The Onion: CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years

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The Onion

 

CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years

 

November 30, 2005 | Issue 41•48

 

 

LANGLEY, VA—A report released Tuesday by the CIA's Office of the

Inspector General revealed that the CIA has mistakenly obscured

hundreds of thousands of pages of critical intelligence information

with black highlighters.

CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years

 

CIA Director Porter Goss.

 

According to the report, sections of the documents— " almost invariably

the most crucial passages " —are marred by an indelible black ink that

renders the lines impossible to read, due to a top-secret highlighting

policy that began at the agency's inception in 1947.

 

CIA Director Porter Goss has ordered further internal investigation.

 

" Why did it go on for this long, and this far? " said Goss in a press

conference called shortly after the report's release. " I'm as

frustrated as anyone. You can't read a single thing that's been

highlighted. Had I been there to advise [former CIA director] Allen

Dulles, I would have suggested the traditional yellow color—or pink. "

 

Goss added: " There was probably some really, really important

information in these documents. "

 

When asked by a reporter if the black ink was meant to intentionally

obscure, Goss countered, " Good God, why? "

 

Goss lamented the fact that the public will probably never know the

particulars of such historic events as the Cold War, the civil-rights

movement, or the growth of the international drug trade.

 

" I'm sure the CIA played major roles in all these things, " Goss said.

" But now we'll never know for sure. "

 

In addition to clouding the historical record, the use of the black

highlighters, also known as " permanent markers, " may have encumbered

or even prevented critical operations. CIA scholar Matthew Franks was

forced to abandon work on a book about the Bay Of Pigs invasion after

declassified documents proved nearly impossible to read.

 

" With all the highlighting in the documents I unearthed in the

National Archives, it's really no wonder that the invasion failed, "

Franks said. " I don't see how the field operatives and commandos were

expected to decipher their orders. "

 

The inspector general's report cited in particular the damage black

highlighting did to documents concerning the assassination of John F.

Kennedy, thousands of pages of which " are completely highlighted, from

top to bottom margin. "

 

" It is unclear exactly why CIA bureaucrats sometimes chose to

emphasize entire documents, " the report read. " Perhaps the documents

were extremely important in every detail, or the agents, not unlike

college freshmen, were overwhelmed by the reading material and got a

little carried away. "

 

Also unclear is why black highlighters were chosen in the first place.

Some blame it on the closed, elite culture of the CIA itself. A former

CIA officer speaking on the condition of anonymity said highlighting

documents with black pens was a common and universal practice.

 

" It seemed counterintuitive, but the higher-ups didn't know what they

were doing, " the ex-officer said. " I was once ordered to feed

documents into a copying machine in order to make backups of some very

important top-secret records, but it turned out to be some sort of

device that cut the paper to shreds. "

 

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