Section · Release verdicts

What each PURSUE release actually did.

The Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System (PURSUE) has published four tranches so far. This section is an independent read on what each release added, what was already public, what was overhyped, and what is still missing. Not a repost of the release notes.

1. Release 01

   2026-05-08·158 records

   The largest, most consequential tranche. Depth on DoW mission reports, first release of a formal PURSUE portal.

   Release 01 opened the PURSUE portal on 2026-05-08 with 158 records. Department of War material dominated the tranche: 70 files, including a run of dated mission reports from CENTCOM theaters (Iraq, Syria) and a set of 28 short infrared and electro-optical videos. NASA contributed 12 items, primarily historical Apollo-era anomalies. A large share of the tranche (roughly half) carries no agency prefix in the war.gov filenames, meaning the originating command was not disclosed in the release metadata itself. This is the tranche the disclosure conversation is anchored to.

   Read the full Release 01 verdict →

2. Release 02

   2026-05-22·63 records

   The video tranche. 57 of 63 items are video files.

   Release 02 shipped on 2026-05-22 with 63 records, overwhelmingly video (57 files). DoW again dominates (58 files) with trace CIA, DoE, and ODNI submissions. The tranche filled out the sensor-video corpus that Release 01 had begun. It is a narrow release: agency diversity is low, document count is very low (6 PDFs), and the content is best understood as an appendix to the DoW video catalog started in R01.

   Read the full Release 02 verdict →

3. Release 03

   2026-06-12·72 records

   FBI joins the tranches. Historical FOIA material folded into the formal PURSUE portal.

   Release 03 shipped on 2026-06-12 with 72 records. The headline shift is FBI: 23 files, the first time FBI records were folded into the PURSUE portal at scale. Much of this material was previously available at vault.fbi.gov, but its inclusion under the PURSUE unsealing changes its legal and archival provenance. NASA added 8 further Apollo-era items. DoW continues at 21 files, weighted more toward documents than R02.

   Read the full Release 03 verdict →

4. Release 04

   2026-07-10·40 records

   The smallest tranche so far. Broadest agency mix. Signals that the pace is slowing.

   Release 04 shipped on 2026-07-10 with 40 records, the smallest tranche to date. The agency mix is the most diverse: DoW (9), NASA (3), CIA (2), DoE (2), FBI (1), and a large share (23) without an agency prefix on the file. Video is 23 of 40. There is no single flagship item comparable to Nimitz or Gimbal. R04 reads as a tail-end tranche of assorted items rather than a coordinated declassification event.

   Read the full Release 04 verdict →