In 1985, citing concerns regarding “difficulty determining what has been publicly disclosed,” the CIA had a truly great idea that would serve both the Agency and the public’s interest in government transparency - a “proposal to establish a focal point to record CIA information released to the public.” The resulting Officially Released Information System, or ORIS, would take years to finally implement, and thanks to a recent FOIA, it might finally become the transparency tool it has the potential to be.

VENONA, a Signals Intelligence and decryption program run by the NSA intercepted and ultimately decrypted thousands of Soviet messages - messages, which as Emma Best found out, remain classified TOP SECRET even decades later.