Challenges to researching declassified programs

One of the most infamous declassified documents the MKUltra experiments. Only by chance was some of it saved- what remains in those destroyed documents now provides fertile ground for conspiracy theory.

I have tried to be moderate and record both conspiracies on each ‘side’. This website may seem overly critical of the West but for reasons outside my control. Liberal democracies have at least made the right conditions for disclosure of government secrets through stronger institutions and rules around government declassification. Mechanisms such as freedom of information acts, government inquiries citizen pressure and the work of dedicated journalists have been able to force open some of the world’s biggest secrets.

Despite this there are still significant challenges to reporting on declassified documents, one main issue being that the government chooses what to declassify meaning it is a curated picture of the government rather than the reality of what occurred. We find this the case with Plan Condor and the U.S government which is still declassifying documents relating to their involvement to this day. 

Some of the documents declassified contain vast swathes of censored pages and so there still lingers the ever-present question of what is behind those censored lines which can dance on the edge of speculation, paranoia or conspiracy theory. Another matter is destroyed documentation for example the MKUltra mind control experiments which were ordered to be shredded by CIA director Richard Helms in 1973 when the CIA was beginning to be investigated due to revelations from Watergate.

The only reason we about these experiments was some of documents were stored in the wrong location saving them from destruction; the remainder of the experiments we have to go from the word of witnesses and perpetrators, it is no wonder then that MKUltra, while a real conspiracy, is touted by many conspiracy theorists alleging that the government actually found mind control.

No, your wifi is fine. This is a legitimate declassified paper from the U.S Department of Homeland Security in 2017 regarding Black Lives Matter and what the FBI labels 'Black Identity Extremists'. The declassified set of emails include the term 'The Race Paper' followed by complete redaction of the entire attachment. It leads to only speculation on what this document includes. Source 

With the collapse of the Soviet Union some trickle of information about past activities has come to light mainly through defectors and former scientists, secret servicemen and others involved. With this comes its own risks as parsing out the truth rather than a good story can be difficult. Former staff and officers are often writing about events decades in the past which means information may be inaccurate or wholly fabricated (and given the choice would you write yourself as an evil person in a memoir?)