Washington, D.C., November 13, 2009 - Three years before al Qaeda's attacks on the United States on 9/11, U.S. officials detected an alarming shift in the ideological stance of Taliban leader Mullah Omar toward pan-Islamism – a change that portended a burgeoning alliance between the Afghan regime and Osama bin Laden. The report that Omar might be falling under bin Laden's "influence" is contained in a December 1998 U.S.
Washington, DC, November 2, 2009 - As Vice President Biden and other high-ranking U.S. officials contemplate a policy of compromise with the Taliban in order to induce them to turn against al-Qaeda, a new article published today on the Web site of Foreign Affairs magazine by the National Security Archive's Barbara Elias outlines why this approach may be unrealistic.
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 20, 2008 - On the tenth anniversary of U.S. cruise missile strikes against al-Qaeda in response to deadly terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, newly-declassified government documents posted today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org) suggest the strikes not only failed to hurt Osama bin Laden but ultimately may have brought al-Qaeda and the Taliban closer politically and ideologically. A 400-page Sandia National Laboratories report on bin Laden, compiled in 1999, includes a warning about political damage for the U.S.
Washington D.C., December 21, 2007 – On the fifteenth anniversary of the discovery of the Archive of Terror in Paraguay, the National Security Archive posted Spanish-language documents that reveal new details of how the Southern Cone military regimes collaborated in hunting down, interrogating, and disappearing hundreds of Latin Americans during the 1970s and 1980s.
Washington D.C., Diciembre 21, 2007 – En el marco de la celebraciуn del 15 aniversario del descubrimiento del Archivo del Terror, el National Security Archive publica hoy evidencias que las autoridades Paraguayas y Argentinas estбn implicadas en la desapariciуn del Doctor paraguayo refugiado en Argentina, Agustнn Goiburъ, el 9 de febrero de 1977. Los documentos demuestran que perpetradores daban un seguimiento minucioso a Goiburъ desde un aсo atrбs hasta solo horas antes que este fuera secuestrado.
Washington D.C., Diciembre 21, 2007 –En ocasiуn del 15 aniversario del descubrimiento del Archivo del Terror en Paraguay, el National Security Archive publica nuevas pruebas de la coordinaciуn de las dictaduras del Cono Sur en desapariciones en los aсos 1970y 1980, junto a otras conocidas que hicieron famoso a este acervo.
Washington DC, November 15, 2007 - In the first Congressional hearing held on the controversial case of violent Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles, the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight invited National Security Archive Senior Analyst Peter Kornbluh to testify on formerly top secret CIA and FBI intelligence reports linking Posada to the October 6, 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner.
Washington, DC, September 17, 2007 - Today the National Security Archive publishes a collection of documents concerning the organization and operations of the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) and the TALON/CORNERSTONE database it has maintained. As the Defense Department announced on August 21, today that database will be terminated while work on new procedures for reporting of threats to the Defense Department and its facilities continues. In the interim, threat reports will be transmitted to the FBI.