Mexico City, Mexico, August 19, 2024 - From 1965 to 1990, the Mexican State was responsible for “systematic and widespread” human rights abuses “against broad sectors of the population,” according to the recently published report of a truth commission on Mexico’s dirty war.
Washington, D.C., May 31, 2024 - On 6 October 1977, President Jimmy Carter and top U.S. national security officials dialed into a secret “Missile Attack Conference” (MAC) to coordinate a response to a simulated surprise nuclear strike on the United States. Organized by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the mock war scenario was the first to involve the U.S. President and may have prompted Carter to authorize a retaliatory nuclear missile launch, according to documents posted today by the National Security Archive.
Washington, D.C., April 29, 2024 - New evidence from Russian archival sources and published today by the National Security Archive details Fidel Castro’s extraordinary April-May 1963 trip to the USSR, which Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev saw as an opportunity to mend relations that had soured after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Washington, D.C., December 14, 2023 – The National Security Archive is pleased to announce the publication of a major primary document collection on the presidency of Jimmy Carter. The latest in the Archive’s award-winning Digital National Security Archive series, U.S. Foreign Policy in the Carter Years, 1977-1981: Highest-Level Memos to the President comprises more than 2,500 communications and top-level policy-making records that Carter personally viewed and, in many cases, commented on directly.
Washington, D.C., August 11, 2023 – Recently unearthed documents from the Romanian national archives shed new light on the Comintern, the Soviet-led international organization that from 1919-1943 was at the forefront of Moscow’s efforts to establish hegemony over Communist parties in Romania, the rest of Europe and worldwide.
Washington, D.C., July 18, 2023 – A set of highly secret emergency action plans kept inside the closely guarded “Football” that traveled with the President at all times and that would give the federal government sweeping emergency powers were of “doubtful legality,” “badly out of date,” and “even illegal,” according to top government officials whose views are memorialized in declassified records posted today by the National Security Archive.
Washington, D.C., April 20, 2023 - Sixty years ago, during April 1963, the U.S. Air Force took steps to implement the final stage of the secret U.S.-Soviet deal that helped resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis with the dismantling of the Jupiter missiles deployed in Italy and Turkey.
Washington, D.C., March 20, 2023 -The declassified Air Force film shows the crew of a U.S. B-52 bomber reaching its “Positive Control” (“fail safe”) point on the way to its target in the Soviet Union. But instead of turning around as usual, they get an order to proceed to their assigned objective. Having received and authenticated a “Go Code” message from U.S. Strategic Air Command (SAC), the pilot announces, “We’re going in,” navigating the aircraft in low over mountains, lakes, fields, and forests to avoid Soviet air defenses.
Washington, D.C., February 16, 2023 - Harvard professor and future Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger discussed the U.S. withdrawal of Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) from Italy during January 1963 talks with top Italian officials and diplomats, including Prime Minister Amintore Fanfani and President Antonio Segni, according to a declassified telegram from the U.S. Embassy in Rome. Segni felt some “pique” that the decision had been made at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and that three months had passed before his government learned about it.
Washington, D.C., December 13, 2022 - In the immediate aftermath of the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev met with the Czechoslovakian Communist Party leader, Antonín Novotný, and told him that “this time we really were on the verge of war,” according to minutes of their October 30, 1962, meeting posted today by the National Security Archive. “We were truly on the verge of war,” Khrushchev repeated later in the meeting, during which he explained how and why the Kremlin “had to act very quickly” to resolve the crisis as the U.S.