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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.
| Briefing Book
A newly declassified memorandum from the weeks after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki confirmed early reports of fatal radiation disease even as Manhattan Project director General Leslie…
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., July 18, 2023 – A set of highly secret emergency action plans kept inside the closely guarded “Football” that traveled with the President at all times and that would give the…
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Washington, D.C., July 6, 2023 – As the world’s wealthiest countries continue to avoid making serious financial commitments to developing states on the front lines of the climate crisis, declassified…
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Washington, D.C., June 5, 2023 – Declassified highest-level records from the first six months of the Clinton administration’s relations with the Russian Federation in 1993 reveal a remarkable array…
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Washington D.C., May 25, 2023 - As Henry Alfred Kissinger (HAK) reaches 100 years of age, his centennial is generating global coverage of his legacy as a leading statesman, master diplomat, and…
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Washington D.C., May 25, 2023 - The National Security Archive today marks what would have been Anatoly Sergeyevich Chernyaev’s 102nd birthday with the publication for the first time in English…
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Washington, D.C., April 20, 2023 - Sixty years ago, during April 1963, the U.S.
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Washington, D.C., April 18, 2023 – A Colombian taxi driver who last month was
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Washington, D.C., March 24, 2023 - On Tuesday, March 28, 2023, PBS’s “American Experience” program premieres “The Movement and the ‘Madman,’” a documentary that tells the story of how the…
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., March 20, 2023 -The declassified Air Force film shows the crew of a U.S. B-52 bomber reaching its “Positive Control” (“fail safe”) point on the way to its target in the Soviet…
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Washington, D.C., March 13, 2023 – The 65-year U.S.
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Washington, D.C., March 10, 2023 - Years before 43 young men from the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college were attacked and forcibly disappeared in Iguala, Guerrero, the Mexican military had the school…
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Washington, D.C., December 16, 2013 – The Soviet Union assisted the United States in its effort to curb South Africa's nuclear program in August 1977 when Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev…
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Washington, D.C., February 28, 2023 - In February 1998, 25 years ago this month, the United States suffered a series of cyber intrusions known as SOLAR SUNRISE that then-Deputy Secretary of Defense…
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Washington, D.C., February 16, 2023 - Harvard professor and future Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger discussed the U.S.
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Washington, D.C., February 7, 2023 – With the Cold War coming to an end and the Soviet Union dissolving, President Bill Clinton was determined not to miss a historic opportunity to help Russia…
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Washington D.C., January 30, 2023 – The George H.W.
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Washington, D.C., December 13, 2022 - In the immediate aftermath of the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev met with the Czechoslovakian Communist Party leader,…
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Washington, D.C., December 9, 2022 – Canadian inspectors visiting the Canada-Indian Reactor (CIR) at Trombay during June 1968 were “unsettled” by data suggesting that India was heading toward the “…