Electronic Briefing Book
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NSA: Every Nuclear-Tipped Missile is an “Accident Waiting to Happen”
nuclear accident never produced a nuclear detonation, but according to a new book by Eric Schlosser every nuclear-tipped missile “is an accident waiting to happen, a potential act of mass murder.” Schlosser’s book, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident, and the Illusion of Safety (Penguin Press, 2013) includes a truly sobering account of… Continue reading
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NSA: Anatoly S. Chernyaev Diary, 1973 – Brezhnev Elevated Detente over Class Struggle — to the Dismay of his Politburo Colleagues
Chernyaev, deputy head of the International Department of the Central Committee (and later a key foreign policy aide to Mikhail Gorbachev), continues to marvel at the contradictory and enigmatic person at the pinnacle of the Soviet leadership — General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. Continue reading
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NSA: National Security Agency Tasked with Targeting Adversaries’ Computers for Attack Since Early 1997, According to Declassified Document
Since at least 1997, the National Security Agency (NSA) has been responsible for developing ways to attack hostile computer networks as part of the growing field of Information Warfare (IW), according to a recently declassified internal NSA publication posted today by the non-governmental National Security Archive (“the Archive”) at The George Washington University. Continue reading
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NSA: The Thatcher-Gorbachev Conversations
Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister who passed away this week, built a surprising mutual-admiration relationship with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s — including behind-the-scenes agreement against the reunification of Germany, and profound disagreement about nuclear abolition — according to translated Soviet records of key meetings between the two leaders, posted… Continue reading
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NSA: Reading the North Korean Tea Leaves: The Perpetual Struggle to Fathom Pyongyang’s Motives and Goals
For decades, the erratic behavior of North Korea’s enigmatic leaders has often masked a mix of symbolic and pragmatic motives, according to declassified documents posted today by the National Security Archive. During earlier crises, Kim Jong Un’s father and grandfather postured and threatened the region in ways markedly similar to the behavior of the new… Continue reading
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Freedom of Information Follies: FOIA Reviewers Declassify Same Rwanda Document Four Times, Creating New Secrets Each Time
The U.S. government’s Freedom of Information Act reviewers produced four different versions of the same State Department document over a 12-year period, releasing different information each time, according to the National Security Archive’s posting today of the documents obtained by author and journalist Michael Dobbs. Continue reading
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National Security Archive: The Zero Dark Thirty File
The poster for the blockbuster movie Zero Dark Thirty features black lines of redaction over the title, which unintentionally illustrate the most accurate take-away from the film – that most of the official record of the hunt for Osama bin Laden is still shrouded in secrecy, according to the National Security Archive’s ZD30 briefing book,… Continue reading
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NSA: Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan Was Not a Grand Design But a Grand Entanglement Resulting from Faulty Intelligence, Excessive Secrecy…
On December 12, 1979, the Soviet Politburo gathered to formally approve the decision made several days earlier to send a “limited contingent” of Soviet forces into Afghanistan. Continue reading
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Declassified 1964 National Intelligence Estimate Predicts India’s Bomb But Not Israel’s
Finds “Better than Even” Chance India Will Soon Build a Bomb; But Mistakenly Concludes Israeli Leaders “Probably Have Not Yet Decided” Continue reading
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NSA: The Haqqani History: Bin Ladin’s Advocate Inside the Taliban
In the wake of the State Department’s recent designation of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Haqqani Network as a terrorist organization, declassified documents posted today — on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks — by the National Security Archive offer new insight into the Haqqani family’s long history with militancy. The records on Network founder Jalaluddin Haqqani detail… Continue reading
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Anatoly S. Chernayev Diary, 1972
Today the National Security Archive publishes excerpts from Anatoly S. Chernyaev’s diary of 1972 for the first time in English translation with edits and postscript by the author. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 