A couple years back, we experienced what was probably the greatest viral campaign we've ever seen: I am, of course, referring to the marketing behind Christoper Nolan's The Dark Knight. In the months leading up to the film, people were getting clues that had them running around cities all over the world and I even got to see a Harvey Dent campaign van in New York City that stopped and gave pins and bumper stickers to people waiting on line to watch a taping of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It was amazing and now that we're only eight months away from the release of The Dark Knight Rises, it's all starting up again.

Just yesterday we posted two mysterious, confidential CIA documents concerning a missing scientist named Dr. Leonid Pavel, an expert in nuclear fuel cycle technologies and reactor designs. Today another document has arrived online, this one courtesy of The Fire Rises Twitter account. Check out the image below and click on it to see it full size.



Obviously a great deal of this document is blacked out, but here's what we do know: the CIA is orchestrating a move called Operation Early Bird that will involve a $3 million payment drop to a militia for the return of Dr. Pavel. The name of said militia is blacked out, but could this be Bane's crew and/or the League of Shadows? It's probably going to be a long time before we get any real answers to what's going on, but hopefully this is all leading to the first theatrical trailer for The Dark Knight Rises.

UPDATE: Turns out that if you type http://www.operationearlybird.com/ into your browser you will go to a website with a countdown clock that ends at 10:00am PST tomorrow. As you can see, this fits in perfectly with the last line of the document above.