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 intensity of the U.S. anti-Vietnam War movement forced President Richard Nixon to abandon plans to escalate the conflict in the fall of 1969 and instead implement his “madman” theory, approving a secret alert of U.S. nuclear forces around the world to project the idea that he was “crazy” and force adversaries to back down.
Washington, D.C., August 8, 2022 – After years of research and planning, U.S. officials and scientists overseeing the Manhattan Project were startlingly unprepared for the emergence of evidence of the long-term effects of radiation generated by the atomic bomb – even after the Trinity test in July 1945 and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 77 years ago this week, according to documents posted today by the National Security Archive.
Washington, D.C., October 16, 2020 - Over the years, aerial and naval encounters have threatened to destabilize U.S-China relations as the two powers contest each other's rights in international airspace and waters. A major incident occurred on 31 March 2001 (Washington time) when a U.S.
Washington, D.C., June 18, 2020 – American and South Korean assessments of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il shifted during the course of negotiations in the 1990s over the North’s controversial nuclear program, according to recently declassified documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and posted today by the nongovernmental National Security Archive at The George Washington University.
Washington, D.C., June 4, 2020 - To mark the 31st anniversary of the massacre at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, June 4, 1989, the National Security Archive today reposts its special exhibit of declassified documentation on an event that has decisively shaped contemporary China – and that just in the past week has unexpectedly gained salience for the United States.
Washington, D.C., October 16, 2014 – Fifty years ago today, on 16 October 1964, the People's Republic of China (PRC) joined the nuclear club when it tested a nuclear device at its Lop Nur test site in Inner Mongolia. For several years, U.S. intelligence had been monitoring Chinese developments, often with anxiety, hampered by the lack of adequate sources. Early on, opinions within the U.S.
Washington D.C., January 22, 2020 - On 24 February 1972 Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird’s inbox included a Joint Chiefs of Staff message concerning the ongoing efforts by military planners to develop a “Communist Chinese Nuclear Package” for the Single Integrated Operational Plan, the Pentagon’s nuclear war plan. Laird’s office was mistakenly included in the message’s routing.
Washington, D.C., November 20, 2019 – In the late 1950s, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles worried about the hit to America’s global political standing if the U.S. stationed nuclear weapons, some of which were huge, in South Korea while senior Defense Department officials pointed to the fiscal benefits of these deployments, according to declassified records posted today by the National Security Archive. Dulles, who had presided over U.S.
The Olympic Games are being held in Tokyo, Japan, during the summer of 2020. In light of widespread concerns about a potential cyber threat from Russia, the Cyber Vault is posting a variety of primary-source documents and other materials that offer additional context to the issues.