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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., January 20, 2022 – Pentagon demands for military exemptions during the 1997 Kyoto climate negotiations posed a substantial challenge for the Clinton administration both internally…
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Washington, D.C., December 21, 2021 – On Christmas Day 30 years ago, the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, stepped down and the hammer-and-sickle flags over the Kremlin were…
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Washington, D.C., December 10, 2021 – As the United States engages in strategic stability talks with Russia and seeks similar talks with China, it is worth looking back to the origins of…
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Washington, D.C., December 6, 2021 — This week, as NATO concludes its annual flagship cyber exercise, Cyber Coalition 21, newly declassified documents detail American collaboration with NATO…
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Washington, D.C., November 24, 2021 – The biggest train wreck on the track to NATO expansion in the 1990s – Boris Yeltsin’s “cold peace” blow up at Bill Clinton in Budapest in December 1994 – was the…
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Washington D.C., November 12, 2021 (Updated February 3, 2022) – More than four decades after the murder of Guyanese scholar-political activist Dr.
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Washington, D.C., October 14, 2021 – The Pentagon’s plan for a trillion-dollar spending program to build new ICBMs, submarines, and bombers has met pushback from critics in and out of Congress who…
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Washington, D.C., October 4, 2021 – Declassified State Department and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports that “acknowledge the long-standing relationship between [Colombian] state security…
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Washington, D.C., September 23, 2021 - The Taliban will not – and perhaps cannot – contain al Qaeda, despite hopeful United States government assurances that the Taliban will be an
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Washington D.C., September 22, 2021 - In an effort to advance a novel foreign policy tool known as “Declassification Diplomacy,” the National Security Archive today posted key administrative…
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Washington, D.C., September 20, 2021 – Over the four decades since the 1979 Iranian revolution, leaders of both the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran have repeatedly explored…
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Washington D.C., September 10, 2021 – At the behest of the CIA, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) established a “station” in Santiago in 1971 and conducted clandestine spy operations…
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Washington, D.C., August 30, 2021 –
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Washington, D.C., August 19, 2021 – The U.S.
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Washington, D.C., August 10, 2021 – The National Security Archive mourns the passing yesterday in Moscow of Sergei Kovalev, our friend and colleague and inspiration, a legend among human righters in…
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Washington D.C., July 16, 2021 - The United Kingdom in the 1970s and 1980s aspired to improve its nuclear weapons capability to bomb Soviet targets, including major cities, without having…
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Washington, D.C., June 16, 2021 – The National Security Archive marks today’s summit meeting in Geneva between President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin by publishing detailed transcripts…
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Washington D.C., June 10, 2021 – Fifty years ago today, a group of pay-for-hire thugs known as the “Halcones” or “Falcons” swarmed the streets of Mexico City in a coordinated attack against some 10,…
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Washington, D.C., June 7, 2021 – On June 7, 1981, 40 years ago today, Israel attacked and partially destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear research reactor at Tuwaitha, using U.S.
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Washington D.C., May 28, 2021 – “The United States came fairly close to using tactical nuclear weapons” during the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1958, according to a secret 1966 RAND summary report…