A little known but extremely important part of the history of domestic surveillance by intelligence agencies is the CACTUS program. CACTUS was a highly classified channel used by agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to transmit information about “the New Left, Black Militants and related matters.” This channel was never disclosed in the Church Committee reports, even when the reports discuss information that was transmitted through CACTUS.

Bayard Rustin was many things: He was a key organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, an advocate for Soviet Jewry, and, “a convicted homosexual,” according to his Federal Bureau of Investigation file. Despite being what many would consider a textbook lefty, Rustin also moonlighted for the Central Intelligence Agency. While that might seem like an irreconcilable contradiction for a man who sat in prison for two years because he refused to serve in World War II, but contradictions aren’t there to be reconciled, they’re there to confound.

When J. Edgar Hoover forced William “Bill” Sullivan, the Bureau’s domestic intelligence chief, into retirement he set into motion a chain reaction which nearly forced him into retirement as well.

FBI Records released by the National Archives confirm confidential informants were reporting on Gavin MacFadyen over forty years before WikiLeaks and the Courage Foundation - even providing the Bureau with some of MacFadyen’s correspondence and his address book.

While some aspects of the investigation into the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. remain unknown to the public - such as NSA’s tracking of James Earl Ray - others are unknowable simply because they were never properly investigated. The most egregious example is Loyd Jowers, who in 1993 confessed to participating in an alleged conspiracy to, with the U.S. government and the mafia, kill Dr. King, and was found culpable in court. While the Department of Justice denied the veracity of these claims, the FBI, however, never investigated the matter and have no files on the man.

A report intended to clear the FBI of any wrongdoing in the Martin Luther King, Jr. murder investigation instead uncovered the extent to which Hoover’s Bureau had engaged in illicit, illegal activity in their personal vendetta against the civil rights leader.

Former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee’s role in covering some of the biggest stories of the 20th century - most notably Watergate - has made him a legend in the industry. It also earned him the ire of several figures in government, including FBI director J Edgar Hoover, who felt he was “a colossal liar.”

Starting last month, Muckrock launched its Vanity Plate Rejection Project by putting out FOIA requests on rejected vanity license plate applications to DMVs across the country. Several agencies have since responded with long lists of all the weird, embarrassing, confusing, and perverted things people have actually tried—and failed—to display on their cars. Hopefully these selections will give you pause the next time you consider having anything but random letters and numbers stamped on your license plate.