FBI files released to Connor Skelding reveal that the Bureau was so sufficiently alarmed about author Norman Mailer’s accusations about their role in Marilyn Monroe’s death that they investigated if they had, in fact, wiretapped the actress phone. After determining they hadn’t, the Bureau considered getting Mailer to retract the claim - until they discovered he was just sort of making stuff up.

Eleven years before the House Select Committee on Assassinations declared they were “certain Yuri Nosenko lied about Lee Harvey Oswald,” the Central Intelligence Agency’s internal security report ignored evidence and abandoned logic to conclude that the Soviet defector was a trustworthy individual who hadn’t been sent over by the KGB.

Last year, to celebrate FOIA’s 50th birthday, we began collecting photos of Commanders-in-chief with cakes, with the goal of creating the most comprehensive archive of presidential pastry ever assembled. Today, we’re checking in to see if our efforts to free chief executive confections bore frosted fruit.

In a 1978 memo urging the curbing of the newly-empowered Freedom of Information Act, the CIA compiled a list of six FOIA request topics considered to be the most potentially dangerous to the Agency’s reputation.

A request for FBI files on a figure at the center of dozens of 20th century conspiracy theories reveals a rare glimpse into the Bureau’s real-life “X-Files” - and tell a story of flying saucers and secret assassins stranger than anything on the show.

While won’t know the full extent of Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis’ 75,000 page FBI file until it’s released, but there are a number of things that are certain to be in it - paramilitary activities in Cuba, his ties the Kennedy assassination, confirmation of his employment of the CIA - very little of which has had any official documentation made available to the public.

When John Kirsch got a “neither confirm nor deny” rejection from the CIA regarding their files on noted JFK assassination researcher Mary Ferrell, he got suspicious. So he filed for their processing notes on his request. Over a year later, they responded … by releasing nearly identical copies of Kirsch’s own request, with the only change being that the very deceased Ferrell’s social security number was now redacted.