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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.
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Washington, D.C., June 3, 2025 - The Trump administration’s intention to acquire Greenland, including possibly by force, has put a focus on the history of its strategic
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Washington, D.C., May 22, 2025 - Early in the morning of October 7, 1963, the top leadership of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) gathered in the office of the Director of Central Intelligence (…
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Washington, D.C., May 19, 2025 – Mexico welcomed CIA espionage activities in Mexico during the Cold War and even initiated some of them, according to recently declassified documents published today…
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Washington D.C. May 7, 2025 – On November 29, 2011, a Chilean judge stunned the world by indicting a retired U.S. Navy captain as an accomplice to the executions of two U.S. citizens in the days…
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Washington, D.C., April 22, 2025 – Declassified U.S. intelligence reports from the 1980s and 90s show that, even while the possibility of war between India and Pakistan remained low, the U.S.
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Washington, D.C., April 7, 2025 - Just six months before the 1964 military coup that overthrew the government of João Goulart in Brazil, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Plans Richard…
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Washington, D.C., March 28, 2025 - Both John F. Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert F.
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Washington D.C., March 19, 2025 - On the day of President John F.
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Washington, D.C., February 28, 2025 - For 17 years, the U.S. Intelligence Community has refused to declassify one of its first investigations into climate change as a national security threat.
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Update - February 14, 2025Washington, D.C., February 14, 2025 - Some 14 years after Anwar al-Awlaki's death in an American drone strike, the Al Qaeda terrorist has become the unlikely subject of a…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.
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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,…
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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…
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Washington, D.C., December 20, 2024—Half a century ago, Mexico was convulsed by state violence and social upheaval.
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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.
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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.
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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…