Primary records
Read the Documents
The primary records behind many of the cases in this book, the same list as the book’s “Read the Documents Yourself” page.
These are the primary records behind many of the cases in this book: inquiry evidence, court rulings, government reports, declassified files and companies’ own internal papers. All are free to search unless noted. The addresses were checked in October 2026; pages move, and the updates page will carry corrections.
Inquiries, Courts and Government Reports
- Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry (postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk): video and transcripts of the public hearings, published evidence and the first volume of the inquiry’s final report (Ch 10).
- Find Case Law, The National Archives (caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk): court judgments from England and Wales and the UK Supreme Court, including the Bates v Post Office rulings (Ch 10).
- CourtListener and the RECAP Archive (courtlistener.com): opinions, dockets and filings from U.S. federal courts, run by the nonprofit Free Law Project; documents not yet there cost a fee on PACER (Ch 1, Ch 4, Ch 11).
- Federal Reserve review of Silicon Valley Bank (federalreserve.gov; search “Silicon Valley Bank review”): the Fed’s April 2023 report on its own supervision of SVB, with supervisory materials (Ch 11).
- U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (hsgac.senate.gov; search “HSBC Case History”): the July 2012 HSBC report, its 99 exhibits and the hearing testimony (Ch 3, Ch 6).
- Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission records on FRASER (fraser.stlouisfed.org; search “Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission”): the commission’s documents, testimony and reports on the 2008 crash, kept by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (Ch 6).
Leaked and Declassified Files
- The Pentagon Papers, U.S. National Archives (archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers): the complete secret Vietnam War study, about 7,000 declassified pages, released in full in June 2011 (Ch 13).
- National Security Archive, George Washington University (nsarchive.gwu.edu): declassified U.S. government documents, many won through Freedom of Information Act requests, with staff analysis (Ch 5, Ch 13).
- U.S. Embassy Jakarta files from the 1960s, declassified in 2017, and the CIA’s 1968 research study “Indonesia—1965: The Coup That Backfired” (cia.gov/readingroom): what American officials knew about the killings as they happened.
- ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database (offshoreleaks.icij.org): records on more than 810,000 offshore companies and trusts from the Panama Papers and four other leaks; ICIJ notes that offshore companies have legitimate uses (Ch 10).
- Jonestown and Peoples Temple: A Digital Archive, San Diego State University (jonestown.sdsu.edu): transcripts, summaries and audio of the Temple tapes the FBI recovered, including the “death tape” recorded on the last day (Ch 4).
Companies’ Own Files
- Truth Tobacco Industry Documents, UCSF Industry Documents Library (industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco): a searchable archive of the tobacco industry’s internal documents, and the model for the opioid archive below (Ch 10).
- Opioid Industry Documents Archive, UCSF and Johns Hopkins University (industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/opioids): emails, sales reports, depositions and other records from opioid lawsuits and settlements, opened to the public in 2021 (Ch 6).
Listing a source does not mean its publisher endorses or reviewed the book.