Washington, D.C., March 18, 2021 – Ten years ago, the Mexican municipality of Allende was the site of one of the worst human rights atrocities ever seen in the country: a three-day rampage that punctuated a larger wave of violence in which the Los Zetas criminal group kidnapped, murdered, and later burned the bodies of as many as 300 victims, incinerating the remains into piles of ashes, bits of teeth, and tiny bone fragments.
Washington, D.C., March 3, 2021 - Video evidence presented by House impeachment managers during Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial shows just how close the violent mob came to physically confronting Vice President Mike Pence and Senators Mitt Romney and Chuck Schumer, and includes footage of the mob rifling through congressional desks and offices. The never-before-seen cell phone and surveillance footage, which members of Congress watched at the same time as the public, makes the Pentagon’s continued silence about its delay in sending in the D.C.
Washington, D.C., February 11, 2021 – The National Security Archive et al. v. Donald J. Trump et al. lawsuit, filed December 1, 2020, to prevent a possible bonfire of records in the Rose Garden, achieved a formal litigation hold on White House records that lasted all the way through the transition and Inauguration Day, the preservation of controversial WhatsApp messages, and a formal change in White House records policy.
Washington, D.C., January 13, 2021 - The Pentagon’s timeline of its response to the January 6, 2021 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol features multiple discrepancies with the public record, while the first federal indictment of mob participants details the specific legal charges that likely will be brought against others, according to the documents in the National Security Archive’s first "January 6 Sourcebook" posted today.
The Sourcebook, subtitled “documents you should read,” includes:
Washington, D.C., Dec. 1, 2020 – The National Security Archive, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, the American Historical Association, and the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington today filed suit against President Donald Trump in his official capacity, seeking to enforce the Presidential Records Act and prevent any destruction of records during the presidential transition.
Washington D.C., October 22, 2020 - On October 23, 1970, one day after armed thugs intercepted and mortally wounded the Chilean army commander-in-chief, General Rene Schneider, as he drove to work in Santiago, CIA Director Richard Helms convened his top aides to review the covert coup operations that had led to the attack.
Washington, DC, June 25, 2020 — Portions of a long-secret government blueprint for expansive surveillance of domestic protest movements during the Nixon presidency have just been released, more than 50 years after it was drafted. The notorious “Huston Plan” prepared by representatives of the White House and the U.S. intelligence community envisioned a smorgasbord of covert operations that made even FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover queasy.
Washington, D.C., June 19, 2020 – As President Trump escalates attempts to quash publication of former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s book, The Room Where it Happened, on the grounds that it still “contains classified information,” the National Security Archive today posted documentation on previous cases of “prepublication review” dating back to the 1970s that cast doubt on the
Washington, D.C., June 4, 2020 - To mark the 31st anniversary of the massacre at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, June 4, 1989, the National Security Archive today reposts its special exhibit of declassified documentation on an event that has decisively shaped contemporary China – and that just in the past week has unexpectedly gained salience for the United States.
Washington, D.C., May 18, 2020 – The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals today ruled against the National Security Archive’s lawsuit to restore the routine disclosure, under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), of the White House visitor logs that were taken down by the Trump administration in early 2017.