FBI (The Vault)
The FBI’s electronic reading room — “The Vault” — holds thousands of declassified Bureau files released under FOIA. DeclassDB indexes them so you can search across investigations, surveillance programs, and the Bureau’s extensive files on public figures and political movements.
Search below to explore the FBI’s historical record, from J. Edgar Hoover’s era through modern releases.
What you’ll find
- COINTELPRO counterintelligence and domestic-surveillance files
- Files on civil-rights leaders, activists, and public figures
- Organized-crime and espionage investigations
- Historical case files and Bureau policy memoranda
Need a file that isn’t public yet? Draft a FOIA request to the FBI’s Record/Information Dissemination Section with the builder below.
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.