Washington, D.C., November 29, 2023 - Henry Kissinger’s death today brings new global attention to the long paper trail of secret documents recording his policy deliberations, conversations, and directives on many initiatives for which he became famous—détente with the USSR, the opening to China, and Middle East shuttle diplomacy, among them.
Washington D.C., November 22, 2023 - “[I]f there has been sufficient reason to open this envelope, I accuse the government of Chile of my death,” wrote DINA agent Michael Townley in March 1978, as FBI agents pursued him for the September 1976 car bomb assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt in Washington, D.C.
Washington D.C., October 3, 2023 – As a diplomatic gesture to mark the 35th anniversary of the October 5, 1988, Chilean plebiscite that forced General Augusto Pinochet from power, the U.S. State Department today designated the Ambassador’s residency in Santiago as “the Barnes House”—honoring the former Ambassador Harry G. Barnes who served as U.S. chief of mission in Santiago during the last years of the Pinochet dictatorship. “The Chief of Mission’s residence will be named ‘The Barnes House,’” according to a U.S.
Washington, D.C., September 26, 2023 - Nine years ago today, 43 Mexican college students were violently abducted and disappeared by police and drug traffickers in the town of Iguala, Guerrero. As the families of the missing boys mark another wrenching anniversary and the investigation in Mexico grinds on, the National Security Archive takes a look at the declassified record on Ayotzinapa in the United States and asks, Why has the U.S. government released so little information about this case?
Washington, D.C., September 19, 2023 – Colombian President Gustavo Petro should comply with the 2014 sentence of the Inter-American Human Rights Court (IACHR) and ask U.S. President Joe Biden to declassify all pertinent U.S. records on the Palace of Justice case, according to Helena Urán Bidegain, the daughter of a court magistrate believed to have been tortured and assassinated by the Colombian Army in the aftermath of the conflagration.
September 8, 2023, Washington D.C. - “In the Eisenhower period, we would be heroes,” Henry Kissinger told President Richard Nixon several days after the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile, lamenting that they would not receive credit in the press for this Cold War accomplishment. Fifty years later, as Chileans and the world commemorate the anniversary of the U.S.-backed military takeover that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power, a fierce debate over the extent of the U.S. contribution to the coup continues.
Washington, D.C., August, 25, 2023 - On the morning of the U.S.-backed military coup in Chile, the CIA briefed President Nixon that Chilean military officers were “determined to restore political and economic order” but “may still lack an effectively coordinated plan that would capitalize on the widespread civilian opposition,” according to the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) dated September 11, 1973, declassified today almost 50 years after it was written.
Washington, D.C., August 28, 2023 – On the 20th anniversary of the Peruvian truth commission’s final report, the National Security Archive posts a core collection of declassified U.S. documents chronicling 20 years of conflict across three presidential administrations along with records relating to the 2001 decision to establish a commission to investigate the violence.
Washington, D.C., August 8, 2023 - As the commander in chief of the Chilean army, Gen. René Schneider, lay dying in a hospital after being shot in a CIA-backed coup plot in October 1970, President Nixon placed a phone call to his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, to ask “What is happening in Chile?” according to a transcript of their conversation posted today by the National Security Archive.
Washington, D.C., April 14, 2023 - Tomás Zerón’s rehabilitation tour has begun.