Third World and Decolonization

A House Divided: Washington, Langley, Saigon, and the Plot Against Diem

Washington, D.C., May 22, 2025 - Early in the morning of October 7, 1963, the top leadership of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) gathered in the office of the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) to discuss the brewing crisis in South Vietnam and America’s role in it. DCI John McCone warned his colleagues: “Under no circumstances” should “the Agency get into the subject of assassination or other highly sensitive matters with [U.S.

From History to Poetry: Mai Der Vang Explores the Archival Record in Her Celebrated Volume "Yellow Rain"

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.

U.S.-Iran Relations: 40 Years of Antagonism, Distrust, and Frustration Reflected in New Volume of Declassified Documents

Washington, D.C., September 20, 2021 – Over the four decades since the 1979 Iranian revolution, leaders of both the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran have repeatedly explored opportunities for either political engagement or simple, transactional arrangements – actions that belie commonly held assumptions about a relationship defined solely by unusual animosity, according to a new volume of declassified records published this month.

Che Guevara and the CIA in the Mountains of Bolivia

Washington, DC, October 9, 2020 – Fifty-three years ago, at 1:15 p.m. on October 9, 1967, Argentine-born revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara was executed in the hills of Bolivia after being captured by a U.S.-trained Bolivian military battalion. A CIA operative, Felix Rodriguez, was present. U.S. officials had been tracking Guevara’s whereabouts ever since he disappeared from public view in Cuba in 1965.

COUP 53: New Documentary on Overthrow of Iran's Mosaddeq

Washington, D.C., August 17, 2020 – Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service – MI6 – took part in the 1953 kidnapping of the chief of police of Tehran, Iran, according to a recently recovered interview of an ex-MI6 operative that is featured in a new documentary film, COUP 53.  The full interview transcript is posted today for the first time by the National Security Archive.

CIA Covert Operations: The 1964 Overthrow of Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana

Washington, DC, April 6, 2020 – Cold War concerns about another Communist Cuba in Latin America drove President John F. Kennedy to approve a covert CIA political campaign to rig national elections in British Guiana, then a British colony but soon to be independent, according to declassified documents posted today by the National Security Archive.

1979 Iran Hostage Crisis Recalled

Washington D.C., November 4, 2019 – On November 4, 1979, a group calling itself the Students Following the Line of the Imam stormed the gates of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seized control of the compound, and took several dozen American diplomats, Marine guards, and others hostage. Thus began a 444-day ordeal that shocked the world, fundamentally altered the political scene in Iran, and cemented negative perceptions in the West of the country’s Islamic leadership. 

New documentary film on 1953 coup in Iran features declassified documents from Archive collection

A new documentary film offers fresh historical material and perspectives on the 1953 coup in Iran.  COUP 53, directed by award-winning Iranian-born film-maker Taghi Amirani, is an innovative look at a decades-old story that continues to reverberate in international politics.  After notable selections in festivals from Telluride to London in 2019, the film is currently having premier screenings in a number of U.S., Canadian, and European cities.