Briefing Books

“Briefing Books” are one-stop resources covering a full range of topics in U.S. foreign policy. Containing from 5 to 100+ documents, each briefing book features an introductory essay, individual document descriptions, related photo or video content, plus links for further reading.
Prisoner Abuse: Patterns From the Past
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Washington D.C. May 12, 2004: CIA interrogation manuals written in the 1960s and 1980s described "coercive techniques" such as those used to mistreat detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq,…
Dubious Secrets of the Cuban Missile Crisis
| Briefing Book
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…
Special Plans and Double Meanings: Controversies over Deception, Intelligence, and Policy Counterterrorism
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A major controversy during the administration of President George W. Bush concerned the use or misuse of intelligence with regard to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs and possible links…
The Rwanda Sitreps
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Washington, DC, February 3, 2014 – Three months after its arrival, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) remained ill-equipped and unprepared to respond to the rising threat of…
Kissinger to Ford: "Smash" Rumsfeld
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Washington, DC, January 24, 2014 – A recently declassified transcript of a telephone conversation (telcon) between Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and President Gerald Ford in December 1975…
USS Pueblo: LBJ Considered Nuclear Weapons, Naval Blockade, Ground Attacks in Response to 1968 North Korean Seizure of Navy Vessel, Documents Show
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Washington, DC, January 23, 2014 – Forty-six years ago today - well before Edward Snowden was born - the National Security Agency suffered what may still rank as the most significant compromise ever…
The Rwanda "Genocide Fax": What We Know Now
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Washington, DC, January 9, 2014 – Twenty years ago this week, the commander of United Nations peacekeeping forces in Rwanda (UNAMIR) wrote a "Most Immediate" cable to his superiors in New York that…
Proliferation Watch: U.S. Intelligence Assessments of Potential Nuclear Powers, 1977-2001
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., December 16, 2013 – The Soviet Union assisted the United States in its effort to curb South Africa's nuclear program in August 1977 when Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev…
CIA Bay of Pigs Secrecy Case Reaches Appeals Court
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Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba Edited by Peter Kornbluh RELATED POSTS CIA SUED FOR 'HOLDING HISTORY HOSTAGE' ON BAY OF PIGS INVASION April 14, 2011
Last Nuclear Weapons Left Cuba in December 1962
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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…
From Silence to Memory
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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…
Nunn-Lugar Revisited
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Washington, DC, November 22, 2013 – The final shipment of highly enriched uranium from former Soviet nuclear warheads to the U.S.
Pakistan's Illegal Nuclear Procurement Exposed in 1987
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Washington, D.C., November 22, 2013 – The arrest of a Pakistani national, Arshed Pervez in July 1987 on charges of illegal nuclear procurement roiled U.S.-Pakistan relations and sharpened divisions…
Mexico's San Fernando Massacres: A Declassified History
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Washington, D.C., November 6, 2013 – Four months before the feared Zetas drug cartel kidnapped and murdered 72 migrants in northeastern Mexico, the U.S.
The Diem Coup After 50 Years
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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.
Kennedy Considered Supporting Coup in South Vietnam, August 1963
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Washington, D.C., December 11, 2009 - At a critical moment in August 1963, President John F. Kennedy saw only negative choices on Vietnam, according to new audio recordings and documentation posted…
The Area 51 File: Secret Aircraft and Soviet MiGs
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., October 29, 2013 – The CIA's history of the U-2 spy plane, declassified this past summer, sparked enormous public attention to the U-2's secret test site at Area 51 in…
The Area 51 File: Secret Aircraft and Soviet MiGs
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., October 29, 2013 – The CIA's history of the U-2 spy plane, declassified this past summer, sparked enormous public attention to the U-2's secret test site at Area 51 in Nevada, but…
Every Nuclear-Tipped Missile is an "Accident Waiting to Happen"
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., October 7, 2013 – A nuclear accident never produced a nuclear detonation, but according to a new book by Eric Schlosser every nuclear-tipped missile "is an accident waiting to…
"Disreputable if Not Outright Illegal": The National Security Agency versus Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Art Buchwald, Frank Church, et al.
| Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., September 25, 2013 – During the height of the Vietnam War protest movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the National Security Agency tapped the overseas communications of…