40 YEARS OF FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACTION
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.
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., February 6, 2025 - In the first two weeks of President Donald Trump’s second term, the administration has begun to scrub critical environmental resources and datasets from federal…
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., February 3, 2025 - Continued U.S. control of the Panama Canal “looks like pure colonialism,” Henry Kissinger advised President Gerald Ford during a National Security Council meeting…
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., January 23, 2025 - Today, the National Security Archive publishes newly declassified information on a secret mid-1960s project in which a handful of young physicists at Lawrence…
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., January 15, 2025 - The late President Jimmy Carter, who was laid to rest last week after a state funeral in Washington, D.C., adamantly believed that the U.S.
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., December 29, 2024 – The late President Jimmy Carter, contrary to the views of some critics, was typically focused, knowledgeable, and strong-willed on matters of foreign policy,…
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., December 23, 2024 – Today, the National Security Archive and ProQuest (part of Clarivate) celebrate the publication of a new scholarly document collection many years in the making…
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., December 20, 2024—Half a century ago, Mexico was convulsed by state violence and social upheaval.
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., December 18, 2024 – A now-legendary but long-secret 70-paragraph telegram written by the top political analyst at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in March 1994, E.
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., December 17, 2024 - A recently declassified Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee (JAEIC) report from December 1960 is the first and only known U.S.
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., December 5, 2024 – Thirty years ago, the Budapest Memorandum ensured the destruction of dangerous post-Soviet nuclear stockpiles but was overshadowed at the time by Russian…
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., November 26, 2024 - U.S. officials had an “unusual” degree of concern about the “potential ecological and social impacts” of the Camisea natural gas pipeline in Peru, according to…
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., November 21, 2024 - The National Security Archive filed suit in federal court today to contest the estimated 12-year backlog of Freedom of Information requests for presidential…
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., November 20, 2024 – The failure of the U.S. intelligence community to adequately warn policymakers about the poor Soviet grain harvest of 1972—resulting in higher food prices in the…
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., October 30, 2024 - A 1983 study from scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore Laboratory said that a full-scale nuclear war between the superpowers would “…
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., October 1, 2024 - On the 50th anniversary of the Pinochet regime’s first act of international terrorism, the National Security Archive is posting a compilation of documents,…
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., September 9, 2024 – Fifty years ago, as the New York Times prepared to break a major exposé on CIA covert operations in Chile, the architect of those operations, Henry Kissinger,…
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., August 8, 2024 – On the week of the 79th commemoration of the U.S.
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., August 1, 2024 – The most successful multilateral environmental treaty of all time drew Ronald Reagan’s support despite opposition from his more conservative advisers, because the…
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., July 23, 2024 - A major report on the current state of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) recently released
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., July 16, 2024 - On 16 July 1945, 79 years ago, the United States, under the Manhattan Project, staged the first test of a nuclear weapon in the New Mexican desert.