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.
May 25, 2020 | Briefing Book
Washington D.C., May 25, 2020 –The National Security Archive marks what would have been Anatoly Sergeyevich Chernyaev’s 99th birthday today with the publication for the first time in English of his...
May 22, 2020 | Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., May 22, 2020 – Seventy-five years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked the start of the atomic era, questions about the value, danger, and morality of nuclear weapons...
May 15, 2020 | Briefing Book
Top Secret Chernobyl:The Nuclear Disaster through the Eyes of the Soviet Politburo, KGB, and U.S. Intelligence
Volume 2
by Svetlana Savranskaya
May 13, 2020 | Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., May 13, 2020 - The Office of Management and Budget is currently accepting comments o
Apr 15, 2020 | Briefing Book
Washington D.C., April 15, 2020 - As the coronavirus puts at risk Russia’s celebration of Victory Day on May 9, 2020, with its huge military parade on Moscow’s Red Square, we are reminded of another...
Apr 10, 2020 | Briefing Book
Washington D.C., April 10, 2020 - The NPT is appropriately acknowledged as a critical means of protecting global security against the danger of unchecked nuclear proliferation. But the treaty has...
Apr 6, 2020 | Briefing Book
Washington, DC, April 6, 2020 – Cold War concerns about another Communist Cuba in Latin America drove President John F.
Mar 16, 2020 | Briefing Book
Washington D.C., March 16, 2020 - During the Cold War, false alarms of missile attacks were closely held matters although news of them inevitably leaked.
Mar 10, 2020 | Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., March 10, 2020 - Franklin Allen “Tex” Harris , the former political officer who took charge of reporting on human rights at the U.S.
Feb 19, 2020 | Briefing Book
Washington D.C., February 19, 2020 - Reporting last week in The Washington Post and Germany’s ZDF public television channel mentioned a 1951 meeting between Crypto AG’s Boris Hagelin and American...
Feb 11, 2020 | Briefing Book
Washington D.C., February 11, 2020 - The U.S.
Feb 5, 2020 | Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., February 5, 2020 – In the eyes of U.S.
Jan 22, 2020 | Briefing Book
Washington D.C., January 22, 2020 - On 24 February 1972 Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird’s inbox included a Joint Chiefs of Staff message concerning the ongoing efforts by military planners to...
Jan 21, 2020 | Briefing Book
Washington D.C., January 21, 2020 - Today the National Security Archive is releasing 6 USCYBERCOM documents obtained through FOIA which shed new light on the campaign to counter ISIS in cyberspace.
Dec 19, 2019 | Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., December 19, 2019 – For 40 years, since the first year of the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, the United States and Iran have been the bitterest of political...
Dec 5, 2019 | Briefing Book
Washington D.C., December 5, 2019 – Cooperative threat reduction by the U.S., Ukraine, and the Russian Federation successfully eliminated the world’s third largest nuclear weapons force in the 1990s...
Nov 20, 2019 | Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., November 20, 2019 – In the late 1950s, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles worried about the hit to America’s global political standing if the U.S.
Nov 4, 2019 | Briefing Book
Washington D.C., November 4, 2019 – On November 4, 1979, a group calling itself the Students Following the Line of the Imam stormed the gates of the U.S.
Oct 30, 2019 | Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., October 30, 2019 – The current crisis with Turkey over Syria has raised questions, yet to be resolved, about the security of 50 U.S.