LANGLEY, VA—A report released Tuesday by the CIA's Office of the Inspector General revealed that the CIA has mistakenly obscured hundreds of thousands of pages of critical intelligence information with black highlighters.
According to the report, sections of the documents— "almost invariably the most crucial passages"—are marred by an indelible black ink that renders the lines impossible to read, due to a top-secret highlighting policy that began at the agency's inception in 1947...
CIA Director Porter Goss has ordered further internal investigation.
Goss lamented the fact that the public will probably never know the particulars of such historic events as the Cold War, the civil-rights movement, or the growth of the international drug trade.
"I'm sure the CIA played major roles in all these things," Goss said. "But now we'll never know for sure."
In addition to clouding the historical record, the use of the black highlighters, also known as "permanent markers," may have encumbered or even prevented critical operations. CIA scholar Matthew Franks was forced to abandon work on a book about the Bay Of Pigs invasion after declassified documents proved nearly impossible to read.
[It's an old story, but I just found it, and you can guess where...]
haa, i thought about halfway through - sounds like The Onion, hehe
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