Secret Writing: CIA’s Oldest Classified Documents

Secret Writing: CIA’s Oldest Classified Documents

Do you want to read the oldest classified documents in our collection? Learn how to make invisible ink? See the only classified documents still in existence from the first World War? Then you’re in luck. Five years ago, the CIA declassified the US Government’s six oldest classified documents, dating from 1917 and 1918. These documents, […]

Detachment A: the Cold War Sabotage Experts of Special Forces

Detachment A: the Cold War Sabotage Experts of Special Forces

Imagine American Special Forces soldiers traveling around Baghdad in civilian vehicles, speaking the local language, carrying false passports, and operating under a cover as they case targets and dodge foreign intelligence agents. Today, such a thing is an impossibility, a much sought after capability that Special Forces has been unable to attain in recent years. […]

The U.S. Army Wanted to Conscript Insects to Fight the Viet Cong

The U.S. Army Wanted to Conscript Insects to Fight the Viet Cong

Mao Tse-Tung famously wrote in On Guerrilla Warfare that guerrillas are proverbial fish who have to swim in the water of the people in order to win their struggle against powerful governments. “It is only undisciplined troops who make the people their enemies and who, like the fish out of its native element, cannot live,” Mao explained. […]