United States and Canada

One of the major primary sources for research on the history of U.S.

Washington, D.C., April 2001 – The Bush administration is in the midst of a nuclear posture review. In his May 1 speech, President George W. Bush announced his support for missile defense and cuts in weapons, but his announcement did not refer to the alert posture of U.S. strategic forces. In a major campaign speech on nuclear weapons policy that he delivered in May 2000, then-presidential candidate Bush addressed concerns about the instant-reaction status of U.S. strategic nuclear forces.

Washington, D.C., March 2, 2001 – The Bush administration has floated the name of Otto Juan Reich for possible nomination as Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs (see Al Kamen, "In the Loop," The Washington Post, 15 February 2001). Mr. Reich served in the Reagan administration as assistant administrator of the Agency for International Development (AID) from 1981 to 1983, then as the first director of the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean (S/LPD) from 1983 to 1986, and finally as ambassador to Venezuela. Mr.

Washington, D.C., December 18, 2000 – President Clinton's decision in September to postpone deployment of a National Missile Defense (NMD) system puts the issue in the lap of the next president, George W. Bush. A strong advocate of NMD, Bush has argued that "America must build effective missile defenses based on the best available options at the earlier possible date." However, he has not yet publicly discussed the intractable technical and political problems raised by NMD that, so far, are without solution.

On Friday, October 6, the National Security Archive at The George Washington University published a newly declassified United States Signals Intelligence Directive (USSID). This version of USSID 18, issued in July 1993, currently governs the National Security Agency’s interception of communications involving U.S. persons. Until publication of the directive, which was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act on September 20, 2000, the only version of USSID 18 available to the public dated back to 1980.

Pending in the Senate is a proposal to enact an “Official Secrets Act” for the United States. Section 303 of the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2001, S. 2507, would make it a crime for government employees to disclose classified information to the public. The proposal is unconstitutional. In violation of the First Amendment, it would stifle informed public debate about the most serious matters of national defense and foreign policy.

Washington, D.C., September 27, 2000 – In September 1992 the Department of Defense acknowledged the existence of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an agency established in 1961 to manage the development and operation of the nation's reconnaissance satellite systems. The creation of the NRO was the result of a number of factors. On May 1, 1960 Francis Gary Powers took off from Peshawar, Pakistan on the U-2 mission designated Operation GRAND SLAM. The flight was planned to take him over the heart of the Soviet Union and terminate at Bodo, Norway.

WASHINGTON D.C., 8 August – U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has overruled the CIA’s claim that it can neither confirm or deny the existence of CIA-prepared biographies of nine former Communist leaders of Eastern European countries, seven of whom are now dead. The judge last week granted the National Security Archive’s motion for partial summary judgment against the CIA’s “Glomar” claim, named after a lawsuit over the ship Glomar Explorer in which the courts allowed the CIA neither to confirm or deny information sought under the Freedom of Information Act.

Plaintiff's Original Complaint 
and Today's Court Filing
Exhibits in Support of 
Today's Court Filing

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 2, 2000 – Lawyers for the National Security Archive today filed in federal district court (in paper and CD-ROM formats) a legal challenge to the CIA’s claim that only one line out of 350 pages of internal histories can be released under the Freedom of Information Act without damaging U.S. national security.

Washington, D.C., July 17, 2000 – On July 13, 2000 the Senate passed a measure in the FY 2001 Defense Authorization Act that – if approved by the full Congress – would severely undercut the public's ability to obtain critical human rights information gathered by U.S. defense attachйs (DATT) and other U.S. military representatives abroad. The provision would exempt from release under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) the "operational files" of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).