CIA (CREST)
The CIA Records Search Tool (CREST) is the Agency’s archive of declassified documents released under the 25-year automatic declassification program and FOIA. DeclassDB lets you search the full text of more than 300,000 of these records instantly — no trip to the National Archives, no terminal in College Park.
Use the search below to dig through decades of intelligence reporting, internal memos, and operational files spanning the Cold War, covert action, scientific intelligence, and the Agency’s most-requested collections.
What you’ll find
- MKULTRA mind-control and behavioral-research files
- STARGATE / GRILL FLAME remote-viewing program records
- The “Family Jewels” internal review of Agency abuses
- JFK assassination records and the OXCART (A-12) program
- Daily intelligence summaries and National Intelligence Estimates
You can also file your own FOIA request with the CIA for records not yet released — use the builder below to draft a properly-formatted letter to the CIA Information and Privacy Coordinator.
Open the FOIA Request Builder →DeclassDB
FOIA search is fragmented and keyword-only. DeclassDB unifies seven federal archives — CIA CREST, FBI Vault, NSA, State, NARA, DoD, NSArchive — and adds AI semantic search, so you can find what you mean, not just what you typed.
AI semantic search
Find by meaning across 309,708 CREST documents (1.05M pages, full-text). The embedding model runs in your browser — no cloud round-trip. Pro & Researcher.
One query, every agency
Unified, blended, de-duplicated across seven federal sources. CIA / FBI / State always free; NSA / NARA / DoD / NSArchive unlocked on Pro.
Privacy-first by design
Vectors, AI summaries, and entity extraction all run on your device. No cloud, no search logs, no third-party trackers. Air-gappable for federal use.