“The Classified Record is a searchable index of declassified U.S. government documents, with primary sources linked and FOIA status documented for each entry. It exists because the existing infrastructure for accessing declassified records was built for researchers, not for the general public. The CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room contains millions of pages of declassified material. The National Archives holds billions more. The National Security Archive at George Washington University maintains one of the most important collections of government records in the world. None of these resources were designed for a person who simply wants to know what a document says and why it matters. They require familiarity with FOIA exemption categories, document numbering systems, and archival search interfaces that have not been meaningfully updated in years. This site is not a replacement for those resources. It is a translation layer between them and anyone who wants to understand what the government has confirmed without spending weeks learning how to navigate federal archives…When a document is added to this site, its full text is transcribed, redacted passages are marked as REDACTED so the structure of the original document is preserved, and the transcription is published as indexed HTML. For the first time, the actual language of these documents is searchable. Each entry also includes a plain English summary of what the document confirms, a section on what the document does not establish, and a documented FOIA status that distinguishes between records withheld under a classification exemption and records for which the government claims no documents exist. That distinction is meaningful. Most resources that discuss these documents do not address it…”