Washington, D.C., January 13, 2009 - During the 1970s the Shah of Iran argued, like current Iranian leaders today, for a nuclear energy capability on the basis of national "rights," while the Ford and Carter administrations worried about nuclear weapons possibilities, according to newly declassified documents published today by the National Security Archive for the first time.
Washington, D.C., January 12, 2009 - The U.S. government’s secret nuclear bomb squad evaluated more than 100 nuclear extortion threats and incidents between 1974 and 1996 but only a dozen required actual deployments (the others were hoaxes), according to the new book, Defusing Armageddon, and key primary sources posted today in the National Security Archive's "Nuclear Vault" by Archive senior fellow Jeffrey T. Richelson.
Washington, D.C., January 23, 2009 - When the 9/11 hijackers crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the U.S. nuclear bomb squad was out of the country on its first foreign deployment since 1998, at a British air base in the Cotswolds, according to the new book Defusing Armageddon and key primary sources posted today in the National Security Archive's Nuclear Vault by Archive senior fellow Jeffrey T. Richelson.
Washington D.C., August 22, 2008 - The U.S. intelligence community buckled sooner in 2002 than previously reported to Bush administration pressure for data justifying an invasion of Iraq, according to a documents posting on the Web today by National Security Archive senior fellow John Prados. The documents suggest that the public relations push for war came before the intelligence analysis, which then conformed to public positions taken by Pentagon and White House officials.
Washington, D.C., February 26, 2008 - The United States should use its power to "prevent the reemergence of a new rival" either on former Soviet territory or elsewhere, declared a controversial draft of the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) prepared by then Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney's Pentagon and leaked to The New York Times in March 1992. Published in declassified form for the first time on the National Security Archive Web site, this draft, along with related working papers, shows how defense officials during the administration of George H. W.
Washington, DC, January 14, 2008: In the wake of the Indian "peaceful nuclear explosion" on May 17, 1974 and growing concern about the spread of nuclear weapons capabilities, the U.S. intelligence community prepared a Special National Intelligence Assessment, "Prospects for Further Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons," published today by the National Security Archive. The 1974 Indian test created shock waves in the U.S.
Washington DC, September 10, 2007 - In the spring of 1991, leaks to the Washington Times on intelligence community discussions of the nuclear activities of the Algerian government and a Chinese reactor sale to that country stimulated a flap within the George H. W. Bush administration over the possibility that Algiers had started a nuclear weapons program. NSC and State Department documents published for the first time today by the National Security Archive shed light on the internal U.S. debate over Algeria's capabilities and intentions, on U.S.
Washington DC, June 15, 2007 - The unfolding controversies over the Iranian and Korean nuclear programs show the extreme difficulty of persuading a government to reverse its nuclear weapons program. Newly declassified documents on U.S.-Taiwan relations during the late 1970s, published today for the first time by the National Security Archive, shed new light on the challenges of counter-proliferation diplomacy. Even a dependent ally, such as Taiwan, tried hard to resist U.S. pressures to abandon suspect nuclear activities and kept Washington guessing whether it had really given them up.
Washington, DC, September 22, 2006 - The prospects of a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in the early 1990's led China to accelerate its testing schedule and discuss differences within the Russian government over testing, according to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and archival research and posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. The documents illustrate the efforts of the U.S.
Washington, DC, May 5, 2006 - Many U.S. government officials and scientists disagreed with the findings of a presidential panel that the double flash signal picked up by a U.S. nuclear detonation detection satellite (Vela 6911) in late September 1979 was possibly not a nuclear test, according to a number of studies posted today by the National Security Archive. The signal appeared to come from a 3,000 mile area that included the South Atlantic, Indian Ocean, tip of Africa, and part of Antarctica.