The National Security Archive The George Washington University Gelman Library Suite 701 2130 H Street N W Washington D C 20037 Phone 202 994-7000 Fax 202 994-7005 www nsarchive org nsarchiv@gwu edu Annual Report for 2013 The following statistics provide a performance index of the Archive’s work in 2013              Freedom of Information and declassification requests filed – 1 167 Freedom of Information and declassification appeals filed – 219 Pages of U S government documents released as the result of Archive requests – 82 537 including such news-making revelations as the first official acknowledgement of the legendary “Area 51” secret base in Nevada U S intelligence’s detection in December 1995 of activities at the Indian nuclear test site that suggested underground test preparations U S and British records relating to Canadian intelligence’s discovery in 1964 that Israel had contracted with Argentina to purchase over 80 tons of “yellow cake ” with virtually nonexistent safeguards CIA materials officially acknowledging the agency’s direct role in the 1953 Iran coup and documentary evidence of the collusion of Mexican officials with the Zeta drug cartel in the 2010 San Fernando massacre of 72 migrants attempting to reach the United States Pages of declassified documents delivered to publisher – 23 819 in one reference collection Mexico-United States Counternarcotics Policy 1969-2013 Evidence delivered to truth commissions and human rights investigators – 2 000 documents to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia for database on human rights violations in Colombia 52 documents to Article 19 and Fundación para la Justicia on the San Fernando massacres and disappearances of 2010 and 2011 for access to information and human rights cases in Mexican federal courts 1 document to the Coalición Pro Defensa del Migrante for a legal appeal of a Mexican foreign ministry information denial 61 documents to Guatemalan proscecutors for investigation of the Diario Militar case 19 documents to Guatemalan prosecutors for the criminal trial of Héctor Bol de la Cruz former Chief of National Police 60 documents to the Guatemala Kaibiles immigration fraud case in Los Angeles federal courts 60 documents pertaining to the disappearance of 19 ceramic factory workers to Argentina’s Prosecutor for Human Rights for the Campo de Mayo case before the Federal Court of San Martín 870 documents to the litigation unit of Argentina’s Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales for multiple human rights cases Books published by Archive staff and fellows – 4 The Pinochet File A Declassified Dossier on A trocity and Accountability by Peter Kornbluh New York The New Press 2013 Revised and Updated Edition 624 pp Pinochet Los Archivos Secretos by Peter Kornbluh Barcelona Critica 2013 Spanish Language Edition 432 pp The Family Jewels The CIA Secrecy and Presidential Power by John Prados Austin TX University of Texas Press 2013 388 pp Intel W ars The Secret History of the Fight A gainst Terror by Matthew M Aid New York NY Bloomsbury Press 2013 Paperback Edition 272 pp Electronic Books published by Archive staff and fellows – 42 bringing the Web site total to 451 Posts by Archive staff on Unredacted blog – 122 Posts by Archive staff on Dept of Secrets of ForeignPolicy com –13 Research requests to the Archive by letter – 6 by e-mail – 3 100 by phone – 1 500 Visiting researchers at the Archive’s Smith Bagley Research Center – 364 from 26 countries Unique visitors to the Archive’s Web site – more than 1 904 054 Pages in html downloaded from the Archive’s Web site – 11 858 342 32 489 html pages per day Bytes downloaded – 10 963 Gigabytes 30 04 GB per day Subscribers to the Archive’s email alerts — 6 223 Viewers of UnRedacted blog — 230 000 page views Followers on the Archive twitter feed — 8 062 Followers on the Archive facebook page — 5 597 Awards the Charles Horman Truth Foundation Award to Archive senior analyst Peter Kornbluh honoring his Chile declassification work another award from the University of Wisconsin’s Internet Scout Report recognizing “the most valuable and authoritative resources online ” Lexis-Nexis radio and TV transcripts of Archive staff interviews – 30 Factiva and Lexis-Nexis news stories citing the Archive – 687 1 January 2013 Colombian prosecutors said they would investigate allegations in a declassified State Department cable indicating that Colombian billionaire Víctor Carranza also known as the “Emerald Czar” was “responsible for the October 1997 Miraflores massacre ” Obtained under the FOIA by Archive analyst Michael Evans the document was first posted on the Archive Web site in December 2012 The hit movie Zero Dark Thirty sparked Archive staff to collect analyze and post on January 17 all the available official documents on the mission that killed Osama bin Laden in one electronic briefing book e-book —The Zero Dark Thirty File As the e-book points out despite the fact that most of the official record of the mission remains classified Zero Dark Thirty film producers Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal were given unprecedented access to classified information about the operation through briefings with high-ranking intelligence officials and Navy Seals who took part in the mission—making Hollywood’s treatment the current “account of record” for the mission ForeignPolicy com highlighted the Archive’s posting which attempts to balance the Hollywood version of the story with available official documentation and interview transcripts February 2013 On February 22 Archive senior analyst William Burr published on the Nuclear Vault portal an e-book documenting the detection by U S intelligence in December 1995 of activities at the Indian nuclear test site that suggested preparations for underground nuclear tests The documents show the difficulty of analyzing satellite photographs of possible test sites for personnel activity cable thickness and sizes of dirt piles—with some analysts terming the images as “clear as mud” in their emails The U S government took diplomatic action to discourage tests not yet aware that the government of India had yet to make a decision to conduct tests According to the State Department cables the prospect of provoking crippling economic sanctions from the west that would threaten India’s economic growth prevented another nuclear test The documents sparked widespread media attention in India with Frontier India The Economic Times and The Indian Express reporting on the publication March 2013 On March 5 legal proceedings in a historic Operation Condor trial began in Buenos Aires Argentina charging 25 high-ranking military officials including former Argentine presidents Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone with conspiracy to kidnap disappear torture and kill 171 opponents of the military dictatorships that dominated the Southern Cone in the 1970s and 1980s Among the victims were approximately 80 Uruguayans 50 Argentines 20 Chileans and a dozen from Paraguay Bolivia Peru and Ecuador who were targeted by Condor operatives Prominent victims of Operation Condor include two former Uruguayan legislators and a former Bolivian president Juan Torres murdered in Buenos Aires as well as former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his 26-year-old American colleague Ronni Moffitt assassinated by a car bomb in downtown Washington D C The kidnapping and disappearance of two Cuban Consulate officials in Buenos Aires on August 9 1976 also features in the prosecution The Archive provided documents and evidence at the request of Argentine prosecutors including the first briefing report from August 1976 to then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on the secret police and military collaboration in the Southern Cone to find and kill opponents of their military regimes Lead prosecutor Pablo Enrique Ouvina described the Archive’s documentary evidence as “establishing a comprehensive analytical framework of what Operation Condor was On March 13 during Sunshine Week March 10-16 Archive staff published the latest update of the government-wide December 2012 FOIA regulations audit entitled Outdated A gency Regs Undermine Freedom of Information Act showing that a majority of federal agencies have failed to update their Freedom of Information Act regulations to comply either with Congress’s changes to the law in 2007 or President Obama’s and Attorney General Holder’s changes to policy in 2009 This audit took months with Archive staff scouring agency Web sites and the Code of Federal Regulations to 2 compare how agencies propose and promulgate their FOIA rules interviewing key government officials and filing FOIA requests with every agency that had failed to post its FOIA regulations online The result was the first-ever complete listing and posting of all agency FOIA rules presented chronologically so that the key legal statutory and policy changes could be included as the metric against which agencies could be judged The audit found that 53 of 100 agencies did not change their regulations to meet requirements of the Open Government Act of 2007 and 59 of 100 agencies ignored the 2009 Obama-Holder guidance declaring a presumption of disclosure instead continuing the practice of unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles petty fee disputes endless interagency referrals and long delays Spurred by the Archive’s audit the Senate invited Archive director Tom Blanton to testify at the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on “We the People Fulfilling the Promise of Open Government Five Years After the OPEN Government Act of 2007 ” Blanton used the opportunity to show just how outdated many agency FOIA regulations really are and presented a “top ten” list of suggestions for “best practice” FOIA regulations Also to mark Sunshine Week the Archive bestowed upon the Department of Justice a repeat of its infamous “Rosemary Award” for worst FOIA performance named after President Nixon’s secretary who erased Watergate tapes for Justice’s failure to ensure that agency FOIA regulations that met the Obama standards The W ashington Post featured both recent awards in Al Kamen’s well-read column “In the Loop ” and in the paper’s roundup news article on Sunshine Week 2013 and news media ranging from The Huffington Post to MSNBC also picked up the story April 2013 On April 8 Chiquita Brands International filed a “reverse” Freedom of Information lawsuit to block the release of records to the National Security Archive on the company’s illicit payments to Colombian terrorist groups responsible for some of the worst human rights atrocities of Colombia’s decades-old civil war At issue are thousands of documents the company turned over to the Securities and Exchange Commission SEC from 1998-2004 as part of an investigation of the company’s illegal transactions with leftist insurgents and right-wing paramilitaries from the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia AUC The new case is the direct outgrowth of a 2010 lawsuit in which the Archive sought to compel the SEC to process a pair of FOIA requests relating to the Chiquita investigation The “reverse” FOIA filing is the latest development in a four-and-a-half-year Archive legal effort to document Chiquita’s financial relationships with Colombia’s illegal armed groups a lawsuit that previously opened more than 5 000 pages of Justice Department records on the case Chiquita remains the only major U S company ever convicted of financing a foreign terrorist group May 2013 On May 10 a Guatemalan court sentenced former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt to 80 years in prison for genocide and crimes against humanity only to have the verdict partially annulled by Guatemala’s high court less than two weeks later on the basis of procedural errors precipitated by the defendants’ lawyers’ boycotting the hearings Archive senior analyst Kate Doyle attended the historic trial in Guatemala and assisted the prosecution by providing declassified CIA and State Department files used in the prosecution argument that Ríos Montt had command responsibility in the massacre of more than 1 700 Mayan Indians in the early 1980s Doyle had previously published the leaked “Operation Sofia” documents detailing the scorched earth strategy ordered by Ríos Montt and retired Guatemalan military officers authenticated the Sofia documents during the proceedings Doyle’s commentary on the trial was featured in the New Y ork Times coverage in the online blog hosted by the Open Society Justice Initiative and in multiple news articles and broadcasts after the trial including The Nation magazine’s summary of the case Doyle’s 3 conclusion the case is not over and the survivors of the massacres “are waiting in the wings and if they have to speak again they will speak again”—the 700-page verdict against Ríos Montt has now been published as a book in Guatemala June 2013 On June 25 Archive senior analyst William Burr exposed a significant loophole in global nonproliferation policy in another widely-read e-book on the Nuclear Vault The posting featured U S and British archival diplomatic records relating to Canadian intelligence’s discovery in 1964 that Israel had contracted with Argentina to purchase over 80 tons of “yellow cake” uranium with virtually nonexistent safeguards Washington could not stop the sale all it could do was raise questions with Argentina about the importance of attaching meaningful safeguards to such transactions The United States vainly tried to get answers from the Israelis over whether the sale was consistent with their own “peaceful use” declarations An article that William Burr and Avner Cohen of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies wrote for Foreign Policy on-line about the yellow cake sale pointed out that this issue remains a problem in global nonproliferation policy there are no strong regulations to ensure that significant yellow cake sales are adequately safeguarded Leading Canadian Israeli and Latin American newspapers published stories about the documents On June 26 the Archive’s Mexico Migration Project launched Migration Declassified and its parallel Spanish site Migración Abierta a project that supports the rights of migrants in North and Central America by increasing transparency around security and law enforcement institutions in Mexico and the United States The site serves as a dissemination point for recently declassified documents on migration policy border enforcement migrant detention programs deportation policies and other issues in U S -Mexico relations especially U S intelligence and security assistance programs In its first six months of operation Migration Declassified had a huge impact in the U S and Mexican media generating dozens of headlines on the 2010 massacre of 72 migrants in San Fernando and contributing key evidence to the debate over U S espionage in Mexico July 2013 On July 18 Migration Declassified posted the results of its first investigation on the U S Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE ’s controversial “Interior Repatriation Program ” The report included evidence that U S and Mexican negotiators clashed over which rights would be extended to migrants drawn into the deportation program and that the U S pushed to make participation compulsory for certain kinds of deportees Declassified documents published in the collection showed that Mexican officials worried about “appearing ‘complicit’” with U S deportation policies and feared that human rights groups would accuse them of forcing “individuals to be repatriated to the interior against their will ” On July 24 the Archive anticipated the 60th anniversary of the 1953 coup in Iran which the U S undertook with British support with a one-day conference revisiting the secret history with new evidence described in an August entry below The conference focused on introducing new archival evidence on the event already one of the most studied episodes of the Cold War in the Middle East Archive deputy director Malcolm Byrne was the lead organizer of the meeting hosted by the Archive’s partners at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Byrne also chaired a panel and delivered a presentation on new evidence from Russian and Azeri archives August 2013 Public demand for Archive documents crashed the GWU Web site on August 15 when Archive senior fellow Jeffrey Richelson published a recently declassified and less redacted version of the CIA history “The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance The U-2 and Oxcart Programs 19541974”—obtained from an appeal of a CIA FOIA denial Among the newly disclosed information contained in the history are revelations that U S spy planes targeted China to help India 4 between 1962 and 1967 never-before-seen information on British participation in the U-2 program and use of British crews to “confuse the Soviets” on overflights of French nuclear sites and specific data on all U-2 flights over the Soviet Union including dates mission numbers pilots airfields payloads and routes But what really caught the attention of the media was the numerous references in the history to the legendary secret air base Area 51 and Groom Lake Nevada including its precise location on an Atomic Energy Commission map The version of the history released to Richelson originally in 1998 had all references to Area 51 redacted making this new release the first official confirmation by the CIA of the existence of Area 51 as a test base for U-2 and other spy planes News outlets from the NBC Today Show to The W all Street Journal covered the story including a front-page New Y ork Times feature and Richelson gave a record number of interviews On August 19 marking the 60th anniversary of the U S -backed coup in Iran of 1953 deputy director Malcolm Byrne posted a comprehensive e-book consisting of rare documents obtained from the CIA through the FOIA supplemented by fascinating materials from the British National Archives The CIA materials were noteworthy for the first-ever officially declassified acknowledgement of the agency’s direct role in the coup— something the spy agency has steadfastly denied for decades even though that fact has been well known almost from the time of the coup itself The British records gave a remarkable window into the pernicious dynamic that regularly asserts itself into the declassification sphere—the role of foreign governments in vetoing the public release of American history In this instance the documents show the British—back in 1978—learning for the first time that the State Department was about to publish a compilation of materials on the coup in its world-famous FRUS series The internal memos and “minutes” go on to reveal the increasingly alarmed attempts by British officials to block that publication—which remains blocked to this day Publicity surrounding the e-book included hundreds of news stories television and radio accounts and blog items around the globe making note of the new releases and the CIA’s longawaited acknowledgement of its role Not surprisingly some circles especially in Iran took the information and ran The Iranian Majles—the Parliament—actually voted a resolution calling for the government to take the United States to the International Court of Justice for its role September 2013 For the 40th anniversary of the Chilean coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende Archive senior analyst Peter Kornbluh participated in a wide series of commemorative events in Santiago Chile He spoke before standing-room-only crowds at three different universities collaborated with the Chilean media in providing declassified documents on the coup for multiple news stories and met with lawyers and human rights activists pursuing legal cases Kornbluh also shared the new revised 40th anniversary edition of his book The Pinochet File A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability New York The New Press 2013 and the translated Spanish edition Pinochet Los Archivos Secretos Barcelona Critica 2013 On the actual anniversary September 11 the Archive's Chile Documentation Project posted new documents that spotlighted Kissinger’s role as the principal policy architect of U S efforts to oust the democratically elected Allende and to assist in the consolidation of the Pinochet dictatorship and the human rights violations that followed At a special “Tribute to Justice” event on September 9 in New York Kornbluh was honored to receive the Charles Horman Truth Foundation Award for the Archive’s work in obtaining the declassification of thousands of formerly-secret documents on Chile after Pinochet’s arrest in London in October 1998 The award was presented to him by Chris Lemmon the son of the late actor Jack Lemmon who starred in the Oscar-winning film on Chile Missing Judge Baltasar Garzón of Spain and Judge Juan Guzman of Chile both of whom sought to prosecute Pinochet also received awards 5 On September 15 Archive senior fellow John Prados published his most recent book The Family Jewels The CIA Secrecy and Presidential Power with the University of Texas Press as part of its Discovering America Series The Archive won the disclosure of the long-secret “family jewels” report from the CIA on June 26 2007 15 years after filing a FOIA request for it The 702-page “family jewels” infamously catalogs 25 years of the CIA’s illegal wiretapping domestic surveillance assassination plots and human experimentation The new book makes the connection between this scurrilous history and the ongoing controversies today over eavesdropping assassinations and torture On September 25 Archive senior analyst William Burr and visiting fellow Matthew Aid posted the results of an appeal of a previously-released version of the National Security Agency’s internal history A merican Cryptology during the Cold W ar first released to the Archive in 2008 The initial release revealed that the NSA had a watch list of over 1 600 Americans whose communications were being monitored under a project codenamed MINARET The new release divulged an eye-popping list of targets including civil rights leaders Martin Luther King and Whitney Young boxer Muhammad Ali and journalists Tom Wicker and Art Buchwald The NSA also monitored the overseas telephone calls and cable traffic of Senators Frank Church DIdaho and Howard Baker R-Tennessee Multiple news and online outlets covered the documents ranging from The Knoxville News Sentinel to The Guardian Der Tagesspiegel Germany A dnKronos Italy and Zero Hora Brazil Also on September 25 Archive deputy director Malcolm Byrne took part in an invitation-only meeting scholars of Iran with newly-elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in New York City Rouhani delivered a talk about his intentions as president that received front-page coverage in The New Y ork Times then took questions from the group for an hour offering a revealing picture of a relaxed confident and cautiously-optimistic leader This was in sharp contrast to the impression his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmedinejad made at a similar session in 2005 also attended by Byrne where the newly-elected president betrayed an extraordinarily distorted view of the West and insisted that he possessed virtually a direct line to the Almighty One of the best outcomes for the Archive of the 2013 Iran elections has been the appointment of Mohammad Javad Zarif as Foreign Minister Zarif in previous years including when he was Iran’s Ambassador to the U N had taken a personal interest in the Archive’s Iran project meeting several times with Byrne and his fellow organizers and at one point in 2008 escorting them around Tehran in his official car for two hours for an uninterrupted discussion of the current political scene On September 26-29 the Archive held a critical oral history gathering of U S and Russian veterans of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program colloquially known as NunnLugar at the Musgrove conference center on St Simons Island Georgia to develop lessons learned enrich our understanding of the challenges of non-proliferation and provide insights for further U S -Russian joint efforts to prevent proliferation of weapons of mass destruction Archive staff prepared a 450-page briefing book containing 70 key declassified multi-source documents for participants to help ground the discussions in historical evidence A small group of academic experts and respected journalists steeped in the subject posed questions and pressed the “veterans” for responses beyond what is known from existing public accounts while Archive director Tom Blanton chaired the discussion Among the American participants were former Senator Sam Nunn former Defense Secretary William Perry and retired Maj Gen William Burns Nunn-Lugar implementers and current Obama administration officials Rose Gottemoeller Laura Holgate and Andrew Weber former Nunn aide Richard Combs retired Russian Strategic Forces generals Evgeny Maslin and Victor Yesin 6 nonproliferation experts William Potter and John Steinbruner director of Russia’s USA and Canada Institute Sergei Rogov and Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist David Hoffman The gathering marked the beginning of a multi-year research project directed by Archive senior fellow Svetlana Savranskaya to draw lessons and models from the Nunn-Lugar experience for U S -Russian cooperation and future denuclearization efforts The final day of the gathering brought the Nunn-Lugar history to the present as participants applied lessons to today’s challenge of destroying Syrian chemical weapons October 2013 On October 5-12 Archive analyst Carlos Osorio met with human rights and government organizations in Argentina Uruguay and Paraguay on a series of technology-sharing evidence management and database-design projects To facilitate the multiple Operation Condor trials in Argentina Osorio worked directly with the Center for Legal and Social Studies CELS to create a special online evidence database of records relating to Condor operations The database will facilitate easy access by all lawyers and judges involved in the historic trial In Paraguay he contributed to a major technological effort to catalogue index and post online a database of the 700 000 documents in the Archivo del Terror so that the documents can be searched and accessed on the Web rather than viewed only at the Supreme Court where the collection is currently housed In Uruguay he is working directly with the Archive for the Commission of Peace COMIPAZ and the National Archive to design a process of digital storage of Uruguayan intelligence records that addresses issues of privacy and access and makes the records searchable for use in future human rights trials On October 24 Migration Declassified made headlines across Mexico by publishing a Department of Homeland Security DHS memo obtained through FOIA indicating that Mexico wanted to “put to bed” bilateral tensions arising from the leak of sensitive intelligence indicating that the U S National Security Agency NSA spied on Mexican citizens The information was discovered among a set of declassified briefing papers prepared for DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano in advance of her July 2013 meetings with President Enrique Peña Nieto and other Mexican officials Published in coordination with prominent journalist Carmen Aristegui and MVS Noticias in Mexico the revelations produced more than 100 news stories and broadcasts in Mexico November 2013 In November the Obama administration announced the outline for the United States’ second National Action Plan and included several potentially powerful improvements to the FOIA including one spurred by the Archive's 2013 comprehensive FOIA audit Freedom of Information Regulations Still Outdated Still Undermining Openness The Action Plan committed the administration to develop a set of common FOIA regulations that will make it easier for requesters to understand and navigate the FOIA process and easier for the government to keep regulations up to date In another nod to the Archive's Audit rare bipartisan legislation passed out of the House Government Reform Committee in March co-sponsored by chairman Darrell Issa R-CA and ranking member Elijah Cummings D-MD which included a 180-day mandate for agencies to update their FOIA regulations On November 6 award-winning journalist Marcela Turati used a set of declassified U S diplomatic cables from the Archive’s Mexico Migration Project collection to shed new light on what she called “the collusion of Mexican municipal state and federal officials” with the murders of hundreds of migrants in and around San Fernando Tamaulipas by a criminal organization known as Los Zetas The Archive complemented her Proceso magazine article with an e-book on the violence in Tamaulipas generating dozens of additional news stories in Mexico and Central America Headlines cited U S Embassy reports that narcotrafficking organizations operated with “near total impunity in the face of compromised local security forces” and evidence linking the “Zetas” to soldiers from the Kaibiles an elite Guatemalan special forces unit known for spectacular acts of cruelty and brutality during that country’s civil war 7 On November 7 the Archive attracted international media attention with an e-book commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the realistic NATO nuclear release exercise that resulted in an unprecedented Soviet reaction that US intelligence eventually inferred was an expression of a genuine belief on the part of Soviet leaders that US was planning a nuclear first strike Despite the dangerous ramifications of this possible nuclear miscalculation the history of the Able Archer 83 war scare had until this posting remained largely unavailable to the public This dearth of primary sources had even led critics— with some justification—to describe the study of the war scare as an echo chamber of inadequate research and misguided analysis and circle reference dependency with an overreliance upon the same scanty evidence In response the Archive filled this echo chamber by posting the A ble A rcher 83 Sourcebook—the most comprehensive collection of documents about the incident available These documents came from Freedom of Information Act releases by the CIA the National Security Agency the Departments of Defense and State research findings from American and British archives as well as formerly classified Soviet Politburo and KGB files interviews with ex-Soviet generals and records from other former communist states The revelations of this nuclear near miss led to articles in ForeignPolicy com Wired The Atlantic an editorial in The Washington Post and a critique of Able Archer 83—and how the U S classification system masked its danger from the public—in The Bulletin of The A tomic Scientists written by Archive FOIA coordinator Nate Jones the editor of the Sourcebook On November 14 a previously secret Pentagon memo published on Migration Declassified produced dozens of headlines and a political firestorm in Mexico with important new evidence on a Top Secret U S intelligence facility in Mexico that barred Mexican personnel and focused exclusively on “high value targeting ” The new revelations were published in partnership with MVS Noticias and Carmen Aristegui who devoted more than 40 minutes of her popular radio program to the issue Dozens of headlines followed causing Mexican legislators to take to the airwaves to call on the Mexican Attorney General to investigate the matter in light of other U S espionage activities disclosed to journalists by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden The publication traced the outlines of a two-track U S intelligence program one a network of joint intelligence centers staffed by personnel from both countries the other a secret facility located inside the U S Embassy to which the Mexicans are not invited On November 21 in a huge victory for the Archive’s Colombia Documentation Project U S District Court Judge Richard Leon rejected Chiquita Brands International’s legal effort to prevent the release under the Freedom of Information Act FOIA of records relating to the company’s illegal payments to a Colombian terrorist group Judge Leon upheld the decision by the U S Securities and Exchange Commission SEC to deny Chiquita’s request for confidential treatment of corporate records it had turned over during the course of the SEC’s investigation of its operations in Colombia The ruling cleared the way for the SEC to finish processing FOIA requests submitted five years ago by the Archive relating to the company’s illegal payments to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia AUC a right-wing “paramilitary” organization responsible for the majority of murders disappearances and forced displacements in Colombia’s internal conflict The documents at issue were primarily legal and financial records pertaining to more than a decade of “sensitive payments” made by the company and its subsidiaries to the AUC and to leftist guerrilla groups like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia FARC and the National Liberation Army ELN The Archive prevailed thanks to pro bono legal representation from the Public Justice Advocacy Clinic at the GWU Law School 8 On November 22 the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F Kennedy the Archive's Cuba Documentation Project generated significant international attention to Kennedy's last act —his effort to advance a rapprochement with Cuba Cigar Aficionado featured Project director Peter Kornbluh’s article on Kennedy's November 1963 secret diplomacy with Cuba and a distilled version appeared on the front page of the leading Mexican newspaper La Jornada and in Cuba an English version was posted on the Archive blog Unredacted and reprinted on Web sites throughout the country Kornbluh did a lengthy interview on the issue for the BBC news program The W orld and other radio interviews with Kornbluh aired on various talk radio stations around the country The assessment of this history is drawn from Kornbluh's forthcoming book Talking with Castro The Hidden History of U S -Cuban Diplomacy to be published in 2014 by the University of North Carolina Press In late November Archive senior analyst Peter Kornbluh returned to Chile and testified before the judge prosecuting military officers for the murder of Charles Horman about whom the movie Missing was made He also testified in the first legal proceedings against a civilian collaborator in the coup El Mercurio owner Agustin Edwards During the proceedings Edward’s admitted to meeting with then CIA director Richard Helms and then U S national security advisor Henry Kissinger shortly after Allende’s election but denied any role in inciting the coup Documents provided to the prosecution by Kornbluh tell a different story of Edwards’s helping to “pave the way” for the coup and show that El Mercurio received millions of dollars from the CIA which subsidized pro-coup propaganda and the paper’s coverup of regime human rights abuses Kornbluh called for further declassification of CIA records that may further incriminate Edwards telling the Santiago Times that “the CIA does not funnel U S $2 million to places like El Mercurio without keeping records of when how and how much There are budget payment and meeting reports written by CIA bagmen who transferred monies to Edwards Group officials that remain secret ” December 2013 On December 4 the Archive’s Malcolm Byrne and Archive Iran Project partner John Tirman of MIT met in Brazil with the Defense Minister and other key officials to open the secret history of the fascinating but short-lived Brazil-Turkey-Iran uranium swap offer of 2010 Regardless of how the November 2013 deal between Iran and the P5 1 pans out in the new year—but especially if it blows up which naysayers in both Iran and the West hope will happen—the experiences and missed opportunities of events such as the 2010 proposal will have much to teach policy-makers about the mechanics and benefits of pursuing multilateral efforts at nuclear nonproliferation Stay tuned On December 5 the John F Kennedy Presidential Library finally declassified and released the remaining boxes of government papers of Attorney General Robert Kennedy The release came after a protracted multi-year campaign by the Archive's Cuba Documentation Project to obtain public access for a major historical collection of records that had been sequestered until recently The Archive worked strategically with NARA officials JFK Library officials the media and even members of Robert Kennedy's family to prod the process of declassification forward Archive analyst Peter Kornbluh called the release a goldmine of material for current and future historians and The Boston Globe ran a multi-page report based on the documents and quoting Kornbluh On December 9 the Archive and its publisher ProQuest released the 41st documentary collection in the Digital National Security Archive DNSA series— Mexico-United States Counternarcotics Policy 1969-2013 This collection is the first covering Mexico for the Archive and is the result of a long-term intensive effort by 9 Archive senior analyst Kate Doyle The over-1 800 document 23 000 pages collection traces the impact of the U S “war on drugs” on Mexico-U S relations from the Nixon administration to the first term of the Obama administration and helps researchers gain a deep understanding of forty years in the history of one of the United States’ most critical bilateral relationships On December 18 Cuban authorities in Havana granted permission to Archive senior analyst Peter Kornbluh for a second visit with Alan Gross the American USAID subcontractor imprisoned in Cuba for illicitly smuggling satellite communications equipment into the country Since his first visit with Gross in November 2012 Kornbluh has been working to document Gross’s case including Gross’s call for his release and the improvement of bilateral relations between the U S and Cuba This second visit highlighted the urgency to obtain Gross’s release for the sake of his own health and safety and to advance the future of U S -Cuban relations Kornbluh is now working to obtain analyze and disseminate documentation on the history of prisoner swaps with Cuba—a history where there is ample precedent going back to the early 1960s when the Kennedy administration traded Cubans held in the United States for U S citizens held in Cuba on charges similar to those facing Alan Gross On December 20 Toby McIntosh editor of freedominfo org the Archive’s virtual network covering freedom-of-information issues and movements worldwide published the fourth in a series of special reports probing the transparency of nine intergovernmental organizations that set international policy norms in finance trade economic development and the environment The initial reports looked at the G8 the Trans-Pacific Trade Talks the Financial Stability Board and the G20 Each report found evidence of inadequate transparency in many forms in the organizations studied especially in the areas of access to documents barriers to participation and disclosure during meetings and negotiations Readership of the freedominfo org site has averaged 2 100 unique visitors per day spiking on the publication of the special IGO reports Readers also followed regular reporting on the activities of the Open Government Partnership In 2013 the Archive proudly celebrated the 20th anniversary of H-Diplo an electronic discussion network and Web site dedicated to the study of diplomatic and international history H-Diplo maintains a member discussion network of nearly 5 000 subscribers and commissions scholarly reviews of journal articles and roundtable debates about key works in the field of diplomatic and international history The Archive has helped support this unique network of scholars over the past ten years through a fellowship underwriting the work of the H-Diplo managing editor Diane Labrosse who oversees the member network editorial board and publications 10