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.
![National Archive](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2024-07/national-archives-building-pennsylvania-ave.jpg?itok=MYmUgd8h)
| 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
![10.7 seconds after explosion](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2024-07/photo_11_10.7_second_tb-256.1.jpg?itok=WIaQgXRJ)
| 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.
![Wayne](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2024-07/Wane-light.jpg?h=0d2bc03d&itok=xZaSq1Wk)
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C. July 12, 2024 - “Cuba,” as former Foreign Service officer, Wayne S. Smith, was fond of observing, “seems to have the same effect on American administrations as the full moon has on…
![Clinton-Yeltsin-NATO](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2024-07/clinton-yeltsin-nato_b19fa107-b661-4b3c-84bc-5acf8c76bc7f-2.jpg?itok=bee8czBv)
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., July 9, 2024 - Hailed at the time as an historic change “burying” a Cold War rivalry, the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 was privately characterized as a “forced step” by Russian…
![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.
![Chernyev in his home office in 2012](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2024-07/chernyaev_in_his_home_office_2012.jpg?itok=iXbMfGao)
| 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…
![kissinger and telcons collage](/sites/default/files/styles/nsarchive_square_thumbnail/public/2024-02/kissinger-telcons_0.jpg?h=791f36a3&itok=xg8bmh_F)
| 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…