The Freedom of Information Act made it possible, but the FBI never had to make it easy to find, view, or study its accumulated information on all sorts of topics from unexplained phenomena to Marilyn Monroe. Now anyone can view the FBI's spreadsheet of associations made by the 9/11 WTC bombers as well as PDFs of documents from the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. It's all on line for your viewing pleasure, with redactions of course but nonetheless fascinating stuff, at their new fully searchable website
The Vault. I took a brief tour this morning and found it absolute pure entertainment. Turn off tv this weekend, forget going to the movies, just put on your Elliott Ness hat, and start studying PDFs about everything you always believe was true but never had anything but conspiracy theories to prove it. How about UFOs being found with little men inside that crashed in New Mexico? Did you know that John Denver was investigated for the possibility of being a narcotics trafficker and a serious anti-war activist? Oh, there's so much juicy stuff here as to take a life-time to digest. So bravo to the FBI for wanting to build public trust with this amazing magnifying class into the past. From an historical point of view, this site is an incredible amount of fun. You might only want to use it at the public library though, because who knows, they most certainly might be tracking who uses it and what they view! Still, crazy cool and fascinating. I never thought in a million years I'd be able to read these documents – it's just too bad the Magic Marker® guys had to be involved as it will drive you nuts wondering what's been blotted out and why.