Briefing Books

Washington, D.C., November 29, 2023 - Henry Kissinger’s death today brings new global attention to the long paper trail of secret documents recording his policy deliberations, conversations, and…

Washington D.C., November 22, 2023 - “[I]f there has been sufficient reason to open this envelope, I accuse the government of Chile of my death,” wrote DINA agent Michael Townley in March 1978, as…

Washington, D.C., October 26, 2023 - In early August 1977, Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev wrote to President Jimmy Carter to inform him that the Soviet Union had detected a nuclear…

Washington D.C., October 4, 2023 – Thirty years ago in Moscow, Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered tanks and airborne troops to shell and storm the “White House,” the Russian Parliament (Supreme…

Washington D.C., October 3, 2023 – As a diplomatic gesture to mark the 35th anniversary of the October 5, 1988, Chilean plebiscite that forced General Augusto Pinochet from power, the U.S.

Washington, D.C., September 26, 2023 - Nine years ago today, 43 Mexican college students were violently abducted and disappeared by police and drug traffickers in the town of Iguala, Guerrero.

Washington, D.C., September 21, 2023 – The Reagan administration rejected an international agreement on humanitarian laws of war—Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions—due to…

Washington, D.C., September 19, 2023 – Colombian President Gustavo Petro should comply with the 2014 sentence of the Inter-American Human Rights Court (IACHR) and ask U.S. President Joe Biden to…

September 8, 2023, Washington D.C.

Washington, D.C., August 28, 2023 – On the 20th anniversary of the Peruvian truth commission’s final report, the National Security Archive posts a core collection of declassified U.S.

Washington, D.C., August, 25, 2023 - On the morning of the U.S.-backed military coup in Chile, the CIA briefed President Nixon that Chilean military officers were “determined to restore political and…

Washington, D.C., August 11, 2023 – Recently unearthed documents from the Romanian national archives shed new light on the Comintern, the Soviet-led international organization that from 1919-1943 was…

Washington, D.C., August 8, 2023 - As the commander in chief of the Chilean army, Gen.

A newly declassified memorandum from the weeks after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki confirmed early reports of fatal radiation disease even as Manhattan Project director General Leslie…

Washington, D.C., July 18, 2023 – A set of highly secret emergency action plans kept inside the closely guarded “Football” that traveled with the President at all times and that would give the…

Washington, D.C., July 6, 2023 – As the world’s wealthiest countries continue to avoid making serious financial commitments to developing states on the front lines of the climate crisis, declassified…

Washington, D.C., June 6, 2023 - U.S.

Washington, D.C., June 5, 2023 – Declassified highest-level records from the first six months of the Clinton administration’s relations with the Russian Federation in 1993 reveal a remarkable array…

Washington D.C., May 25, 2023 - As Henry Alfred Kissinger (HAK) reaches 100 years of age, his centennial is generating global coverage of his legacy as a leading statesman, master diplomat, and…

Washington D.C., May 25, 2023 - The National Security Archive today marks what would have been Anatoly Sergeyevich Chernyaev’s 102nd birthday with the publication for the first time in English of his…