A MuckRock project launching today, “Protecting LGBTQ+ Youth from Conversion Therapy” seeks to use public records to gain a better understanding of the conversion therapy industry, governmental involvement in the practice, and the scope of its harm on LGBTQ+ youth.

At the height of the Cold War, an informant’s tips resulted in the Federal Bureau of Investigation looking into the then newly-formed LGBT organization, the Mattachine Society and their publication ONE Magazine. The FBI was concerned that the organization was pro-Communist and had been publishing articles detailing allegations of unfair government discrimination and entrapment by police departments.

Files originally released to Jason Smathers show that in the Summer of 1989, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Tampa office launched a brief investigation into reports that two individuals that identified themselves as FBI agents to Walt Disney World maintenance workers. How were staff able to determine that these two weren’t legitimate G-men? Well, at least one of the perpetrators was wearing shorts and a tank top.

During its 70 year history, a number of coffee-related controversies have gripped the Central Intelligence Agency - but perhaps none of them had such long-lasting impact on the caffeination of our nation’s clandestine service as a year-long inquiry into the legality of using government funds to buy CIA employees their daily pick-me-up.

In the Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified archives is a formerly SECRET memo, dated February 17th, 1967, from the Chief of the CIA’s Technical Intelligence Division entitled “Photo Analysis of UFO Photography.” That memo served as a response to a request by the Deputy Director of The National Photographic Interpretation Center to analyze photographic evidence of what was purported to be an unidentified flying object.