Cold War Signals Intelligence
From intercepted Soviet cables to dragnet fiber taps: how listening became the backbone of American intelligence.
9 documents · 1950–2009 Vol. I · 150 records 83 issuing bodies · 11 jurisdictions Links verified 15 October 2026
A reading room for the public record
Public records nobody reads, catalogued.
Declassified files, inspector-general audits, technical reports and raw datasets: published by governments, then left unread. Each entry links to the official source and an Internet Archive copy.
150Records
143Verified live or by hand
33 yearsMedian wait, declassified files
63 yearsLongest wait: CIA, 1963
Collections
All 9 collections →Failed Procurement Programs
Billions spent, little delivered: auditors' autopsies of projects that collapsed under their own requirements.
11 documents · 1999–2023Declassified UFO Programs
Seventy-five years of governments investigating the sky, in the original paperwork rather than the documentaries.
16 documents · 1947–2025The Nuclear Paper Trail
Tests, accidents, targets, experiments and a warning meant to last ten thousand years.
15 documents · 1946–2015Watching the Watchers
Half a century of domestic surveillance, and the oversight documents that exposed it.
12 documents · 1956–2026Space Program Post-Mortems
NASA's accident boards wrote some of the most honest documents in government. Read them in sequence.
8 documents · 1967–2011Recently released
Browse by release date →- 1992 QA-0137NSA · Correspondence
NSA records on the Pentagon's 1992 search for missing Cold War reconnaissance aircrews
Records released by the NSA in September 2025 and published in October 2026, detailing a 1992 Pentagon effort to work out whether crews of shot-down Cold War reconnaissance flights had been captured by the Soviet Union, China or others.
- 1980 QA-0142House · Collection
The 1980 Reagan–Carter ‘Debategate’ scandal files
Records on the controversy that erupted in 1983 when it emerged that Reagan's 1980 campaign had obtained Carter's confidential debate briefing materials before their 28 October debate.
- 1966 QA-0133NSA · Study
NSA Technical Journal: ‘Coupon Collecting and Cryptology’ (1966)
A mathematical paper by Marie Capozza from the Fall 1966 NSA Technical Journal, applying the classic 'coupon collector' probability problem to cryptology.
- 2010 QA-0135NSA · Study
NSA ‘Point Forecasts’: technology forecasting studies (brain–network interfaces, terahertz, energy harvesting)
Eight NSA technology-forecasting studies on privacy and anonymity, brain–network interfaces, advanced antennas, terahertz electronics and energy harvesting, released in 2026 in response to a FOIA request filed on 25 May 2011.
Long-held secrets
See the timeline →The oldest documents here that stayed classified or unpublished for more than 25 years.
- 1932 QA-0011FBI · Case file
Albert Einstein: FBI surveillance file
More than 1,400 pages recording two decades of FBI suspicion of Albert Einstein, starting in 1932 with a patriotic group's petition to keep him out of the country.
- 1943 QA-0012FBI · Case file
Nikola Tesla: FBI file on the seizure of his papers
Records on what happened to Nikola Tesla's papers after he died in a New York hotel in January 1943, when the Office of Alien Property impounded his belongings.
- 1946 QA-0032JTF-1 · Report
Operation Crossroads: atomic bomb tests Able and Baker at Bikini Atoll
Joint Task Force One's report on the July 1946 tests that exposed a fleet of target ships to two atomic detonations at Bikini Atoll.
- 1947 QA-0007FBI · Case file
FBI ‘UFO’ file (flying disc reports, 1947 onward)
The FBI's main file on 'flying discs', opened during the 1947 sighting wave when the Army Air Forces asked the Bureau to help vet reports.
- 1947 QA-0008FBI · Memo
Roswell UFO: FBI Dallas teletype of 8 July 1947
The FBI's contemporaneous teletype on the Roswell debris, sent the day the base announced it had recovered a 'flying disc'.