Washington, D.C., March 13, 2023 – The 65-year U.S. effort to detect and track objects in space, from the days before Sputnik 1 to today’s much more crowded orbital environment, is the subject of a fascinating new article and briefing book posted today by the National Security Archive.
Washington, D.C., February 28, 2023 - In February 1998, 25 years ago this month, the United States suffered a series of cyber intrusions known as SOLAR SUNRISE that then-Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre called “the most organized and systematic [cyber] attack the Pentagon has seen to date.” Coming rapidly on the heels of ELIGIBLE RECEIVER 1997 (ER97)[1], a multi-agency, no-notice exercise that raised more questions than answers about h
Washington D.C. September 22, 2022 - The Soviets exposed then Vice President Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat, to ionizing radiation during his famous visit to Moscow in July 1959, according to declassified Secret Service records posted today by the National Security Archive. Using detection devices known as Radiac Dosimeters, Nixon’s Secret Service detail measured significant levels of radiation in and around Nixon’s sleeping quarters at Spaso House, the residence of the U.S. Ambassador, during the first days of his trip.
Washington D.C., September 15, 2022 - On December 9, 1975, as Secretary of State Henry Kissinger prepared to travel to Moscow for arms control talks, he placed an urgent phone call to Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin in Washington. “I want to talk to you about the signal,” Kissinger told Dobrynin.
Washington D.C., September 13, 2022 - On the 5th anniversary of the CIA’s September 13, 2017, decision to pull its agents out of Cuba, after several operatives were stricken with what has become known as the “Havana Syndrome,” the National Security Archive today posted the first of a declassified documentation series on the “Moscow Signals”—a decades-long chapter of the Cold War during which Soviet intelligence bathed the U.S.
Washington, D.C., August 8, 2022 – After years of research and planning, U.S. officials and scientists overseeing the Manhattan Project were startlingly unprepared for the emergence of evidence of the long-term effects of radiation generated by the atomic bomb – even after the Trinity test in July 1945 and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 77 years ago this week, according to documents posted today by the National Security Archive.
Washington, D.C., June 27, 2022 – In a remarkable example of transforming the mundane into high art, poet Mai Der Vang, daughter of Hmong refugees and finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, pored through thousands of pages of declassified documents from the collections of the National Security Archive and other sources to find material for her poems, whose purpose is to record and vivify the trauma experienced by the Hmong people during the Secret War in Laos of the 1960s and 1970s.
Washington, D.C., June 2, 2022 – The apocalyptic threats emanating from Moscow over the Ukraine war raise the terrible prospect of nuclear weapons use. The probabilities may be low, but if a major nuclear war occurred, the catastrophic impact of a so-called nuclear winter could be felt on a global scale.
By James E. David*
Washington, D.C., January 6, 2022 - On the first anniversary of the January 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol, a review of government materials by the National Security Archive’s Cyber Vault project shows the double-edged impact of social media during the episode. While the Internet played a large role in the planning and execution of the riot, as well as creating various cybersecurity risks, it also enormously facilitated subsequent investigations. At the same time, its use in surveillance by government agencies has been