America's spies have their own version of Wikipedia - jere's what it looks like
Before you can access Intellipedia, you need to login to the Intelink website, which warns you that it's an official US government server. If you try and access the site without authorization, it says, you might be criminally prosecuted.
There are a couple of options for logging in. If you have the proper VPN, you can login remotely over the internet. Or you can use a CAC, or common access card, inserted into your workstation's card reader to verify you.
Google supplies the search software and servers that make up the Intellipedia network, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. It's handling plenty of traffic, with the top secret Intellipedia version seeing the most use.
Source: SF Chronicle/MuckRock
Statistics released via FOIA in 2014 showed the TS version having 255,402 registered users. That wiki had 113,379 entries with more than 290 million page views, and 6.2 million edits.
Of course, we're blocked from logging in. But FOIA requests for entries and some publicly available screenshots can at least show us a little bit of what's inside.
On the real Wikipedia, some users have uploaded some unclassified screenshots of the system, which looks near-identical to the real thing. The biggest difference: the big, colored bars indicating the classification of what is being viewed.
Through a MuckRock FOIA request, we can see what the entry for the Conch Republic looks like.
It actually looks a lot like Wikipedia's own entry, which is not surprising. As MuckRock notes, it's basically a word-for-word copy and paste job. Though we must admit it's kind of weird that US intelligence agencies have information about a place that doesn't even exist.
Though the spy version is a bit different, as the Intellipedia manual explains.
Unlike normal Wikipedia, the top and bottom portion of each entry has classification markings, like this one marked "Unclassified." There are also portion markings of (U), which means the same. The entry on the Conch Republic was accessed 763 times.
We really hope this isn't an indication of any covert action being carried out at Sloppy Joe's Bar.
The entry for Vatican City, which has been accessed more than 10,000 times, is quite different from the playful page for Conch Republic. Instead, it goes straight to what intel analysts would want to know: Threats.
Another website, called The Black Vault, has been sending in FOIA requests for Intellipedia entries for many years. Creator John Greenewald has published entries he's obtained on subjects like "Bay of Pigs," "JFK Assassination," and "UFOs."
This is what Intellipedia says about the Bay of Pigs, the failed invasion of Cuba by CIA-backed paramilitaries that greatly embarrassed President Kennedy in the 1960s. The entry was previously marked "Secret."
While some conspiracy theorists believe the CIA had a hand in the assassination of Kennedy, don't expect Intellipedia to back up that view. The entry focuses on CIA's investigation of whether the president's murder was a KGB plot.
Intellipedia doesn't say much about UFOs either. This one photo is the entire entry.
Greenewald says on The Black Vault that he received "no records" responses when he asked for topics like "B-21 Bomber," anything on the hacker "Guccifer," or "Paranormal."
But we'd be most interested to see how the top secret version of the "Edward Snowden" entry turns out. A 2014 FOIA request only returned a blank page.
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