The FBI files, searchable
All 122 Vault parts, 44,238 pages, as OCR text
The FBI Vault's D.B. Cooper release is a set of scanned PDFs whose built-in text is unusable. Every page was re-read with OCR (Tesseract, 300 dpi). Two downloads hold the result; the scans themselves stay on the FBI Vault, linked below.
OCR text pack
One plain-text file per Vault part. Every page starts with a header line, ==== Part 64 · PDF page 304 · Bates DB Cooper-27170 ====, so any search hit tells you exactly which page to open. Search it with any editor that searches across files, or with grep.
Searchable database
The same text in a SQLite database with a full-text index, plus a small Python search tool for phrases, words near each other and sound-alike matches, e.g. python3 search.py '"Tena Bar"'. No extra packages needed.
Before you quote anything
- OCR is imperfect. Much of the file is 1970s teletypes, carbons and handwriting, and photos and clippings often come through poorly. A search that finds nothing doesn't prove the file is silent; try spelling variants.
- "PDF page" is the page number in the Vault's PDF viewer. The Bates number is the FBI's stamp in the bottom-right corner. It was read by OCR, so it is missing on some pages and occasionally off by a digit.
- Names the FBI redacted appear as blanks or exemption codes (b6, b7C).
- Always check the scan on the FBI Vault before quoting.