Policy Making and Diplomacy

Washington, D.C., December 11, 2015 – The Clinton administration came to office in 1993 determined to restore the United States as the preeminent global protector of the environment, but saw its hopes for a major climate treaty run aground on a series of international and domestic political and procedural setbacks, according to a selection of declassified and previously unpublished records posted today by the nongovernmental National Security Archive, based at The George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).

Washington, D.C., September 16, 2015 - Today the CIA and the LBJ Library are releasing online a collection of 2,500 declassified President’s Daily Briefs (PDBs) from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Related Materials

Nunn-Lugar Revisited
U.S.-Russian cooperation on threat reduction from the Soviet Union in 1991 to Syria in 2013
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 447

Project Sapphire 20th Anniversary
More than a half-ton of weapons-grade uranium removed from Kazakhstan in 1994
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 491

Photos

1.    The Bal Qar Gai conference “yurt.” Tom Blanton at the head of the conference table.
 

Washington, D.C., August 19, 2015 – President Gerald Ford was "offended" and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger "almost blind with rage" over Israeli negotiating behavior in 1975, according to newly released Kissinger telephone transcripts obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and posted today by the National Security Archive.

Washington D.C., August 13, 2015 – On the eve of Secretary of State John Kerry’s historic trip to Havana tomorrow to raise the American flag over the newly reopened U.S. Embassy, the National Security Archive today distributed a ground-breaking article revealing key details of the behind-the-scenes political operations and secret negotiations that have led to the normalization of diplomatic relations. The article appears in the September issue of Mother Jones magazine and was written by Archive analyst Peter Kornbluh and American University Professor William M. LeoGrande.

Washington, DC, January 30, 2015 – Former Ambassador Prudence Bushnell's notebooks provide a never-before-seen view into the inner workings of US diplomacy during one of the international community's darkest hours in recent decades.

Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana
By William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh
(University of North Carolina Press, October 2014)

In the News

The Real Reason It's Nearly Impossible to End the Cuba Embargo
Peter Kornbluh and William M. LeoGrande, The Atlantic, October 5, 2014

Los diálogos secretos entre Cuba y Estados Unidos
Nora Gámez Torres, el Nuevo Herald, October 5, 2014

A Historic Press Conference at the Pierre WHAT: In July 1975, Henry Kissinger sent two of his deputies to meet with representatives of Fidel Castro at the Pierre Hotel in New York City. It was there-in room 727-that the historic first secret talks between Washington and Havana to normalize relations were held. But they would not be the last... For over fifty years, U.S.

Washington, DC, July 24, 2014 – Former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze, who passed away on July 7, brought a new diplomatic style and candor to bear in changing U.S.-Soviet relations in the late 1980s and ending the Cold War, according to Soviet and U.S. declassified documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).

EXPERT OPINION

Declassified U.N. Cables Reveal Turning Point in Rwanda Crisis of 1994
By Mark Landler, The New York Times, June 3, 2014

The United Nations Security Council in Rwanda
By Michael Barnett, the George Washington University, June 1, 2014

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