National Security Archive
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The CIA Black Sites Program and the Gina Haspel Nomination
Today, the Archive provides the basis for an evidence-based review of the Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program, posting a selection of the most recent versions of declassified documents that reveal the RDI’s background. Continue reading
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NSA: Gina Haspel’s CIA Torture File
The Trump administration’s nominee to be CIA director, Gina Haspel, personally supervised the torture of a CIA detainee in 2002 leading to at least three waterboard sessions, subsequently drafted the cable that ordered destruction of the videotape evidence of torture, and served as a senior CIA official while the Agency was lying to itself, Presidents… Continue reading
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NSA: Cuba and The U.S.: ‘Intimate Diplomacy’
As Castro Era Ends, the National Security Archive posts Records on Back Channel Efforts toward Rapprochement by Pioneering Journalist Lisa Howard Continue reading
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NSA: The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the German Nuclear Question: Part II, 1965-1969
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), widely accepted today as a global standard for international nuclear policy, was in fact a source of significant tension between two staunch allies, the United States and West Germany, in the mid-1960s, as illustrated by declassified documents published for the first time today by the National Security Archive and the… Continue reading
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NSA: New Findings on Clerical Involvement in the 1953 Coup in Iran
Senior Iranian clerics reportedly received “large sums of money” from U.S. officials prior to the August 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, according to a contemporaneous British document located by researchers at the U.S. National Archives. It is posted in full today for the first time by the nongovernmental National Security Archive, based at… Continue reading
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CIA declassifies more of "Zendebad, Shah!" – internal study of 1953 Iran coup
A partially-declassified CIA history of the 1953 coup in Iran, released in late 2017, includes an-depth critique of how the agency approached the operation, highlighting the effects of bureaucracy and politics on the conduct of U.S. clandestine activities. The CIA report, posted today by the George Washington University-based National Security Archive, also reveals details about… Continue reading
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NSA: Rumsfeld Snowflakes Come in from the Cold
Washington D.C., January 24, 2018 – On the day before September 11, 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld believed the gravest threat to American national security was Pentagon bureaucracy, according to “snowflakes” he wrote that were released by the Defense Department after a five-year Freedom of Information Act fight and lawsuit by the National Security… Continue reading
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A “Harsh and Terrible … Solution”: Fidel Castro’s Armageddon Letter to Nikita Khrushchev
Homing in on the Cuban perspective, Dark Beyond Darkness aims to fill a persistent gap in the history – the general dismissal of Cuba’s stake – that not only skewed our understanding of the event for years but helped make the crisis so perilous in the first place. Continue reading
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Cuba: Documents Chart History of Secret Communications
With the approach of the 3rd anniversary of “17-D”—the iconic date of December 17, 2014, when President Barack Obama and President Raul Castro made public a historic breakthrough in U.S.-Cuba relations—the National Security Archive today announced the publication of a major collection of declassified records on the history of talks between the two nations. Continue reading
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NSA: NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard
Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner Continue reading
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Engaging North Korea II: Evidence from the Clinton Administration
The Clinton administration made plans for war against North Korea during the 1994 nuclear crisis. While U.S. officials believed they could “undoubtedly win,” however, they also understood “war involves many casualties,” according to documents posted today by the George Washington University-based National Security Archive. Continue reading
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NSA: U.S. Presidents and the Nuclear Taboo
U.S. presidents sometimes made nuclear threats in the course of Cold War crises and confrontations, but powerful social norms – not just military considerations – inhibited them from initiating the combat use of nuclear weapons, according to declassified documents posted today by the nongovernmental National Security Archive. Continue reading
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U.S. Embassy Tracked Indonesia Mass Murder 1965
The U.S. government had detailed knowledge that the Indonesian Army was conducting a campaign of mass murder against the country’s Communist Party (PKI) starting in 1965, according to newly declassified documents posted today by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University. The new materials further show that diplomats in the Jakarta Embassy kept… Continue reading
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The Cuban Missile Crisis at 55: U.S. Planned for Military Occupation of Cuba
The U.S. military drew up plans to occupy Cuba and establish a temporary government headed by a U.S. “commander and military governor” during the 1962 missile crisis, according to the recently declassified “Military Government Proclamation No. 1” posted today by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University. Continue reading
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NSA: Trump Hides Mar-a-Lago Records
Washington, D.C., September 15, 2017 – The Department of Homeland Security today released exactly two pages of Mar-a-Lago presidential visitor records in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by the National Security Archive, together with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in… Continue reading
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Chile: Secrets of State
Forty-four years after the U.S. supported military coup, the Santiago Museum of Memory and Human Rights has inaugurated a special exhibit of declassified CIA, FBI, Defense Department and White house records on the U.S. role in Chile and the Pinochet dictatorship. The unusual exhibit, which officially opened to the public on September 5, is titled… Continue reading
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Mar-a-Lago Visitor Logs Release Delayed to Sept. 15
The widely anticipated release of Mar-a-Lago visitor records during President Trump’s first six weeks in office has been delayed until noon on Friday, September 15, at the request of the government. Continue reading
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NSA: "Clean" Nukes and the Ecology of Nuclear War
30 August 2017 — National Security Archive Officials in 1960s Sought Studies of “Longer-term Consequences of Nuclear Attacks on the Health of People or on Their Living Environment” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 602 Continue reading
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1953 Iran Coup: New U.S. Documents Confirm British Approached U.S. in Late 1952 About Ousting Mosaddeq
Washington, D.C., August 8, 2017 – The British Foreign Office approached the Truman administration on more than one occasion in late 1952 to propose a coup to overthrow Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, according to freshly declassified State Department documents. Posted today for the first time, two previously Top-Secret memoranda from senior officials at State… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 