PROMIS has accumulated decades of controversy, competing claims and, at times, confusion over what the name itself actually refers to. The records released by the National Security Agency provide an important distinction. The NSA’s PROMIS, or Product Management Information System, was an intelligence-product management database developed during the 1970s. According to records released to The Black Vault under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the system was designed to organize information associated with intelligence reports and give senior signals intelligence managers a way to search, analyze and manage information about those products. It should not simply be equated with the…
Author: John Greenewald
More than nine years after a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request was submitted to the National Security Agency, the agency has released a heavily redacted copy of a 1972 NSA Technical Journal article titled “Maybe It’s Related to the Phase of the Moon…” The Black Vault submitted the request on August 6, 2017, seeking the article, which was published in the Fall 1972 edition of the journal. The NSA ultimately processed the request as FOIA Case 102240 and issued its response on August 25, 2026. The article, written by Herbert S. Guy, Jr., concerns the analysis of a callsign…
The Department of War announced September 14, 2026, that it has issued a targeted legal waiver allowing current and former military personnel, civilian employees and contractors to provide protected information concerning Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) directly to designated representatives of the government’s PURSUE effort. According to the Department, the waiver establishes an “authorized, legally protected disclosure mechanism” for individuals possessing UAP-related National Defense Information, or NDI. “This waiver establishes an authorized, legally protected disclosure mechanism for current and former personnel to provide UAP-related National Defense Information (NDI) to designated representatives of the PURSUE effort,” the Department said. The announcement is…
The Central Intelligence Agency on Friday released 71 declassified President’s Daily Brief documents related to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, opening a new collection of intelligence assessments that documented what the U.S. government was receiving about Usama Bin Ladin, al-Qa‘ida and terrorist threats in the years leading up to the attacks. The documents were released September 11, 2026, on the 25th anniversary of the attacks. According to the CIA, the collection represents the Agency’s “single largest release of declassified CIA PDB products related to 9/11” and contains more than 100 pages of intelligence analysis. The newly released material spans from…
More than five years after The Black Vault filed a Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) request seeking a fresh review of the CIA’s historic KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual, the Agency has released its most complete official version of the document to date. The release stems from MDR case EOM-2021-00117, originally filed in May 2021 by The Black Vault. An initial response issued on February 9, 2024, resulted in only limited additional disclosures while continuing to withhold portions of the manual under Executive Order 13526, Sections 3.3(h)(2) and 6.2(d). Following an appeal submitted by The Black Vault on March 1, 2024, the…