In 1996, John Greenewald, Jr. began researching the secret inner workings of the U.S. Government at the young age of fifteen. He targeted such groups as the CIA, FBI, Pentagon, Air Force, Army, Navy, NSA, DIA, and countless others.

Greenewald utilized the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to gain access to more than two million pages of records. He accumulated this astonishing number of documents on topics related to UFOs, the JFK Assassination, chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, and top secret aircraft. Time elapsed, and Greenewald's online archive became known globally as "The Black Vault."

The Black Vault is now visited by tens of thousands of people every day, who come to download the information he has collected. Since day one, the site remains free, and contains records that in some cases, took Greenewald more than a DECADE to obtain from the U.S. Government.

His teenage project turned into the largest private online collection anywhere in the world, totaling more than 1.7 million pages of material.