Digital National Security Archive

Digital National Security Archive unlocks a vast trove of important declassified U.S. government documents providing vital primary source material to advance research in twentieth century history, politics, and international relations.

Digital National Security Archive Modules

• Afghanistan: The Making of U.S. Policy, 1973–1990
  This collection documents most aspects of U.S. policy toward Afghanistan from 1973 to 1990. It also encompasses events leading up to the 1979 Soviet invasion and includes the Soviet withdrawal during 1988-1989.
• Argentina, 1975-1980: The Making of U.S. Human Rights Policy
  This collection chronicles the development of U.S. policy as it attempts to deal with the tragedy experienced in Argentina during the critical, formative period of the late 1970's.
• The Berlin Crisis, 1958–1962
  This collection provides a record of U.S. policy during the most prolonged U.S.-Soviet crisis of the Cold War era. The set covers the crisis years and also events leading up to the crisis as well as developments in its wake.
• Chile and the United States: U.S. Policy toward Democracy, Dictatorship, and Human Rights, 1970–1990
  This collection chronicles CIA covert operations, the coup d'état, Pinochet's repression, international terrorism, diplomacy leading to a return to democracy, and the pursuit of justice for human rights victims of the military regime.
• China and the United States: From Hostility to Engagement, 1960–1998
  This collection brings together important documentation on the relationship between the U.S. and China, with an emphasis on the 1969–1998 time period. It includes economic and scientific associations, intelligence estimates and studies.
• CIA Covert Operations: From Carter to Obama, 1977-2010
  This collection provides a detailed account of the operational and diplomatic history of U.S. covert operations, beginning with Carter in 1977, and concluding with the G.W. Bush administration, with a few Obama-era documents also included.
• CIA Covert Operations II: The Year of Intelligence, 1975
  This collection details covert operations that took place during the first full year of the Gerald R. Ford administration, known as "The Year of Intelligence", the media revelations about official abuses and the subsequent political crisis.
• CIA Covert Operations III: From Kennedy to Nixon, 1961-1974
  Authoritative and wide-ranging, these 2,407 documents, many published here first, illuminate the world of CIA covert operations from 1961-1974, from high-level decisions and confidential records of CIA directors to individual operations.
• CIA Family Jewels Indexed
  This set reveals the CIA's most closely held secrets about their domestic intelligence activities they considered outside its charter, conducted at the height of the Cold War through 1973.
• Colombia and the United States: Political Violence, Narcotics, and Human Rights, 1948-2010
  This set covers over 60 years of U.S. involvement, from the early days of the Cold War through the deluge of recent political scandals. It features intelligence assessments and detailed dossiers on Colombian political and military figures.
• Cuba and the U.S.: The Declassified History of Negotiations to Normalize Relations, 1959-2016
  Includes 1,704 documents on top secret policy making toward Cuba, revealing one of the most dramatic and colorful histories of back-channel attempts at conflict resolution and engagement in the annals of modern U.S. foreign policy.
• The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
  This set presents an integrated, comprehensive record of U.S. decisionmaking during the most dangerous U.S.-Soviet confrontation in the nuclear era. It reprents an organized, cataloged, and fully indexed record of the event.
• The Cuban Missile Crisis: 50th Anniversary Update
  This collection marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 with previously unpublished records from U.S. and Soviet archives.
• The Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited: An International Collection, From Bay of Pigs to Nuclear Brink
  This set contains multinational records—declassified documentation from the United States, the Soviet Union, Cuba and other key countries—which further illuminate events leading up to and through the missile crisis in 1962.
• Death Squads, Guerrilla War, Covert Ops, and Genocide: Guatemala and the United States, 1954-1999
  This set covers U.S. relations with Guatemala during the decades of violent conflict sparked by the CIA-controlled coup in 1954. Internal political, military, social and economic conditions, and the infamous 'Death Diary' are revealed.
• Donald Rumsfeld's Snowflakes, Part I: The Pentagon and U.S. Foreign Policy, 2001-2003
  A unique resource for the study of U.S. national security strategy following September 11 and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, this collection chronicles Donald Rumsfeld's leadership of the Pentagon during the George W. Bush administration.
• Electronic Surveillance and the National Security Agency: From Shamrock to Snowden
  This groundbreaking collection of leaked and declassified documents thoroughly covers the electronic surveillance policies, relationships, and activities of the U.S. and its allies, from 1948 to the present.
• El Salvador: The Making of U.S. Policy, 1977–1984
  This collection covers the U.S. policy toward El Salvador and events in El Salvador from the Carter Administration's formulation of a new Central American policy in January 1977 through the Salvadoran Presidential elections of May 1984.
• El Salvador: War, Peace, and Human Rights, 1980–1994
  This is the second set of declassified U.S. records on El Salvador, presenting recently declassifed documents. The collection represents an extraordinarily rich account of a controversial and recent U.S. foreign policy issue.
• Iran: The Making of U.S. Policy, 1977–1980
  This set of documents focuses on United States policy towards Iran and events in Iran during the period of January 20, 1977, to January 29, 1980. More than 14,000 documents are presented.
• The Iran-Contra Affair: The Making of a Scandal, 1983–1988
  This collection provides an accounting of the political, military and paramilitary operations - overt, covert and extra-official -- which served as the foundation for the most significant American scandal since Watergate.
• Iraqgate: Saddam Hussein, U.S. Policy and the Prelude to the Persian Gulf War, 1980–1994
  This collection focuses on two major issues central to the Iraqgate affair: 1) The U.S. policy toward Iraq in the 1980s up to the latter’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. 2) The Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) affair in the summer of 1989.
• Japan and the United States: Diplomatic, Security, and Economic Relations, 1960–1976
  This collection pulls together more than 2,000 primary source documents detailing the relationship between the United States and Japan during the formative years of their modern alliance.
• Japan and the United States: Diplomatic, Security, and Economic Relations, 1977–1992
  This collection is the most important compilation of documents publicly available on relations between the United States and Japan during the Carter, Reagan, and H.W. Bush presidencies.
• Japan and the United States: Diplomatic, Security, and Economic Relations, Part III, 1961-2000
  This collection, which supplements the first two sets on U.S.-Japan relations with the very latest declassified records, spanning the years from the Kennedy to Clinton presidencies across four decades.
• The Kissinger Conversations, Supplement: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy, 1969–1977
  This collection updates the National Security Archive's substantial body of documents focusing on Kissinger's roles in policymaking and diplomacy under presidents Nixon and Ford, with freshly declassified memoranda and transcripts.
• The Kissinger Conversations, Supplement II: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977
  This update adds the latest declassified memoranda of conversation and telephone transcripts to the National Security Archive's unparalleled collections on Henry Kissinger's diplomatic and policy activities from 1969-76.
• The Kissinger Telephone Conversations: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977
  Comprising over 15,500 telcons, this collection documents Kissinger's conversations with top officials in the Nixon and Ford administrations, as well as noted journalists, ambassadors, and business leaders close to the White House.
• The Kissinger Transcripts: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977
  This first collection of Henry Kissinger's memcons constitutes a critically important record of the history of international relations from 1969 to 1977. The detailed documents are actual verbatim records of the meetings.
• Mexico-United States Counternarcotics Policy, 1969-2013
  This set traces U.S.-Mexican drug-control cooperation from Nixon through Obama's first term, covering relations between the hemisphere’s largest consumer of illegal drugs and the principal producer and transit point for those substances.
• The National Security Agency: Organization and Operations, 1945-2009
  This is a uniquely detailed collection of records documenting the history, mission, and intelligence collection and analytic operations of America's largest and most secretive intelligence agency and its predecessor organizations.
• Nicaragua: The Making of U.S. Policy, 1978–1990
  This set provides an unparalleled record of the diplomatic, political, paramilitary and economic developments which turned the small Central American nation of Nicaragua into the most controversial U.S. foreign policy issue of the 1980s.
• Peru: Human Rights, Drugs and Democracy, 1980-2000
  This is a uniquely detailed collection of records documenting U.S. foreign policy at work in Latin America, as well as internal domestic politics in Peru. It is comprised mostly of previously classified documents.
• The Philippines: U.S. Policy During the Marcos Years, 1965–1986
  This collection documents U.S. policy during the 20-year rule of Ferdinand E. Marcos; in effect, a case study of U.S. policy toward a Third World country that it deems politically, economically and strategically vital.
• The President's Daily Brief: Kennedy, Johnson, and the CIA, 1961-1969
  These are the Top Secret intelligence materials the CIA provided each morning to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Released in 2015, they offer new insights into the intelligence process and presidential decision-making
• The President's Daily Brief: Nixon, Ford, and the CIA, 1969-1977
  This set presents the Top Secret intelligence provided by the CIA to Presidents Nixon and Ford each morning, offering insight into the intelligence process and the global challenges faced during this pivotal period.
• Presidential Directives on National Security, Part I: From Truman to Clinton
  This collection's documents pertain to all aspects of U.S. national security policy from Truman to Clinton — foreign, defense, intelligence, and international economic policy — and structure.
• Presidential Directives on National Security, Part II: From Truman to George W. Bush
  The publication of Part II of Presidential Directives has been made possible by the declassification since 1994 of a substantial number of previously unavailable records. It includes the administration of G.W. Bush.
• South Africa: The Making of U.S. Policy, 1962–1989
  This collection provides more than 2,500 primary source documents describing U.S. relationships to apartheid including implementation, enforcement, and violations of the U.N.-sponsored sanctions against South Africa.
• The Soviet Estimate: U.S. Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1947–1991
  This collection documents U.S. intelligence analysis of Soviet foreign policy, military capabilities, the economy, Soviet science and technology, and the internal situation within the Soviet leadership.
• Soviet-U.S. Relations: The End of the Cold War, 1985-1991
  A rare collection of highest-level primary sources, documenting every summit and private communication between U.S., Soviet, and Russian presidents from 1985-1991 leading to the peaceful end of the Cold War.
• Targeting Iraq, Part 1: Planning, Invasion, and Occupation, 1997-2004
  Includes 2,141 documents on one of the most significant U.S. policy decisions of recent times, with records from official U.S. and British sources encompassing plans for regime change, war and occupation, the use of intelligence, and WMD.
• Terrorism and U.S. Policy, 1968–2002
  The principal focus of this collection is on international terrorism, beginning with the July 1968 hijacking of an El Al jet to Algiers, other incidents, and the 9/11 attack and aftermath.
• U.S. Espionage and Intelligence, 1947–1996
  This set describes the varied civilian and military organizations that constitute the U.S. intelligence community, their past and present operations, and the mechanisms by which the community's activities are managed.
• U.S. Intelligence and China: Collection, Analysis and Covert Action
  This is a compilation of declassified documents concerning U.S. intelligence activities directed at both the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China, from 1945 to the present.
• The U.S. Intelligence Community: Organization, Operations and Management, 1947–1989
  This collection provides researchers with the most comprehensive structural portrait of the U.S. espionage establishment ever published, including previously inaccessible documents.
• The U.S. Intelligence Community After 9/11
  This collection documents the significant organizational and operational changes in the U.S. Intelligence Community since 9/11 - changes in foreign and defense policy, internal security practices, and technology.
• U.S. Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction: From World War II to Iraq
  This collection documents U.S. intelligence concerning the most important weapons systems that other nations produced or tried to produce during World War II, the Cold War, and the post-Cold War era.
• U.S. Military Uses of Space, 1945–1991
  The set provides a detailed record of U.S. military space organizations, operations and policy from 1945 to the present, including the origins of military space programs, the evolution and capabilities of various space systems.
• U.S. Nuclear History, 1969-1976: Weapons, Arms Control, and War Plans in an Age of Strategic Parity
  This essential resource details the nuclear weapons policies of the Nixon and Ford years, a critical period in the nuclear age. The emergence of MIRVs and ABMs as well as enduring global concerns such as arms control are richly documented.
• U.S. Nuclear History: Nuclear Arms and Politics in the Missile Age, 1955–1968
  This collection comprehensively documents major developments in U.S. nuclear weapons policies and programs from the mid-1950s through 1968, the period that set the nuclear stage for the decades of the Cold War that followed.
• U.S. Nuclear Nonproliferation 2, Part I: From Atoms for Peace to the NPT, 1954-1968
  A rich collection of U.S. government records, this set documents Washington's concern about emerging nuclear weapons states and the creation of the major institutions and agreements that constitute the international nonproliferation system.
• U.S. Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy, 1945–1991
  Spanning the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki through the IAEA inspections of Iraq's nuclear program, this collection offers researchers the most complete set of primary source materials to U.S. nonproliferation policy available.
• U.S. Policy in the Vietnam War, Part I: 1954-1968
  This collection documents the deadliest conflict in modern U.S. history prior to the current war against terrorism. The principal focus of this collection is on the period of the Vietnam War between 1961 and 1968.
• U.S. Policy in the Vietnam War, Part II: 1969-1975
  U.S. Policy in the Vietnam War, Part II is the most important compilation of documents available on the final phase of the Vietnam War. It includes newly released documents on all aspects of the final period of the war.
• U.S. Policy toward Iran: From the Revolution to the Nuclear Accord, 1978-2015
  This set combines White House records, intelligence analyses, diplomatic cables, terrorism reports and international inspection materials covering the gamut of issues in U.S.-Iran relations from the 1979 revolution to the 2015 nuclear deal.
• The United States and the Two Koreas, Part II, 1969-2010
  This is extends the first Korean collection. It combines new declassified records with selected WikiLeaks documents, documenting the history of U.S. policy toward South and North Korea through Obama's first administration.
• The United States and the Two Koreas (1969-2000)
  This is a collection of recently declassified records documenting the history of U.S. policy toward and relations with South and North Korea from the Nixon to the Clinton administrations.