Document search
The STARGATE release, searchable.
Full-text search across the 12,180 documents the CIA released in its STARGATE collection, about 90,400 pages. Free to use.
Warning: text for all documents has not been verified. Errors are possible. Check the original by document ID on CREST.
Why this exists
The release is public but hard to work with. CREST, the CIA’s own archive, holds every document, but its transcriptions are poor and its site is hard to navigate. This tool puts a new machine transcription of all 12,180 documents behind one search box, each result keyed to its CIA document ID.
How to search
- Several words find documents that contain all of them. Typing “and” between them is optional. “Or” and “not” are not supported.
- Put a phrase in quotation marks to find those words together. One quoted phrase per search works best.
- Machine reading misreads names. If a name you expect is missing, try a variant: a letter dropped or doubled, or two words run together. A search that finds nothing is not proof the record is silent.
- Every result carries the document’s CIA ID. Use it to find the original scan on CREST.
A companion tool
For meaning-based search across millions of declassified U.S. government documents, well beyond this collection, try HistoryLab AI.
Corrections and requests
Found a transcription error, or have a request about a page? Write to press@projectinterloper.com.