Thanks for the replies.
Yes, Rivka, I have something specific in mind. The trouble is that I don't want to go into too much detail because I don't want to give the story away. But...
I want the US government -- and probably its security services -- to have decided that covering up the events of a pivotal historical event was a good idea. Nobody -- not even intrepid DP reporters! -- ever find out the full story, so years / decades later people are still wondering.
The release of information date is only important in so far as I don't want to put the story fifty years after said event and find out that there is some rule by which information is released into the public domain after forty! (Going for accuracy / authenticity here, folks!)
(In Britain, there is something called the thirty-years rule; after thirty years, documents from the Cabinet Office are made available to the public; I guess I had that kind of thing in the back of my mind. BTW, individual census returns here are sealed for 100 years -- very annoying when you are trying to do research on the 1920s and 1030s!)
Of course, I could go down the totally illegal destruction of information route, which would get me out of a huge hole with very little effort on my part. Yeah... Looking good...
Rat: "intriguing Chris fanfic"? H'm. Don't know about that. At the moment, it is a few thousand words of disjointed angsty drivel festering on my hard drive. Can't really guarantee that it will ever be anything more.
Chris