The Central Intelligence Agency this week published more than 12 million pages of declassified records online.
Some 930,000 documents are now available to the public via the CIA's Electronic Reading Room.
Before this online access became available, folks had to travel to the National Archives (NARA) facility in College Park Md., between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. in hopes that one of only four computers designated for access to the CIA Records Search Tool (CREST) was available to use.
"Access to this historically significant collection is no longer limited by geography," CIA Director of Information Management Joseph Lambert said in a statement. "The American public can access these documents from the comfort of their homes."
The vast CREST collection covers topics from early agency history and the Cold War to Vietnam, the Berlin Tunnel project, and the Korean War, as well as developments on terrorism and worldwide military and economic issues.
Records also include large specialized collections of foreign translations, scientific abstracts, ground photo descriptions, and secret documents about Star Gate, a secret 1970s Army program investigating psychic phenomena in intelligence applications, among other files.
The CREST database was declassified a decade ago under a 1995 executive order issued by then-President Bill Clinton, whose decree made public secret government documents at least 25 years old that have "permanent historical value." The CIA complied in 2000 by setting up four computers in the NARA.
This week's release, however, marks a new milestone for public information.
"Moving these documents online highlights the CIA's commitment to increasing the accessibility of declassified records to the public," the government agency said.
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Conspiracy theorists and history buffs excited to dig into the archives can tip their hat to journalist Michael Best, who collected more than $15,000 in a Kickstarter campaign to scan the CIA's entire declassified vault and upload it to the Internet Archive.
"It looks like our efforts have been successful," he wrote in an October update. "Thanks to the printing campaign that's made it expensive (and pointless) for CIA to keep the database offline … the Agency has agreed to put the entire database online in the near future."
MuckRock, an organization that pushes for the release of government data via FOIA requests, also played its part: In 2014, the nonprofit asked for access to CREST, and later filed suit. The CIA initially promised to deliver data on 1,200 compact discs within six years—for $108,000.