After five years of trying to get records out of the Harvard University Police Department, I ended up spending $125 on a high-resolution photo German Chancellor Angela Merkel. This is the story of how and why.

The Central Intelligence Agency kept a 1961 translation of the “Atlas of the Far Side of the Moon” marked as “For Official Use Only” in its archives for just shy of 50 years.

The Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified archives include a formerly SECRET incident involving a spy plane and an unusual example of small arms fire: the “Congolese SAM,” also known as a spear.

MuckRock has previously written about some of the surprising photographic finds in the Central Intelligence Agency’s archives, including a stray cat that was considered a state secret for 50 years. Proving that they’re equal opportunity creature classifiers, records recently uncovered in CREST show photos of World War II military working dogs which weren’t made public until 2013 - nearly 70 years after they were taken.

We’re celebrating the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s birthday with a look at five different ways MuckRock users have used FOIA to bring shed light on the Bureau’s 11 decades of skulking around in America’s shadows.