National Security Archive Research Articles

Burying Culpability: The Killing Fields (1984), Us Foreign Policy, and the Political Limits of Film-Making in Reagan-Era America

Burying Culpability: The Killing Fields (1984), Us Foreign Policy, and the Political Limits of Film-Making in Reagan-Era America

Remembering Democratic Time: Specters of Mexico's Past and Democracy's Future

This article examines the politics of memory at work in both Mexico's dirty war against political dissidents and the failed attempts to prosecute political leaders responsible for the atrocities. Utilizing information recently made available by the National Security Archive's Mexico Project, it explores how power relations influence public memory, and how this memory shapes democratic futures. A critical engagement with Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx informs an analysis of how the past lives on in ways that challenge political attempts to achieve closure. Through this encounter, the article advances a line of questioning about what constitutes a democratic relationship to time capable of resisting a politics of amnesia. I argue that a more democratic conception of time departs from the conventional metaphors of understanding temporality by seeking an ideal where multiple experiences of time can be present concurrently.

Open Veins, Public Transcripts: The National Security Archive as a Tool for Critical Pedagogy in the College Classroom

Since 2004, I have used various document sets from the National Security Archive (NSA) to teach students about modern Latin American history at Georgia College and State University, a medium-sized public liberal arts university in central Georgia. The NSA has the largest non-governmental online collection of US national security government documents in the world. Its research staff compiles, introduces, contextualizes, analyzes, and sifts through thousands of declassified materials. These include inter-agency memos, embassy communications, executive directives, confidential correspondence, and other once-classified materials. This essay will critically examine the NSA as a way of teaching the histories of US imperialism and intervention, state suppression of popular dissent, militarism, human rights abuses, and counterinsurgency tactics and training in Latin America from the beginning of the Cold War until today. First, I will provide an explanation of the assignments that I use. These consist mostly of document analysis exercises and larger research papers. I will also share which topics students tend to explore, while noting several potential methodological pitfalls in using the NSA documents. Secondly, I will share testimony on how students' views on US foreign policy have changed. The general consensus at the beginning of the semester is that one of the principal aims of US foreign policy is to promote democracy above all other values. After examining the NSA documents, however, students seriously re-examine this idea. Indeed, introducing students to the `raw material' provided by the NSA is a powerful pedagogical tool for delivering and teaching radical history.

The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations in Cuba, 1959–1965 (review)

Don Bohning, The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations in Cuba, 1959-1965. Dulles, Va.: Potomac Books, 2006. 320pp.In this book, The Castro Obsession, the former Latin American editor of the Miami Herald, Don Bohning, provides a good, concise overview of the efforts by the United States to remove Fidel Castro from office in the period 1959-1965. While treading over ground covered by others such as Peter Wyden, Bohning nevertheless succeeds as an investigative reporter in writing a good synthesis of the efforts that began with the Eisenhower administration and finally subsided with the election of President Lyndon Johnson and the shifting of attention to southeast Asia.Bohning covers the traditional topics such as the Bay of Pigs, Operation Mongoose, and CIA activities in Miami, highlighting a cast of larger-than-life American and Cuban characters, ranging from those approximating James Bond to others more closely resembling Maxwell Smart. Ultimately, the United States spent hundreds of millions of dollars and, according to the author, instead of ridding the hemisphere of Castro, the covert campaign undoubtedly contributed to maintaining and consolidating his control over (1).The book opens with a review of the Bay of Pigs invasion and its spectacular failure. Immediately, President John Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy figure prominently in the narrative, especially the latter, though both shared the obsession with Castro. Chastised by those who argued against the Bay of Pigs as well as those within the military and Cuban American community who felt the president should have used U.S. forces to help the invasion, the Kennedy brothers made me feud with Castro personal. To underscore the point, Bohning incorporates materials from interviews with Americans such as Jake Esterline and Jack Hawkins as well as Cuban perspectives provided by Erneido Oliva, Rafael Quintero, and Carlos Obregon.The subsequent section deals with Operation Mongoose and efforts to destabilize the Castro government through operations ranging from intelligence gathering to sabotage and finally several botched assassination attempts. Characterizing many of the attempts as nutty schemes (93), the author uses long-disclosed sources including the Church Committee hearings and National Security Archive materials to tell the familiar story of the Mafia's efforts to assassinate Castro as well as CIA efforts to provide poison to close confidants of the Cuban leader. The Cuban Missile Crisis effectively eliminated many of the operations when Kennedy promised no invasion of Cuba in return for the removal of missiles.Despite the promises, the U.S. government remained active in trying to depose Castro, and Miami became a hot spot in the cold war. The CIA and other government agencies worked out of the University of Miami's South Campus in a series of front companies such as Zenith Technical Enterprises. …

From Solidarity to Martial Law: The Polish Crisis of 1980-1981: A Documentary History. Ed. Andrzej Paczkowski and Malcolm Byrne. Foreword, Lech Walẹsa. National Security Archive Cold War Readers. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2007. xlvii, 548 pp. Bibliography. Chronology. Index. Photographs. $65.00, hard bound.

From Solidarity to Martial Law: The Polish Crisis of 1980-1981: A Documentary History. Ed. Andrzej Paczkowski and Malcolm Byrne. Foreword, Lech Walẹsa. National Security Archive Cold War Readers. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2007. xlvii, 548 pp. Bibliography. Chronology. Index. Photographs. $65.00, hard bound. - Volume 67 Issue 2

The Influence of External Factors on the Process of Transformation in Poland. The Case of the Polish Presidential Elections of 1989

In the first half of 2001 the US Department of State, following a request from the National Security Archive (a US non-governmental organisation), declassified documents relating to the Round Table negotiations, the presidential elections, the crisis over choice of a prime minister and the creation of government (coalition) in Poland in 1989. Those documents, highly confidential until their release, allow us to look at the most important events in the transformation in Poland from a different perspective, which has not yet been extensively analysed. In essence, they indicate the role of external factors which have influenced the political situation of Poland – the transformation and actual decomposition of communism. They include cables detailing the US embassy’s participation in, and its analysis of the events during Poland’s ‘revolution’.

Diplomacy with Fundamentalists: The United States and the Taliban

AbstractAfter the Taliban had become a permanent factor in Afghan politics at the beginning of 1995, the US administration started talking to them, mainly through the American Embassy in Islamabad. Declassified documents about the administration's dealings with the Taliban, which were obtained and published by the National Security Archive, give insight into the relationship between the two unlikely partners. The Americans discussed various issues with the Taliban, such as peace in Afghanistan, the fight against narcotics, human rights, the proposed Unocal gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan, and terrorism. The Taliban demanded recognition as Afghanistan's legitimate government and wanted access to additional revenue. American talks with the Taliban survived the deterioration of the relationship from original friendliness to opposition to the promotion of sanctions and finally to threats. Since the end of summer 1998, a solution to the issue of Osama Bin Laden has been the US administration's top issue. The Americans asked the Taliban with urgency to take Bin Laden into custody or to expel him. The US administration, however, did not offer the Taliban anything in return. Persuasion was not enough to achieve the desired result and the administration's strategy was self-defeating.

September 11th Sourcebooks

September 11th Sourcebooks

The National Security Archive and Digital National Security Archive

The National Security Archive and Digital National Security Archive

American Secret Intelligence: A Review Essay

Political Science QuarterlyVolume 118, Issue 1 p. 127-131 American Secret Intelligence: A Review Essay JOHN PRADOS, JOHN PRADOS JOHN PRADOS is a fellow of the National Security Archive in Washington, DC, directing its Vietnam documentation project, and author of eleven books, four of them on intelligence subjects. He has just published The Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William E. Colby and a volume on the Dien Bien Phu crisis of 1954 titled Operation Vulture.Search for more papers by this author JOHN PRADOS, JOHN PRADOS JOHN PRADOS is a fellow of the National Security Archive in Washington, DC, directing its Vietnam documentation project, and author of eleven books, four of them on intelligence subjects. He has just published The Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William E. Colby and a volume on the Dien Bien Phu crisis of 1954 titled Operation Vulture.Search for more papers by this author First published: 15 February 2013 https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-165X.2003.tb00389.x AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume118, Issue1Spring 2003Pages 127-131 RelatedInformation

Breaking Developments in Domestic Intelligence

Le jugement de la Court of Review americaine concernant la surveillance des agents de renseignements etrangers et l'utilisation de la loi du FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) constitue un pas supplementaire dans le debat public et gouvernemental sur l'information domestique, dans la recherche d'un equilibre entre les exigences de la securite nationale et celles des libertes constitutionnelles. Ce debat sur la collecte, l'utilisation, la conservation et la diffusion des renseignements interieurs presente trois aspects : le seuil de surveillance d'un individu ou d'un groupe potentiellement menacant ; le seuil de retention et de diffusion de l'information acquise au cours de la surveillance domestique ; la supervision de ces systemes de renseignements qui presentent un danger pour les libertes.

Playa Girón: Bay of Pigs: Washington’s First Military Defeat in the AmericasThe Missile Crisis in Cuba

Playa Girón: Bay of Pigs: Washington’s First Military Defeat in the AmericasThe Missile Crisis in Cuba

Cold War Studies and New Archival Materials on Stalin

The field of Cold War history has grown exponentially since the opening of Soviet-period archives in 1991-92. The Cold War International History Project, run out of the Wilson Center, recently celebrated its tenth anniversary with a conference in Washington, DC, attended by some 120 scholars representing a wide variety of institutions and projects related to research on the Cold War. In addition to the Cold War International History Bulletin, put out by the Project, two new English-language scholarly journals have been founded: The Journal of Cold War Studies, edited by Mark Kramer at the Davis Center at Harvard, and Cold War History, edited by Odd Arne Westad in London. New opportunities for publishing scholarly work on the Cold War are apparently necessary; according to the editors of Diplomatic History, there has in fact been an ongoing glut of submissions of manuscripts on Cold War topics.' The publication and collection of documents from the Soviet period have also multiplied along with greater access to Russian archives. In its Annals of Communism series, Yale University Press has already published at least a dozen volumes of documents from the Russian archives on the Soviet period, some of them related to the history of the Cold War. The Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford have become a major repository of collections of Cold War-era documents microfilmed from the Russian archives. In addition to its central task of declassifying American intelligence and foreign policy documents from the Cold War period, the National Security Archive, headquartered at George Washington University, has contributed to the declassification and copying of documents from Russia, China, Viet Nam, and elsewhere. Among European institutions, the Feltrenelli Foundation in Italy has particularly distinguished itself by sponsoring a number of significant document publication projects.2

Whether to “Strangle the Baby in the Cradle”: The United States and the Chinese Nuclear Program, 1960–64

Earlier versions of this article appeared in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as “The China Puzzle,” Vol. 53, No. 4 (July/August 1997), and were presented at the 1999 annual meeting of the Society for the Historians of American Foreign Relations. The authors thank Barton Bernstein, William Bundy, Gordon Chang, Lynn Eden, Raymond Garthoff, Robert Johnson, Robert Norris, David Painter, John Prados, David Rosenberg, Walt Rostow, Gen. William Smith (ret'd), J. Samuel Walker, and Paul Wolman for comments, and the W. Alton Jones Foundation for anancial support to the National Security Archive, George Washington University.

American Policy and Cuba, 1961-1963

In 1997 the Department of State finally released the two FRUS volumes on Cuba policy in the Kennedy administration. At the end of 1998 the department released a microfiche supplement. The set is distinguished by a new level of editorial assistance and especially broad research across the archival holdings of agencies and collections of papers. The result is authoritative. The volumes provide an excellent foundation for understanding U.S. policy on Cuba during this period, if complemented by the contents of the secret White House tape recordings of meetings on Cuba available elsewhere.1 If Cuba is the subject, State Department documents are obviously not sufficient. So these FRUS volumes became a test case for securing the interdepartmental documentary access commanded by the 1991 law passed to support the Foreign Relations series. The volumes pass the test. Indeed, the majority of documents in these two volumes come from outside State. Large numbers are from the White House and CIA, of course. But Defense Department records also provided a treasure trove of material, especially for the Bay of Pigs and other developments in 1961. The microfiche supplement provides even more CIA and Defense material, some of which – like the report on the Bay of Pigs by the CIA’s inspector general – was extricated with the help of prodding from the National Security Archive (especially Peter Kornbluh).

News from the National Security Archive

News from the National Security Archive

National Security Archive

National Security Archive

Foreign Policy Failure in the White House: Reappraising the Fall of the Shah and the Iran-Contra Affair.

Through a close inspection of empirical evidence, the authors wish to show how high-level policymakers are beset by complex decision-making tasks that the rational and systemic perspective fails entirely to take into account. This book focuses on the contributions of both cognitive psychology and the analysis of bureaucratic politics to the understanding of foreign policy decisions made by individuals, small groups, and large organizations. Two recent events are investigated: the fall of the Shah of Iran (1979), and the Iran-Contra affair (1986). This work offers new evidence through a detailed examination of primary sources, particularly internal government documents, messages, and reports newly declassified by the National Security Archive in Washington. Most of this material has not been accessible to previous writers.

The Militarization of the Drug War in Mexico

Essay| February 01 1993 The Militarization of the Drug War in Mexico Kate Doyle Kate Doyle Kate Doyle is an analyst for the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C., a nonprofit research institute and library that makes declassified government documents on United States foreign policy available to the public. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Current History (1993) 92 (571): 83–88. https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.1993.92.571.83 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Kate Doyle; The Militarization of the Drug War in Mexico. Current History 1 February 1993; 92 (571): 83–88. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.1993.92.571.83 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentCurrent History Search This content is only available via PDF. © 1993 by The Regents of the University of California1993 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Friday the Thirteenth

Journal Article Friday the Thirteenth Get access Scott Armstrong Scott Armstrong executive director National Security Archive in Washington, D.C. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 75, Issue 4, March 1989, Pages 1234–1244, https://doi.org/10.2307/1908638 Published: 01 March 1989