documents is a redacted version of the 2005 CIA Office of Inspector General (OIG) Report on Central Intelligence Agency Accountability Regarding Findings and Conclusions of the Report of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001. In 2005, then-CIA Director Porter Goss issued a public statement on the OIG report. In 2007, CIA publicly released a redacted executive summary of the report along with a statement from then-Director Michael Hayden. In response to FOIA requests for the full 2005 OIG report, CIA and other agencies conducted an extensive review of the nearly 500-page document in order to release information that no longer needed to be protected in the interests of national security...:

911 attacks

Style Manual & Writers Guide for Intelligence Publlications

Find the 8th edition of the CIA's Style Manual for Intelligence publications.

CIA Style Manual

World Factbook

"The World Factbook provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities.."
World Factbook

CIA.gov Launches Mobile Site

"In response to the growing use of mobile devices, the Central Intelligence Agency has launched a new mobile site (https://www.CIA.gov/mobile).
Readers can now access mobile-friendly versions of CIA.gov materials on their small screens:

• About CIA: Quick facts about our leadership, mission, and history.
• CIA Museum: Artifacts and stories from the CIA Museum, whose brick-and-mortar location is closed to the public.
• Press Releases and Statements: Browse back to 2010.
• Careers: Find out why CIA is an employer of choice.
• Offices of CIA: Overviews of our organization and what we do.
• Contact CIA.."

Top Secret CIA Documents on Osama bin Laden Declassified

"The National Security Archive today is posting over 100 recently released CIA documents relating to September 11, Osama bin Laden, and U.S. counterterrorism operations.  The newly-declassified records, which the Archive obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, are referred to in footnotes to the 9/11 Commission Report and present an unprecedented public resource for information about September 11..."

World Factbook, 2012

Providing information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities, the World Factbook
now allows users to listen to the national anthems of individual countries.

The World Factbook Is Changing

"With unrest sweeping the Middle East and economic problems in Europe, The World Factbook is trying to help readers identify the factors that may underlie these social, political, and economic changes. Accordingly, the Factbook is adding new categories of societal data, which—along with other demographic and economic entries—offer additional insight into a country’s economic strength, internal stability, and impact on the environment. After a comprehensive search for datasets that are current and regularly updated, nine new fields have been added, with the World Health Organization and the World Bank providing most of the information..."

Central Intelligence Agency Freedom of Information Act Annual Report, 2009
Provides information on how to request information from the CIA via the Freedom of Information Act.

CIA Opens Center on Climate Change and National Security
"he Central Intelligence Agency is launching The Center on Climate Change and National Security as the focal point for its work on the subject. The Center is a small unit led by senior specialists from the Directorate of Intelligence and the Directorate of Science and Technology.

Its charter is not the science of climate change, but the national security impact of phenomena such as desertification, rising sea levels, population shifts, and heightened competition for natural resources. The Center will provide support to American policymakers as they negotiate, implement, and verify international agreements on environmental issues. That is something the CIA has done for years. “Decision makers need information and analysis on the effects climate change can have on security. The CIA is well positioned to deliver that intelligence,” said Director Leon Panetta.

The Center will assume responsibility for coordinating with Intelligence Community partners on the review and declassification of imagery and other data that could be of use to scientists in their own climate-related research. This effort draws on imagery and other information that is collected in any event, assisting the US scientific community without a large commitment of resources..."

CIA Inspector General Report Exposes Torture as U.S. Policy What were they hiding?A side-by-side comparison of the Bush and Obama versions of the CIA Inspector General report
"Today, the National Security Archive posted a side-by-side comparison of two very different versions of a 2004 report on the CIA's "Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities" by Agency Inspector General John Helgerson. Yesterday, the Obama administration released new portions of the report including considerably more information about the use of torture and other illegal practices by CIA interrogators than a version of the report declassified by the Bush administration in 2008. The report was first posted on the Web yesterday by the Washington Independent.

New revelations include:

Details on a number of “specific unauthorized or undocumented torture techniques” not mentioned in the 2008 release, including the use of guns, drills, threats, smoke, extreme cold, stress positions, “stiff brush and shackles,” mock executions and “hard takedown.” The Bush administration censured almost all portions of the document pertaining to specific torture techniques, save for a few references to waterboarding that omitted nearly all other contextual information.

A look at the legal reasoning behind the Agency’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” and the development of Agency guidance on capture, detention and interrogation.
A brief discussion of the history of CIA interrogation, including the "resurgence of interest in teaching interrogation techniques" in the early 1980s "as one of several methods to foster foreign liaison relationships."

The conclusion that, while CIA interrogations had produced useful intelligence, the “effectiveness of particular interrogation techniques in eliciting information that might not otherwise have been obtained” is not “so easily measured.”.."

Special Review: Counterterrorism Terrorism and Interrogation Activities, September 2001 - October 2003

Creating Global Intelligence
"Discover the back story of the US intelligence community by exploring "Creating Global Intelligence: The Creation of the US Intelligence Community and Lessons for the 21st Century", a collection of declassified documents from the late 1940s to the early 1950s that ultimately led to the establishment of the CIA. This 800+ collection allows history to come to life as well as giving perspectives on the complex issues that senior US Government officials grappled with when considering how to establish an enduring national intelligence capability..."

25-Year Program Archive Search
"CIA has maintained a program operating out of the CIA Declassification Center to review records under the purview of EO 12958, as amended, before they reach their automatic declassification deadline. CIA has deployed an electronic full-text searchable system it has named CREST (the CIA Records Search Tool), which has been operational since 2000 and is located at NARA II in College Park Maryland. The CREST system is the publicly-accessible repository of the subset of CIA records reviewed under the 25-year program in electronic format (manually reviewed and released records are accessioned directly into the National Archives in their original format). Over 10 million pages have been released in electronic format and reside on the CREST database, from which researchers have printed almost a million pages. To use CREST, a researcher must physically be present at the National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Recognizing this presents an obstacle to many researchers, we have been investigating ways to improve researcher knowledge of and access to CREST documents.

On this Agency site, researchers can now use an on-line CREST Finding Aid to research the availability of CIA documents declassified and loaded onto CREST through 2008. Data for the remaining years up to the present (CREST deliveries have been ongoing) will be placed on this site at later dates.

As indicated in the "25-Year Released Documents Search" page below, researchers can search by the title and date, or date span, of documents."

Vietnam Histories(CIA)
"This release consists of six declassified histories volumes and describes the CIA's role in Indochina during the Vietnam War. These histories written by Thomas L. Ahern, Jr., are based on extensive research in CIA records and on oral history interviews of participants. The release totals some 1,600 pages and represents the largest amount of Vietnam-era CIA documents yet declassified."