Declassified Files.

What this pillar covers

Declassified files include a wide range of material: CIA experimental programs, FBI surveillance and disruption operations, NSA signals intelligence, foreign-policy coups and covert actions, atomic and biological human experimentation, and the steady drip of post-Cold-War releases through FOIA. The boundary is the document — if there's a primary record (memo, report, scanned page, sworn testimony), it lives here.

Several of the most-read cases in this pillar were denied by the responsible agency for decades before the documents emerged. MK-Ultra was officially denied until the Church Committee. Operation Northwoods was filed away for 35 years before James Bamford recovered it. The 1953 Iran coup was a conspiracy theory until 2013, when the CIA finally acknowledged its role. The pattern of "denial → partial admission → archival release" is so common in this pillar that we've treated it as the default research path.

Featured case

• File 001 · Open · Updated May 2026

  MK-Ultra: The CIA's Twenty-Year Mind-Control Program

  What the surviving documents prove, what was destroyed before disclosure, and what's still classified about the agency's experiments on civilians, soldiers, and prisoners from 1953 to 1973.

The catalogue

Cases planned for this pillar, organized by category. Files marked ✓ are published; the rest are in research or queued.

CIA programs and experiments

• ✓ MK-Ultra (1953–1973) — The umbrella program.
• Project ARTICHOKE (1951–1953) — MK-Ultra's direct predecessor.
• Project BLUEBIRD (1950–1951) — The first formally named CIA mind-control program.
• Project MKSEARCH (1964–1973) — MK-Ultra's smaller successor.
• Project MKNAOMI (1953–1970) — CIA-Army biological weapons stockpile.
• Operation Midnight Climax (1954–1965) — CIA safe-house LSD operation.
• Operation Mockingbird — Alleged media-influence program.
• Project Stargate (1978–1995) — Army/CIA remote-viewing program.
• Project Pandora (1965–1970) — Microwave effects research.
• The Phoenix Program (1965–1972) — CIA Vietnam counterinsurgency.
• Operation Mongoose (1961–1962) — Anti-Castro covert action.
• Operation 40 — Cuban exile assassination unit.
• Operation Ajax (1953) — CIA-MI6 coup against Iran's Mosaddegh. Acknowledged 2013.
• Operation PBSUCCESS (1954) — CIA coup against Guatemala's Árbenz.
• ✓ Operation Northwoods (1962) — The Joint Chiefs' false-flag proposal against Cuba.
• Operation CHAOS (1967–1974) — Domestic spying.
• HTLINGUAL (1952–1973) — CIA mail-opening program.
• Operation CONDOR (1975–1983) — South American intelligence cooperation.
• The Bay of Pigs (1961) — CIA Cuba invasion; Kirkpatrick Report.
• Operation Gladio (1956–1990) — NATO stay-behind networks.
• Project Camelot (1965) — Army-funded sociology in Chile.
• The Family Jewels (2007 release) — CIA's 1973 internal review.

FBI programs and surveillance

• COINTELPRO (1956–1971) — Counterintelligence against US political organizations.
• COINTELPRO sub-programs — Files on CPUSA, Black Nationalists, New Left, White Hate.
• The MLK Surveillance File — Including the 1964 "suicide letter."
• The Black Panthers Operations — Including the Hampton/Clark killing (1969).
• The American Indian Movement / Wounded Knee (1973).
• The Huston Plan (1970) — Nixon-era proposal for unified domestic intelligence.
• The 28 Pages — Saudi-related material withheld from the 9/11 Inquiry.

NSA and signals intelligence

• Project SHAMROCK (1945–1975) — Telegram-intercept program.
• Operation MINARET (1967–1973) — Watchlist of US citizens.
• The USS Pueblo Incident (1968).
• The USS Liberty Incident (1967).
• The VENONA Project (1943–1980) — Soviet cable decryption.
• STELLAR WIND (2001–2007) — Post-9/11 mass surveillance.
• PRISM (2007–present).
• MUSCULAR (2013 disclosure).
• Boundless Informant (2013).
• The Vault 7 Leaks (2017).
• The Snowden Disclosures (2013) — The corpus.

Atomic and biological experimentation

• The Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1932–1972).
• The Guatemala Syphilis Experiments (1946–1948).
• Hanford Radiation Releases / Green Run (1949).
• The Plutonium Files (1945–1947).
• Project Sunshine (1953).
• The Fernald State School Experiments.
• Project 4.1 (1954) — Castle Bravo Marshallese fallout.
• The Holmesburg Prison Experiments (1951–1974).
• Operation Whitecoat (1954–1973).
• Operation LAC / Large Area Coverage (1957–1958).
• Operation Sea-Spray (1950).
• Project SHAD (1962–1973).
• Edgewood Arsenal Experiments (1948–1975).

Foreign policy and disclosure

• The Gulf of Tonkin Incident (1964).
• The Pentagon Papers (1971).
• The Iran-Contra Affair (1985–1987).
• The MOVE Bombing (Philadelphia 1985).
• The JFK Files: 2017, 2022, 2023, 2025 releases.
• The RFK Assassination Files.
• The MLK Assassination Files (sealed until 2027).
• The 9/11 Commission Redactions.

How we work this pillar

Every declassified-files case file links to at least one primary document. Where the CIA's FOIA Reading Room, the National Security Archive at GWU, or the National Archives (NARA) hold the source material, we cite the specific holding. Where the document is only available through a third party (a researcher's personal collection, a published reproduction), we note that and link to the most reliable secondary source.

When new releases happen — and they happen often, especially with JFK files and the ongoing UAP releases — existing files are updated with revision dates. We don't quietly rewrite history.