The Black Vault

The Black Vault
Type of site
Document archive
Available inEnglish
OwnerJohn Greenwald, Jr.
URLtheblackvault.com
Launched1996 (1996)
Current statusActive

The Black Vault is a website hosting an online archive of declassified documents, largely originating from the United States Government.

History

The Black Vault hosts declassified government documents.[1][2] The site's owner and operator, John Greenewald Jr., began filing Freedom of Information Act requests with the United States Government at age 14.[3] In 1996, he started the website as a repository for his collection of responsive files.[3]

Contents

As of 2020, The Black Vault archived more than two million pages of government documents.[4]

Documents first published by The Black Vault have been cited in reporting by Popular Mechanics, CNET, Vice, and others.[5][6][7]

According to the Columbia Journalism Review, as of 2020, its "biggest score" was "material related to MKUltra" which were gradually released to the site over a period of 19 years.[4] It has also published hundreds of thousands of pages of documents related to the topic of UFOs.[8]

See also

References

  1. ^ Ibrahim, Nur (January 19, 2021). "Can You Now Download Thousands of CIA Files on UFOs?". Snopes. Retrieved January 9, 2025.
  2. ^ Conner, Christopher T. (2024). Conspiracy Theories and Extremism in New Times. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 19. ISBN 1666933090.
  3. ^ a b Fox, Roy (2000). MediaSpeak: Three American Voices. Bloomsbury. p. 163. ISBN 0313002517.
  4. ^ a b Raviv, Shaun (May 6, 2020). "Inside the Black Vault". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved August 16, 2025.
  5. ^ "In the 1970s, the CIA Created a Robot Dragonfly Spy. Now We Know How It Works". Popular Mechanics. February 18, 2020. Retrieved January 9, 2025.
  6. ^ "The Black Vault releases trove of CIA's classified UFO documents". CNET. January 13, 2021. Retrieved January 9, 2025.
  7. ^ "You Can Now Easily Download All CIA UFO Documents to Date". Vice. January 11, 2021. Retrieved January 9, 2025.
  8. ^ "Man releases 130K pages of declassified Air Force documents on UFOs". KABC-TV. January 20, 2015. Retrieved August 16, 2025.

Further reading

  • Greenewald, John (2019). Inside The Black Vault: The Government's UFO Secrets Revealed. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 1538118386.