Washington, DC, October 25, 2007 - As a lock of Che Guevara's hair along with photos, captured documents, intelligence intercepts, and original fingerprints relating to the capture, execution and secret burial of the Argentine-born revolutionary sold at auction for $100,000, the National Security Archive posted declassified U.S. documents relating to his death 40 years ago this month.
Update - June 26, 2007, 1 p.m. - The full "family jewels" report, released today by the Central Intelligence Agency and detailing 25 years of Agency misdeeds, is now available on the Archive's Web site. The 702-page collection was delivered by CIA officers to the Archive at approximately 11:30 this morning -- 15 years after the Archive filed a Freedom of Information request for the documents. The report is available for download in its entirety and is also split into five smaller files for easier download. ALL FILES NOW FULL TEXT SEARCHABLE!
Washington D.C., January 6, 2007 - The Czechoslovak human rights activists who launched the landmark Charter 77 movement secretly gathered their first 240 signatures on handwritten cards without leaving copies with the signatories, but were arrested 30 years ago today by the secret police on charges of "subversion" and "hostility to the socialist state and social system" before they could deliver the original Charter to the Federal Assembly, according to Charter 77 and Czechoslovak secret police documents published in English for the first time on the National Security Archive Web site (www
Washington D.C., December 12, 2006 - As Chile prepared to bury General Augusto Pinochet, the National Security Archive today posted a selection of declassified U.S. documents that illuminate the former dictator's record of repression. The documents include CIA records on Pinochet's role in the Washington D.C.
Update - December 12, 2006 Communiquй from Authors of the Draft Report of the Special Prosecutor (in Spanish) Click here to read the press release (also in Spanish) The authors of the draft report of the Special Prosecutor, "ЎQue no vuelva a suceder…!" (parts of which were posted by the National Security Archive on February 26, 2006), have written a critique of the government's official report, "Informe Histуrico a la Sociedad Mexicana - 2006." In their communiquй, the authors object to changes made to their original findings and ask the government to recognize the conclusions and recommend
Washington, DC, October 18, 2006 - The CIA's reliance on high-level informants including the President of Mexico for "intelligence" about the student protest movement in 1968 that culminated in the infamous Tlatelolco massacre misled Washington about responsibility for the repression, according to documents obtained by journalist Jefferson Morley and posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
This new Electronic Briefing Book on the Tlatelolco massacre is based on a collaboration between Proceso magazine and the National Security Archive and launched on March 2, 2003. The collaboration grew out of a shared desire to publish and disseminate to a wide audience newly-declassified documents about the United States and Mexico. On an occasional basis, Proceso magazine publishes an article by the Archive's Mexico Project director, Kate Doyle, examining new documentary evidence on a chosen topic. The series--called Archivos Abiertos (or, Open Archive), draws from U.S.
May 12, 2006 - Thirty years ago today, the physicist Yuri Orlov gathered a small group of human rights activists in the apartment of prominent Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov in Moscow to establish what today is the oldest functioning human rights organization in Russia - the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group (MHG) - thus serving as an inspiration for a new wave of human rights activism in the Soviet Union and around the world.
Washington, D.C., March 23, 2006 - On the eve of the 30th anniversary of the military coup in Argentina, the National Security Archive posted a series of declassified U.S. documents and, for the first time, secret documents from Southern Cone intelligence agencies recording detailed evidence of massive atrocities committed by the military junta in Argentina. The documents include a formerly secret transcript of Henry Kissinger's staff meeting during which he ordered immediate U.S. support for the new military regime, and Defense and State Department reports on the ensuing repression.
Washington, D.C., 13 March 2006 - The National Security Archive, along with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), on March 10 filed a "friend of the court" brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The brief asks the Court to uphold a lower court decision ordering the Department of Defense to comply with a FOIA request for photos and digital movies depicting the abuse of detainees by American troops at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq.