Few things break a FOIA requester’s heart like tearing open an envelope from the CIA, seeing that they’ve released the document you requested, beginning to read it, and realizing that it’s been so heavily redacted that you can’t discern its content. This happened to me the other day. Today’s hot docs will show what I’m doing to remedy the situation.
Last year, I combed through Evan Thomas’s history of the CIA entitled The Very Best Men. It’s a pretty fluid and fun read, but what makes the book really interesting to historians is that the CIA granted Thomas limited but unprecedented access to its records while he was writing. I used the works he cited as leads to fire off some Mandatory Declassification Review requests to the CIA. (Click here to see when to use MDR and when to use FOIA.) Here’s one below:
