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The FBI’s declassified Qaddafi files are like Mad Libs for tyrants

So we actually made Mad Libs for them.

 

Curt Hopkins

Internet Culture

Posted on May 8, 2013   Updated on Jun 1, 2021, 4:22 pm CDT

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has a public documents site called “The Vault.” The FBI releases its declassified documents there. But declassified does not apparently mean comprehensible or useful. 

The latest release, 207 pages of information on deceased Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi, reads more like a Mad Libs for tyrants than a window into what the Bureau knew about the man ultimately responsible for the Lockerbie bombing.

A great deal of the documents require not simply a sense of the context of recent history, but also expertise in intelligence, cryptography, and palaeography. 

Or experience doing Mad Libs. And if you do choose the Mad Libs path, please share your samples. The people deserve to know. 

So, have fun. And three cheers for open government.

Click to expand:

And try your own!


Illustration by Jason Reed

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*First Published: May 8, 2013, 6:07 pm CDT