Washington, DC, March 20, 2015 – For decades the Central Intelligence Agency has conducted a major signals intelligence (SIGINT) effort that often placed it in competition with other members of the Intelligence Community, according to a significant collection of declassified documentation posted today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org).
Washington, DC, February 4, 2015 – During much of the Cold War Soviet space activities — civilian and military — were a major focus of U.S. intelligence collection and analysis. As one of the key areas of technological competition with Moscow — one where the Soviet Union jumped to an early lead in some space activities — the space race generated profound concern in Washington over the need to understand and respond to new developments. To that end, U.S.
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More Cold War Espionage Transcripts Unsealed
October 10, 2008
National Security Archive and Historians Secure Long Secret Rosenberg Grand Jury Testimony
September 11, 2008
Court Agrees to Release of Most Rosenberg Grand Jury Materials
July 22, 2008
Federal Prosecutors Agree to Release of Some Rosenberg Grand Jury Records After Petition from Archive and Historical Groups
June 26, 2008
Washington, D.C., October 21, 2014 –The secretive missile-tracking center known as DEFSMAC began at the National Security Agency 50 years ago in order to consolidate the multiple alerts and reports on Soviet missile launches, and now includes the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency along with the Defense Intelligence Agency as partners in a global 24/7 missile and space surveillance effort, according to declassified documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org). Compiled and introduced by Archive senior fellow Dr. Jeffrey T.
Selected as a "Best History Book of the Month" - Amazon Washington, DC, September 16, 2014 – The Predator drone, though best known as the CIA's primary weapon in the war against Al Qaeda, was merely an unarmed, remote-control intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft when the Defense Department first bought it in 1994. As detailed in Richard Whittle's Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution (Henry Holt and Company, September 16, 2014), the Predator's configuration was derived from drones developed in the 1980s by former Israeli aeronautical engineer Abraham Karem.
Washington, DC, July 20, 2014 – Forty-five years ago, astronaut Neil Armstrong took his "one small step" for mankind, becoming the first person to set foot on the moon. The program that resulted in that historic event — managed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) — had been a very public one ever since its announcement by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. Even the Soviet government had publicized aspects of its own effort. But there were also highly secret elements to the U.S.
A major controversy during the administration of President George W. Bush concerned the use or misuse of intelligence with regard to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs and possible links between Iraq and al-Qaida. The best known elements of that controversy were Iraqi motivations behind the procurement of aluminum tubes, whether Iraq had sought to acquire uranium from Niger, if Iraq was seeking to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program, and whether it was producing and stockpiling chemical or biological weapons.
Washington, DC, January 23, 2014 – Forty-six years ago today - well before Edward Snowden was born - the National Security Agency suffered what may still rank as the most significant compromise ever of its code secrets when the American spy ship USS Pueblo was captured by communist forces off the coast of North Korea on January 23, 1968. The U.S.
Washington, D.C., December 16, 2013 – The Soviet Union assisted the United States in its effort to curb South Africa's nuclear program in August 1977 when Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sent President Jimmy Carter a message that Moscow's spy satellites had noticed signs of nuclear weapons test preparations at a site in the Kalahari Desert. Very quickly the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) directed spy satellites to photograph the site which intelligence analysts later agreed was geared to nuclear testing. The U.S.
Washington, D.C., October 29, 2013 – The CIA's history of the U-2 spy plane, declassified this past summer, sparked enormous public attention to the U-2's secret test site at Area 51 in Nevada, but documents posted today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org) show that Area 51 played an even more central role in the development of the U.S.