Briefing Books
“Briefing Books” are one-stop resources covering a full range of topics in U.S. foreign policy. Containing from 5 to 100+ documents, each briefing book features an introductory essay, individual document descriptions, related photo or video content, plus links for further reading.
![ebb 853 collage](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2024-06/ivan_ramirez_doc-collage_0.jpg?h=8dddf796&itok=wSw2iI2c)
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., June 21, 2024 – On Wednesday, a Colombian court condemned former Colombian Army Gen.
![Pinochet-Contreras-collage](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2024-06/pinochet-dina-contreras.jpg?h=274bc7c1&itok=tEElqLXA)
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., June 18, 2024 - On June 18, 1974, the official registry of the Chilean military dictatorship published Decree 521 on the “creation of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA…
![President Jimmy Carter with the Joint Chiefs and Secretary of Defense Harold Brown meeting for breakfast, 20 November 1977](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2024-05/1977-11-20_nlc03590.17.17a.jpg?itok=Dr8sD--1)
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., May 31, 2024 - On 6 October 1977, President Jimmy Carter and top U.S.
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| Briefing Book
Washington D.C., May 25, 2024 - The National Security Archive today marks what would have been Anatoly Sergeyevich Chernyaev’s 103rd birthday with the publication for the first time in…
![Fidel in The USSR poster](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2024-04/fidel-ussr-map.jpg?itok=5uRLe_gc)
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., April 29, 2024 - New evidence from Russian archival sources and published today by the National Security Archive details Fidel Castro’s extraordinary April-May 1963 trip to the USSR…
![On the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, President Nixon and First Lady Pat Nixon plant a California Giant Sequoia tree](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2024-04/Photo%201_Banner.jpg?h=512ef808&itok=V6gVknSM)
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., April 26, 2024 - High-level officials inside the Nixon administration debated climate change and the impacts of sea-level rise, extreme temperatures, and fossil-fuel consumption as…
![President Jimmy Carter approaching the National Emergency Airborne Command Post [NEACP]](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2024-04/nlc00304.19.jpg?h=19a385ee&itok=Oma7_MTU)
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., April 18, 2024 - After nine years of unwanted delays, the State Department’s Office of the Historian (OH) last month published a new Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS)
![Rosalynn Carter meets with President Alfonso López Michelson](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2024-04/rosalynn_carter_meets_with_alfonso_lopez_michelson.jpg?itok=tDb28Bx8)
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., April 15, 2024 – A highly sensitive blacklist of allegedly corrupt Colombian officials assembled by the U.S.
![President of the Russian Federation Brussels, Belgium 9 December 1993 Meeting between NATO Secretary General M. Wörner and Russian President B. Yeltsin at the Chateau du Stuyvenbergh](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2024-04/woerner-yelrsin_0.jpg?itok=j1lrzZod)
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., April 4, 2024 - Top NATO and U.S.
![President Boris Yeltsin meeting Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Kremlin, Moscow on December 31, 1999](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2024-03/Vladimir_Putin_with_Boris_Yeltsin.jpg?h=5aabe7a9&itok=sO7_3AqD)
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., March 21, 2024 - Vladimir Putin’s first election as president of Russia 24 years ago was “reasonably free and fair,” according to a declassified U.S.
![Frame from "Commander's Report, Operation Castle" film](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2024-02/commanders_report_operation_castle.jpg?itok=hQ0m7ANQ)
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., February 29, 2024 - Seventy years ago, on 1 March 1954 (28 February in Washington), the U.S. government air-dropped a thermonuclear weapon, code-named “Shrimp,” on Bikini Atoll in…
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| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., February 13, 2024 - State Department lawyers advised Henry Kissinger that transcriptions of his telephone conversations made when he served as national security adviser and…
![President Bill Clinton, holding a tenor saxophone, waves to a Boris Yeltsin](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2024-01/President_Bill_Clinton_with_a_saxophone_at_a_dinner_hosted_President_Boris_Yeltsin800.jpg?h=fa9f3ee1&itok=mXsH-vW5)
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., January 25, 2024 - Declassified highest-level records from the Moscow summit 30 years ago this month detail U.S.
![President Jimmy Carter annotates a document while working at his desk in the Oval Office](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2023-12/01-jimmy_carter_working_at_his_desk_-_nara_-_173610.jpg?h=3792c31e&itok=0Zkf5_tn)
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., December 14, 2023 – The National Security Archive is pleased to announce the publication of a major primary document collection on the presidency of Jimmy Carter.
![JFK and Stikker](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2023-12/jfk_and_stikker.jpg?itok=xW4qgHIz)
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., December 6, 2023 - Recent U.S. government decisions on the declassification of historical records on nuclear proliferation demonstrate the good, the bad and the ugly in the current…
![Henry Kissinger](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2023-05/henry_kissinger_0.png?itok=Bxy8gWF-)
| Briefing Book
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…
![Michael Townley](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2023-11/michael-townley-in-car.jpg?itok=2TV8eFUT)
| Briefing Book
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…
![Adviser Zbigniew Brezinski, President Jimmy Carter, and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2023-10/zbigniew_brzezinski_jimmy_carter_and_cyrus_vance_-_nara_-_175908.jpg?itok=XIbi97kK)
| Briefing Book
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…
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| Briefing Book
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…
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| Briefing Book
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.