Database shows behind the scenes story of the declassification process, and helps determine what was left out of last Thursday’s release

When much of the JFK files were released on October 26th, over 50 thousand emails from the Assassination Records Review Board, an independent agency to re-examine for release the assassination-related records, were separately released and largely overlooked.

The ARRB emails (or ARRBmails) show a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the ARRB, the review and release process, and provide new insight into how our history came to be written. The original release was located in an obscure spot on National Archive’s website, and split across a dozen, difficult-to-search files. MuckRock has compiled them into a single database that allows users to view the 52,287 ARRBmails in an easy-to-read format, and search each of the metadata fields.

Find anything neat? Let us know at info@muckrock or on Twitter. Special thanks to Russ Kick for inspiring this project.

Image via National Archives