The Torture of Declassified Documents

While most of the media has been reporting on CIA torture memos, recently declassified, I have been tortured by browsing pages of 'virtually' musty old government documents forced into the open by the Freedom of Information Act.

A mild interest in uncovering the design behind the so-called MJ-12 Eisenhower Briefing Document (EBD)  drove me to spend hours of valuable time in the government's various "electronic reading rooms" as I searched for anything resembling the document.

Here are a few links:

http://www.archives.gov/

http://www.foia.cia.gov/

http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945-50Intel/d320

http://foia.fbi.gov/

What I learned had little to do with MJ-12. 

In fact, it left me questioning the purpose behind the entire classification process.

For years the government appears to have been ready to "mark" nearly anything with various official classification levels, including CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, and TOP SECRET.

One of the EYES-ONLY aspects of looking back to the 1950s era was the dramatic difference between the modern day government markings and those in place during the peak of the "flying saucer" invasion.

Sometimes I found SECRET, others S-E-C-R-E-T and other times the classification was boxed in by dashes. The MJ EBD features TOP SECRET surround by asterisks.

I also found the incorrect useage of a comma in the date line in a document issued by the White House in the same month as the date on the EBD. One of the earliest critcisms of the EBD was the superfluous comma.

Mostly I learned how quickly the government search engines can frustrate the simplest quest.

On a positive note I did see that CIA has been busy releasing more material, including several documents about the UFO question.