In March of 2006, we scanned and published portions of a vintage Marine Corps Institute textbook on chemical warfare defense, from around 1980. Never to our knowledge previously available online, that manual provides a wealth of information on chemical and biological weapons in an accessable, straightforward fashion.
We only reproduced portions of the book, though. Left out was more than half the text and most of the illustrations, concerning Marine Corps procedures and a wealth of information on the personal protective gear of the era, none of which is of anything other than historical interest. While we are very interested in history, and some of the information doubtless remains useful - like how to properly fit and don an M17-family chemical protective mask - none of it is really so phenomenally interesting or relevant that we wanted to scan it and put it online.
The Marine Corps Institute is still around, still serving the same basic function it was around 1980, and long before - educating young jarheads in the finer points of modern warfighting. A list (probably somewhat outdated) of their courses is available here. You need to be a Marine or Marine reservist to access the online courses, of course. After all, we can't let just anyone learn the finer points of, oh, spelling, punctuation, or basic nutrition, USMC-style (courses 0118, 0119, and 3316, respectively). That would be wrong.
We recently made a FOIA request for the class materials for course 572 - that would be "NBC Individual Survival Measures", the apparent successor to our chemical warfare defense textbook of yore. To be fair, the USMC responded quite promptly - we got a response by email in about ten days. To be not so fair, they evidently really don't want to better educate the world about defenses against nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, because they sent the coursebook for MCI course 5714a (57.14a) - "Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC) Reconnaissance and Contamination Avoidance", which it is claimed is the "updated replacement course" for course 572. Hmmn, let's see - "survival measures" were superceded by "reconnaissance and avoidance"? I'm a little skeptical, myself. Especially since the contants of the PDF file for course 57.14a are dated August, 1997, the PDF file was created in September, 1999, and was last modified in March of 2000. Nevermind that 572 was, according to this MCI PDF file, introduced in FY2004; I'm sure that's just a mistake, and the government would never, you know, lie...
An interesting side note came up when we examined the metadata for the PDF. The "author" field reads "ILM Corporation". Industrial Light and Magic, perhaps? Seems an odd choice for someone to put together training materials, but we couldn't immediately find another ILM Corporation...
So, as disappointing as it may be, we give you the "official" replacement for the modern version of what we've already published - Marine Corps Institute 57.14A, NBC Reconnaissance and Contamination Avoidance. 163 pages, 1.18 megabytes of really dumbed-down, feel-good training, government style, available (without enlisting or making a FOIA request) nowhere else. You're welcome. :)
It took some wrangling on our part - and some pretty disingenious explanations on their part - but we finally got ahold of the course materials for course 572, after all. It, in all of it's several-hundred-megabyte (we kid you not) glory, can be seen here, in a rather more exciting TCUEC exclusive than the PDF file just above.