CIA U-2 Collection of Signals Intelligence, 1956-1960
CIA U-2 Collection of Signals Intelligence, 1956-1960
By James E. David*
By James E. David*
Washington, D.C., January 25, 2022 – The National Security Archive updates today the publication last year of interview transcripts from eight former U.S. ambassadors to Russia, providing essential historical context to debates over U.S.-Russian relations, with three additional interviews with the deans of American diplomacy with Moscow – Jack Matlock, Thomas Pickering, and James Collins.
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 replaced with the red-white-and-blue of the Russian Federation. Triumphalists and conspiracy theorists ever since have attributed this epochal event to the machinations of U.S. policy makers.
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 allies to dissuade and impede Russian advances, both in cyberspace and in European territory. The recently released materials feature after action reports (AARs) and planning documents concerning the BALTIC GHOST series of cyber exercises.
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 result of “combustible” domestic politics in both the U.S. and Russia, and contradictions in the Clinton attempt to have his cake both ways, expanding NATO and partnering with Russia at the same time, according to newly declassified U.S. documents published today by the National Security Archive.
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 the Soviet Union and in the Russian Federation today.
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 from interviews with eight former U.S. ambassadors to Moscow, courtesy of the Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey.
Washington D.C., May 25, 2021 – The National Security Archive marks the 100th anniversary of Anatoly Sergeyevich Chernyaev’s birth with the publication of the first English-language translation of the Chernyaev diary (described as “irreplaceable” by Pulitzer-Prize-winning author David Hoffman) for the year 1981.
Washington, D.C., May 7, 2021 – U.S.-Soviet cooperation in space was a regular, if less noticed, feature of the final years of the USSR and continued well after the emergence of independent Russia, a compilation of declassified documents and interviews posted today by the National Security Archive underscores. In the second of a two-part posting, records from Russian and American archives highlight the successes of joint operations ranging from the Shuttle-Mir program to the International Space Station.
Washington, D.C., April 12, 2021 – Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s historic spaceflight 60 years ago, which made him the first human in space, prompted President John F. Kennedy to advance an unusual proposal – that the two superpowers combine forces to cooperate in space. In a congratulatory letter to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, posted today by the nongovernmental National Security Archive, Kennedy expressed the hope that “our nations [can] work together” in the “continuing quest for knowledge of outer space.”