40 YEARS OF FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACTION
2022 postings and publications
This page shows all EBBs, News, Books, and Unredacted postings.
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Unredacted blog
NYT Names “After Ayotzinapa” One of 2022’s Best Podcasts The New York Times has named “After Ayotzinapa” one of the “Best Podcasts of 2022,” calling it a “jaw-dropping account” that “…
Briefing Book 818
Edited by Peter Kornbluh
Washington, D.C., December 13, 2022 - In the immediate aftermath of the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev met with the Czechoslovakian Communist Party leader,…
News
Washington, D.C., December 12, 2022 – Today, the National Security Archive relaunched its platform of Russian-language primary sources featuring a new search engine that allows researchers to perform…
Briefing Book 817
Edited by William Burr
Washington, D.C., December 9, 2022 – Canadian inspectors visiting the Canada-Indian Reactor (CIR) at Trombay during June 1968 were “unsettled” by data suggesting that India was heading toward the “…
Unredacted blog
The National Security Archive, along with our scholarly partners at ProQuest, is publishing a timely collection on the 20-year U.S. war in Afghanistan. The new Digital National Security Archive (DNSA…
Unredacted blog
The Archive is deeply saddened to announce the recent passing of senior fellow Dr. John Prados, a celebrated military and intelligence historian and one of the founders of the Archive. A…
News
By the Archive
Washington, D.C., November 30, 2022 - We are deeply saddened to announce the passing yesterday of National Security Archive senior fellow Dr. John Prados, a celebrated military and intelligence…
Briefing Book 816
Edited by William Burr
Washington, D.C., November 18, 2022 - A top safety official at a U.S. nuclear weapons lab wrote that “the public must be encouraged to realize that risks [of an unintentional nuclear detonation]…
Briefing Book 815
Edited by Svetlana Savranskaya
Washington, D.C., November 3, 2022 – As Cuban-Soviet ties grew stronger from late 1960 through early 1961, the Cubans repeatedly asked for military assistance and security guarantees from the Soviets…
Unredacted blog
The United Nations Human Rights Council recently voted to adopt a resolution to address the human rights implications of the United States’ nuclear legacy in the Marshall Islands. The October 7th…
Briefing Book 814
Edited by Peter Kornbluh
Washington D.C., October 28, 2022 - Sixty years ago today, the most dangerous days of the Cuban Missile Crisis came to an end—and the cover-up of the deal that would end the crisis began.…
Briefing Book 813
By Tom Blanton
Washington, D.C., October 27, 2022 - The most dangerous 24 hours of the Cuban Missile Crisis came on Saturday, October 27, 1962, 60 years ago today, as the U.S. moved closer to attacking Cuba and…
Briefing Book 809, Special Exhibit 809
Edited by Tom Blanton
The Cuban Missile Crisis actually lasted 59 days, not the fabled "13 days" so familiar from books and Hollywood. Soviet nuclear warheads arrived in Cuba on October 4, 1962, and did not leave until…
Briefing Book 812
Edited by William Burr
Washington, D.C., October 21, 2022 - President John F. Kennedy made unilateral decisions to blockade Cuba and approve other military moves, but winning the support of European allies remained central…
Unredacted blog
The Archive’s Cuban Missile Crisis @ 60 Series Continues The National Security Archive’s Cuban Missile Crisis @ 60 series continues with two new recent postings on 1) U.N. Ambassador Adlai…
Briefing Book 811
Edited by Peter Kornbluh
Washington D.C., October 17, 2022 - In a secret “eyes only” memorandum for John F. Kennedy, written 60 years ago today at the outset of the Cuban Missile Crisis, U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson…
Briefing Book 810
Edited by Svetlana Savranskaya
Washington, D.C., October 14, 2022 - Today the National Security Archive publishes for the first time in any language a translation of the first meeting between Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and…
Unredacted blog
The Cuban Missile Crisis @ 60 The Cuban Missile Crisis actually lasted 59 days, not the fabled “13 days” so familiar from books and Hollywood, according to a new collection recently announced by the…
News
By Tom Blanton and Nate Jones
Washington D.C., October 4, 2022 – Federal judge James Boasberg today supported a CIA claim that a public document about a famous nuclear war scare should be censored “to protect ‘intelligence…
Briefing Book 808
Edited by Svetlana Savranskaya
Washington, D.C., October 3, 2022 - Sixty years ago, on October 1, 1962, four Soviet Foxtrot-class diesel submarines, each of which carried one nuclear-armed torpedo, left their base in the Kola Bay…
Briefing Book 807
Edited by Claire Dorfman
Washington, D.C., September 30, 2022 - To mark this year’s anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, the National Security Archive today posted an essential collection of ten key U.S. documents on…
Briefing Book 806
Edited by William Burr and Peter Kornbluh
Washington D.C. September 22, 2022 - The Soviets exposed then Vice President Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat, to ionizing radiation during his famous visit to Moscow in July 1959, according to…
Briefing Book 805
Edited by William Burr and Peter Kornbluh
Washington D.C., September 15, 2022 - On December 9, 1975, as Secretary of State Henry Kissinger prepared to travel to Moscow for arms control talks, he placed an urgent phone call to Soviet…
Briefing Book 804
Edited by Peter Kornbluh and William Burr
Washington D.C., September 13, 2022 - On the 5th anniversary of the CIA’s September 13, 2017, decision to pull its agents out of Cuba, after several operatives were stricken with what has…
Briefing Book 803
Edited by Peter Kornbluh
Washington D.C., September 12, 2022 - One day after the violent, U.S.-backed, coup d’état in Chile, the overthrow of Salvador Allende was the very first item in President Richard Nixon’s September 12…
Unredacted blog
Resources for the Trump Mar-a-Lago Records Saga The extraordinary saga of former President Trump’s mishandling of government records, including classified national security information,…
Briefing Book 802
Compiled and edited by Svetlana Savranskaya and Tom Blanton
For more information, contact: National Security Archive
202.994.7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu
Washington D.C., August 30, 2022 – The National Security Archive mourns the passing today of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, 1931-2022, first and last president of the Soviet Union, who…
Briefing Book 801
Edited by Michael Evans
Washington, D.C., 24 August 2022 - As the U.S. contemplated a more aggressive drug war strategy in Colombia in the 1980s, top intelligence officials said success there would require “a bloody,…
Briefing Book 800
Edited by William Burr
Washington, D.C., August 8, 2022 – After years of research and planning, U.S. officials and scientists overseeing the Manhattan Project were startlingly unprepared for the emergence of…
Unredacted blog
Pentagon and DHS Announce More Destroyed January 6 Phone Records The Pentagon has joined the Department of Homeland Security in destroying potential evidence related to the January 6 Capitol attack.…
Briefing Book 799
Compiled and edited by visiting Scoville Fellow Rachel Santarsiero
Washington, D.C., July 26, 2022 – 75 years ago, President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act into law, marking a major restructuring of the U.S. government’s military and…
Unredacted blog
DEA No Longer Accepting Emailed FOIA Requests The Drug Enforcement Administration (a component of the Department of Justice) recently told the National Security Archive that it will no longer accept…
Briefing Book 798
Edited by William Burr
Washington, D.C., July 14, 2022 – For decades starting in the late 1940s, influential internal U.S. government analyses provided civilian and military leaders with staggering estimates of likely…
Unredacted blog
Last week the Colombia Truth Commission wrapped up three-and-a-half years of work with the launch of its June 28, 2022, report on the causes and consequences of Colombia’s conflict. The publication…
Briefing Book 797
Edited by Michael Evans
Bogotá, 28 June 2022 - Today, Colombia’s Truth Commission wraps up three-and-a-half years of work with the launch of its report on the causes and consequences of Colombia’s conflict. The publication…
Briefing Book 796
Edited by Malcolm Byrne
Document selection by
Mai Der Vang
Washington, D.C., June 27, 2022 – In a remarkable example of transforming the mundane into high art, poet Mai Der Vang, daughter of Hmong refugees and finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry,…
News
Edited by Lauren Harper
Washington, D.C., June 23, 2022 – Gina Haspel, 15 years before President Trump nominated her and the US Senate confirmed her as CIA director, personally oversaw the waterboarding of alleged USS…
Unredacted blog
Nuclear stockpiles are expected to grow over the coming decade, according to the most recent study from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The June 13, 2022, report cites a…
News
Edited by Claire Harvey and Lauren Harper
Washington, D.C., January 6, 2022 - The National Security Archive marks the one-year anniversary of the assault on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, with a meticulously…
News
Edited by Lauren Harper and Claire Harvey
Washington, D.C., June 9, 2022 – As the House Select Committee tonight launches its televised hearings into the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the National Security Archive marks the…
Briefing Book 795
Edited by William Burr
This posting was UPDATED on October 30, 2024. Read the updated posting Washington, D.C., June 2, 2022 – The apocalyptic threats emanating from Moscow over the Ukraine war raise the terrible…
Briefing Book 794
Edited by Burkely Hermann
Washington, D.C., May 26, 2022 – The Pentagon’s role in U.S. environmental policy expanded during the Clinton presidency as the Pentagon became a more active player at international climate change…
Unredacted blog
SCOTUS Will Not Hear Prepublication Review Case; DNI Has Not Yet Updated Prepublication Instructions Despite 2017 Congressional Mandate The Supreme Court made the unfortunate decision not to hear a…
Briefing Book 793
Translated by Anna Melyakova
Edited by Svetlana Savranskaya
Washington D.C., May 25, 2022 –The National Security Archive marks what would have been Anatoly Sergeyevich Chernyaev’s 101st birthday today with the publication for the first time in English of his…
Unredacted blog
The National Security Archive, along with our scholarly partners at ProQuest, is publishing a rich new set of documents on United States climate change diplomacy from the Reagan years through the…
Weekend Read: Guatemalan Judge Orders New Trials Based on Death Squad Dossier, Obtained by NSArchive
Unredacted blog
By Claire Harvey Exactly 23 years ago on May 20, 1999, the National Security Archive published the “Diario Militar”, a detailed document also known as the “Death Squad Dossier” that was…
Unredacted blog
Director of National Intelligence Reiterates Overclassification a National Security Concern at Worldwide Threats Hearing The Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, and the Director of…
Briefing Book 792
Edited by John Prados
Washington, DC, May 11, 2022— The Central Intelligence Agency aggressively pursued clandestine efforts to undermine East German morale at the height of the Cold War, recently declassified CIA records…
Unredacted blog
NSArchive and CREW Ask DOJ to Investigate Missing Trump Call Logs The National Security Archive teamed up with the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) to ask the Justice…
Special Exhibit
Edited by Kate Doyle and Claire Dorfman
Ayotzinapa Investigations is a special page dedicated to the work of the National Security Archive and others in documenting and seeking justice for the 43 disappeared students of the Ayotzinapa…
Unredacted blog
By Claire Harvey Nuclear negotiations between the United States, world partners, and Iran are stalled, and the question of how to bridge the gap between Washington and Tehran remains as important…
Briefing Book 791
Edited by Malcolm Byrne
Washington, D.C., April 14, 2022 – After weeks of uncertainty over ongoing multilateral nuclear negotiations with Iran, it is still an open question whether they will actually produce a signed…
Book By Hussein Banai, Malcolm Byrne, John Tirman
News
Edited by Kate Doyle and Claire Dorfman
Friday, 1 April 2022, Mexico City—International experts investigating the disappearance of 43 Mexican college students have uncovered astonishing new evidence about the case in secret archives of the…
Unredacted blog
Senate Judiciary FOIA Hearing Highlights DOJ’s Poor Performance Encouraging FOIA Compliance Longtime FOIA champion Senator Patrick Leahy presided over his last Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)…
Briefing Book 790
Edited by William Burr
Washington, D.C., March 28, 2022 – Russia’s increasingly grueling invasion of Ukraine has given rise to chilling talk over whether the conflict might go nuclear, reminding the world that atomic…
Briefing Book 789
Edited by William Burr
Washington, D.C., March 24, 2022 – At four in the morning on 3 October 1979, Colonel William Odom, military assistant to national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, received a phone call from the…
Unredacted blog
By Claire Harvey The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) faces existential challenges to preserve electronic records critical to our nation’s history, according to the…
Rosemary Award
Edited by Lauren Harper
Washington, D.C., March 16, 2022 - Former President Donald J. Trump has the dubious honor of winning the National Security Archive’s infamous Rosemary Award for worst performance in open government…
FOIA Audit 789
Edited by Lauren Harper
U.S. National Archives 2025 Budget Request Threatens Mission Failure -
the 2024 update
Briefing Book 788
By James E. David
CIA U-2 Collection of Signals Intelligence, 1956-1960
By James E. David*
News
By Svetlana Savranskaya and Tom Blanton
Washington D.C., March 4, 2022 - The National Security Archive mourns the passing of a true hero of nuclear non-proliferation and U.S.-Russian and Russian-Ukrainian cooperation of the 1990s, Colonel…
Unredacted blog
By Claire Harvey On February 24, 2022, Russian forces began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine following months of troop build-up along the border and failed negotiations between the two countries, as…
Briefing Book 787
By Tom Blanton and Svetlana Savranskaya
Washington, D.C., March 3, 2022 – While Russian troops invaded Ukraine this week, the Russian Supreme Court turned down the appeal by the legendary human rights group Memorial against the “…
News
By Tom Blanton
Washington D.C., February 22, 2022 – The National Security Archive mourns the passing of our longtime Senior Fellow, the award-winning filmmaker Sherry Jones, who died of cancer on February 14…
Unredacted blog
“Shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States” The National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have…
News
Edited by Lauren Harper and Tom Blanton
Washington, D.C., February 9, 2022 – The National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have formally requested that the Justice Department and FBI…
Unredacted blog
The final episode of “After Ayotzinapa”, a collaboration between the National Security Archive and Reveal News from the Center for Investigative Reporting, aired Saturday, January 29, 2022. The…
Briefing Book 786
Edited by Peter Kornbluh and George Gelzer,
with a historical chronology by William M. LeoGrande
Washington D.C., February 2, 2022 – On the eve of the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s executive order imposing “an embargo on all trade with Cuba,” the National Security Archive today…
News
Edited by Kate Doyle and Claire Dorfman
Washington, DC, January 28, 2022 – National Security Archive continues the "After Ayotzinapa" project by publishing today the José Torero Cullen interview.
Briefing Book 785
Edited by Tom Blanton
Washington, D.C., January 25, 2022 – The National Security Archive updates today the publication last year of interview transcripts from eight former U.S. ambassadors to Russia, providing essential…
Unredacted blog
The National Security Archive and Reveal News from the Center for Investigative Reporting released the second installment of the new podcast “After Ayotzinapa” this Saturday, January 22, 2022. The…
News
Edited by Kate Doyle and Claire Dorfman
Washington, DC, January 21, 2022 – John Gibler is a journalist, author, and activist who writes eloquently and prolifically about Mexico. His collection of testimonies from Ayotzinapa…
Briefing Book 784
Edited by Burkely Hermann
Washington, D.C., January 20, 2022 – Pentagon demands for military exemptions during the 1997 Kyoto climate negotiations posed a substantial challenge for the Clinton administration both internally…
Unredacted blog
By Claire Dorfman On Saturday, January 15th, the first episode of “After Ayotzinapa,” Part One: The Missing 43, will premiere on podcast platforms and radio stations around the United States! The…
Unredacted blog
“After Ayotzinapa” Podcast Investigates Horrific Mexican Atrocity On Saturday, January 15, a new podcast exploring the shocking case of 43 Mexican students disappeared by security forces in 2014 will…
News
Edited by Kate Doyle
Research assistance by Claire Dorfman
Washington, D.C., January 10, 2022—On Saturday, January 15, a new podcast exploring the shocking case of 43 Mexican students disappeared by security forces in 2014 will launch on radio stations…
Unredacted blog
Archive Cyber Fellow Cristin Monahan examined government records that highlight the double-edged role the Internet played in the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack and its aftermath in this week’s Cyber…
News
Compiled and edited by Cristin J. Monahan
Washington, D.C., January 6, 2022 - On the first anniversary of the January 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol, a review of government materials by the National Security Archive’s…