From accidental mind control to classified cottage cheese, MuckRock’s most popular articles prove that transparency doesn’t have to be tedious.

In late December 1977, Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, known to the world as “Charlie,” died in his home in Switzerland. A few months later, his body was stolen from its cemetery plot, kicking off an international corpse hunt that briefly - if dubiously - included the FBI.

For the past few months, we’ve talked with dozens of users to try and find a way to make MuckRock even easier for people who want to help open up government, whether they’re filing a single request or hundreds. We’re excited to finally show you the results.

An eight page document unearthed in the Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified archives offers a standardized procedure for remote viewing, the psychic espionage technique utilized by various agencies during the government’s decades-long researcher into the militarization of ESP.

As part of its ongoing psychic research in the ’80s, the Central Intelligence Agency explored the ideas of notorious “free energy” advocate Tom Bearden, according to one of Bearden’s papers discovered in the CREST archives by Mike Lewinski. In particular, the Agency was interested in “STAR WARS NOW!,” Bearden’s warning of Soviet weaponization of electromagnetic fields to create superweapons such as the “Tesla Howitzer.”

As we kick off what will hopefully be a very transparent Sunshine Week 2018, we want to take a moment to reflect on one of the more absurd finds in the Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified archive so far, and how the work the #OpenGov community can find itself part of the public record.

A 12-page document discovered by Emma Best in the Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified archive is simply entitled “PHOTO WITH DARK IMAGES.” And as far as we can tell, that’s exactly what it is - pictures of something, arranged in different amounts and angles.

In late 1981, the U.S. Secret Service needed help locating someone. Unable to find the A-Team, they turned to the government psychics at Army Intelligence.

Intelligence work can make on feel awfully stupid, and in the Central Intelligence Agency’s 13 million pages of declassified documents that’s more than a few times that folks made their frustrations felt. Here’s five of our favorites.

MuckRock published over twice as many articles in 2017 as we did last year, which necessitated breaking this year in review into two parts. Let’s pick up where we left off, just in time for FOIA’s 51st birthday.