![](\"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Screen-Shot-2017-01-19-at-9.20.28-AM.png\")
<\/a>Right, the C.I.A.\u2019s declassified records database, and left, the four computers from which the public could previously gain access to it. Credit Mike Best<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n
By DANIEL VICTOR<\/span> and\u00a0<\/span>ERIN McCANN A magician walks into a laboratory.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not the beginning of a joke. It\u2019s the subject of a declassified 1969 Central Intelligence Agency memo<\/a>, one of more than 930,000 searchable documents<\/a> that the agency posted online on Tuesday.<\/p>\n The memo about the magician was among the more unusual files in the trove of declassified reports, which include more than 12 million pages of dispatches and correspondence that document the history of the C.I.A.<\/a><\/p>\n If you wanted, you could read up on the United States government\u2019s research on \u201cspiritualist healers<\/a> in Mexico,\u201d the \u201cdreamlike structure of telepathic assertions<\/a>\u201d or \u201can assessment of the evidence for psychic functioning<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Or you could examine the agency\u2019s actions and research during the Vietnam and Korean Wars. Maybe you would prefer to read through the files of Henry A. Kissinger<\/a>, who was secretary of state under Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, or a description of the Berlin Tunnel<\/a>, a wiretapping effort to monitor the Soviet Union during the Cold War. You can look through intelligence reports on specific countries or events, find recipes for invisible ink<\/a> or learn how to open sealed letters<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt gives insight into a lot of different elements of our history since the 1940s,\u201d said Mike Best, a journalist and archivist who pushed for the online publication of the files.<\/p>\n Technically, you could have gained access to the files before, but only if you drove to the National Archives building in College Park, Md., where there were four computers you could use to sift through the C.I.A. Records Search Tool, known as Crest. You couldn\u2019t email or otherwise electronically transmit files to yourself, but you could print them out on the C.I.A.\u2019s dime (as long as the paper and ink hadn\u2019t run out).<\/p>\n \u201cAccess to this historically significant collection is no longer limited by geography,\u201d Joseph Lambert, the C.I.A. director of information management, said in a statement. \u201cThe American public can access these documents from the comfort of their homes.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Best would often drive 90 minutes from southeast Pennsylvania to examine the documents. Nearby signs instruct users that their searches and printed files are being monitored, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re under surveillance for doing this entirely legal thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The publication of the files represents a potential motherlode of background material for researchers, journalists and curious hobbyists. While many such people have already combed through the material in Maryland, the online publication will allow for access among people who can\u2019t drive there.<\/p>\n But, to be clear, most of the files are pretty boring.<\/p>\n The collection appears to be the result of regular bureaucratic collation: Someone sends something interesting to the agency (the magician, who someone claimed was a miracle-working healer), or someone writes an interesting academic paper (the spiritualist healers), and the result is files like these, summaries of work that the agency thought notable enough to file away.<\/p>\n Others have no apparent reason for having been collected by the C.I.A., like a single-page ad for the Buffalo Bill Wax Museum<\/a>. (Maybe it\u2019s a code, the key to which remains classified.)<\/p>\n The Crest archive represents a major document dump, but the C.I.A. has published many other declassified files<\/a> online. Its files are typically unclassified after 25 years.<\/p>\n For those who believe the truth is out there, the website has a collection of reports<\/a> on unidentified flying objects, and capitalized on interest in last year\u2019s \u201cX-Files\u201d reboot<\/a> by posting the \u201ctop five documents<\/a> Mulder would love to get his hands on.\u201d<\/p>\n After journalists at MuckRock<\/a>, a news site, filed Freedom of Information Act requests for access to the Crest database, the C.I.A. said in 2015 that it would take 28 years to publish. In 2015, the agency cut its estimate to six years<\/a>, and said the documents would be delivered on 1,200 compact discs at the price of $108,000.<\/p>\n
\nThe New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n