Wars and Conflicts

Washington, DC, April 16, 2015 – Newly declassified Clinton White House e-mails and notes detail a decisive U.S. role in the tragic pullout of United Nations peacekeepers during the first two weeks of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, according to documents and analysis posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University on Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah). The documents show U.S. skepticism about United Nations peacekeeping operations as early as September 1993, as domestic political criticism of U.S. involvement, the specter of U.S.

Washington, DC, June 5, 2014 – During the North Korean nuclear crisis of the 1990s, the United States and South Korea shared blunt concerns about the possible outbreak of military hostilities with Pyongyang, according to newly published internal documentation from the National Security Archive. In April 1994, South Korean Defense Minister Rhee Byong Tae told U.S.

Washington, D.C., February 21, 2014 – Inane and contradictory declassification actions on military records of the Cuban Missile Crisis indicate serious flaws in the Defense Department's declassification procedures for historical records, according to documents posted today by the National Security Archive. One of the biggest secrets of the crisis was that a deal involving the trade of Soviet missiles in Cuba for U.S.

Washington, DC, December 11, 2013 – The last Soviet nuclear warheads in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis did not leave the island until December 1, 1962, according to Soviet military documents published today for the first time in English by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org). At 9 o'clock in the morning on December 1, 1962, the large Soviet cargo ship Arkhangelsk quietly left the Cuban port of Mariel and headed east across the Atlantic to its home port of Severomorsk near Murmansk.

Washington, DC, December 4, 2013 – The landmark report on the Guatemalan police archives, From Silence to Memory: Revelations of the AHPN, has been made available in a new English translation issued by the University of Oregon. The publication — with a preface by the National Security Archive's Kate Doyle — is a history of the National Police before and during Guatemala's armed conflict.

Washington, D.C., November 1, 2013 – Continued investigation of the presidency of John F. Kennedy further strengthens the view that the origins of U.S. support for the coup which overthrew South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem 50 years ago today traces directly to President Kennedy, not to a "cabal" of top officials in his administration. As the documents posted by the National Security Archive in 2009 and new material posted today indicates, the often-told story that a "cabal" of senior officials, in combination with U.S.

Washington, D.C., September 24, 2013 – On September 20, a Guatemalan tribunal convicted the former director of the National Police of Guatemala, retired Col. Hйctor Bol de la Cruz, and his subordinate Jorge Alberto Gуmez Lуpez for the 1984 disappearance of student and labor leader Edgar Fernando Garcнa. The verdict broke new ground in the case of Fernando Garcнa's abduction and presumed murder, by condemning senior police officials for their role in ordering, overseeing, and then concealing the crime.

After weeks of powerful testimony and excruciating procedural wrangling, the trial of former Guatemalan dictator Efraнn Rнos Montt and his intelligence chief Josй Rodrнguez Sбnchez on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity is coming to an end. With Judge Yazmin Barrios's request for closing arguments yesterday, the government's lead prosecutor, Orlando Lуpez, gave more than two hours of summation based heavily on the Guatemalan military plans, manuals, and operational records entered as evidence.

Washington, DC, March 28, 2013 – A radio program on the Dos Erres massacre in Guatemala in 1982, which featured National Security Archive senior analyst Kate Doyle, won a prestigious George Foster Peabody Award yesterday. The program originally aired on May 25, 2012, as part of "This American Life" from WBEZ, and was a collaboration with Pro Publica and Fundacion MEPI.

Archive Electronic Briefing Books Cited in This Posting

THE IRAQ WAR -- PART II: Was There Even a Decision?
October 1, 2010

THE IRAQ WAR -- PART I: The U.S. Prepares for Conflict, 2001
September 22, 2010

Saddam Hussein Talks to the FBI
July 1, 2009

THE RECORD ON CURVEBALL
November 5, 2007

TOP SECRET POLO STEP
February 14, 2007

New State Department Releases on the "Future of Iraq" Project
September 1, 2006

CIA Whites Out Controversial Estimate on Iraq Weapons
July 9, 2004