Diplomatic History—State Department Style

Abstract

Government censorship of the press during the conflict with Iraq, severe even by wartime standards, makes one wonder how the history of U.S.Iraqi relations will be portrayed by official Washington when that record is published twenty-five or thirty years from now. If reports issued during the 1980s are any guide, the American public will have to look to sources other than the White House or Departments of State and Defense for an accurate account of the diplomatic and military applications of foreign policy during the Reagan and Bush administrations. The normal tendency of the military to suppress information bearing upon foreign relations is understandable, if not always excusable. More serious is the equally deliberate practice of the State Department in selecting and publishing records of diplomatic history that in some crisis situations grossly misrepresent the government's aims and actions. Examples of such misrepresentation are found in volumes of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), issued from 1984 to 1989, which purport to chronicle U.S. relations with Iran and Guatemala during the years 1952-1954. This was the period in which the CIA organized and directed revolts that brought down the governments of those two countries. Not every record can be or need be included in the Foreign Relations series. But if the papers that are selected are to provide the public with an accurate picture of U.S. dealings with other nations, they must include all documents that