The Intercept's Cora Currier just flagged a new trove of CIA documents that the agency declassified and dumped on its website. They come from an in-house publication for spooks, and man, are they silly.

Currier describes the collection of newly released articles from Studies in Intelligence Collection thusly:

Ostensibly a semi-academic review of spycraft, Studies emerges in the pieces, which date from the 1970s to the 2000s, as so much more, at turns mocking excessive secrecy and bad writing, dishing on problematic affairs, and bragging about press manipulation.

Of course, there is plenty of self-serious material in the journal too, including scholarly reviews, first-person memoirs, interviews and intellectual ruminations on everything from maps to "How We Are Perceived" and "Ethics and Clandestine Collection."

Currier has collected some of her favorite moments from a few of the hundreds of articles on the site. But she misses one of the best, a "review" of a clandestine international annual luncheon put on by the CIA, complete with the chef's recipe for "Nicaraguan shrimp salad." (Surprisingly, the recipe does not call for military aid to Contra rebels.)

I sort of like the missives complaining that CIA officers use too much purple prose and meaningless platitudes in their written evaluations of subordinates:

On the serious side, there's a tribute to women who have died in CIA service, tersely titled "TRIBUTE TO WOMEN WHO HAVE DIED." Good luck reading that one:

There's also a classic titled "Unconventional [REDACTED] History":

Although it's eight pages long, the article takes an abrupt jump on page two in the middle of this sentence:

The following six pages all look like this:

Anything in the collection catch your eye? Share it in the comments.