Washington, DC, March 13, 2006 - The U.S. Intelligence Community failed to penetrate the veil of secrecy surrounding the nuclear activities of South Africa's apartheid regime, particularly its nuclear weapons program, according to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and archival research and posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
U.S. diplomats and intelligence identified who was perpetrating the killing in Rwanda on the second day of the genocide, according to recently declassified documents posted to the Web today by the National Security Archive to mark the 10th anniversary of the start of the genocide.
Ten years ago this week, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Prudence Bushnell visited Rwanda and Burundi. Her visit-one of many visits by State Department and Defense Department officials in the preceding year-served dual purposes: to pressure Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, his government and opposition groups to form a transitional government and to gather information for policymakers back home. Such diplomatic activity was emblematic of the resources and attention committed to Rwanda despite its relative unimportance to U.S. interests.
NEW BOOK based on Unprecedented Access to Cuban Records; True Story of U.S.-Cuba Cold fear Clash in Angola presented in Conflicting Missions Washington D.C.: The National Security Archive today posted a selection of secret Cuban government documents detailing Cuba's policy and involvement in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s.
Today the National Security Archive publishes on the World Wide Web sixteen declassified US government documents detailing how US policymakers chose to be “bystanders” during the genocide that decimated Rwanda in 1994. The documents include those cited in the new investigative account, “Bystanders to Genocide: Why the United States Let the Rwandan Tragedy Happen”, by Samantha Power, in the September 2001 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.