United States and Canada

Update - February 14, 2025

Washington, D.C., February 14, 2025 - Some 14 years after Anwar al-Awlaki's death in an American drone strike, the Al Qaeda terrorist has become the unlikely subject of a flurry of partisan news and opinion reports attacking the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which the Trump administration is attempting to discredit and shut down.

Washington, D.C., December 18, 2024 – A now-legendary but long-secret 70-paragraph telegram written by the top political analyst at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in March 1994, E. Wayne Merry, criticizing the American policy focus on radical economic reform in Russia, was published in full today for the first time by the National Security Archive.

Washington, D.C., December 17, 2024 - A recently declassified Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee (JAEIC) report from December 1960 is the first and only known U.S. intelligence report to correctly and unequivocally state that Israel’s Dimona nuclear project would include a reprocessing plant for plutonium production and was weapons related. All known, subsequent U.S. intelligence products treated the reprocessing issue as unsettled until the late 1960s, when Israel reached the threshold of a nuclear weapons capability and the U.S.

Washington, D.C., October 18, 2024 – National Security Archive director Tom Blanton reflects on 40 years of working “to dislodge and declassify U.S. government secrets” in the latest edition of “In the Room,” a podcast produced by veteran CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen.

Washington, D.C., July 23, 2024 - A major report on the current state of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) recently released by the National Coalition for History (NCH) includes a critical assessment of the state of declassification: “For the sake of accountability and a fuller historical record, NARA needs more funding so it can make steady progress in reviewing and declassify

Washington, D.C., June 28, 2024 – This week, Washingtonian magazine published a glowing profile of the National Security Archive, its executive director Tom Blanton, and the Archive’s decades-long effort “to help the public see the unredacted truth about our history.”

Washington, D.C., March 15, 2024 - The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is requesting less funding for Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 than it received in FY 2024, threatening to worsen an already dire budget crisis for the steward of priceless U.S. government records.

Washington, D.C., January 25, 2024 - Declassified highest-level records from the Moscow summit 30 years ago this month detail U.S. President Bill Clinton’s strong personal support for Russian President Boris Yeltsin, their close cooperation on security issues, and deep concern about Yeltsin backtracking on economic reforms newly understood by the Clinton team as too “harsh” on the Russian people.