Policy Making and Diplomacy

Nixontapes.org and the National Security Archive are pleased to bring you the complete phone conversations of Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Henry Kissinger as captured by the Nixon taping system. This unified, easy-to-use collection includes digital audio from the telephone switchboards of the Oval Office, Nixon’s hideaway office in the Executive Office Building, the Lincoln Sitting Room, the White House residence, and Camp David.

Washington, D.C., December 23, 2008 - Amidst a massive bombing campaign over North Vietnam, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon candidly shared their evident satisfaction at the “shock treatment” of American B 52s, according to a declassified transcript of their telephone conversation published for the first time today by the National Security Archive. “They dropped a million pounds of bombs,” Kissinger briefed Nixon. “A million pounds of bombs,” Nixon exclaimed.

Washington D.C., November 12, 2008 - The Obama administration can act quickly after taking office in January to reverse the secrecy trend of the last eight years and restore openness in the executive branch, according to a set of new proposals posted online today by the National Security Archive.

Washington D.C., November 10, 2008 - A court ruled today that the National Security Archive may proceed with its effort to force the White House to recover millions of Bush Administration Executive Office of the President (EOP) e-mail records before the presidential transition.

Washington D.C., November 5, 2008 - In a striking rebuke to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Judge Gladys Kessler of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia yesterday rejected the CIA’s view that it—and not journalists—has the right to determine which Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests are newsworthy.

Washington D.C., October 31, 2008 - In an opinion issued today in a case brought by the National Security Archive, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the United States District Court for the District of the Columbia ordered the Department of Justice to submit several legal opinions issued by the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel for in camera review.

Washington D.C., September 10, 2008 - On the eve of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the military coup in Chile, the National Security Archive today published for the first time formerly secret transcripts of Henry Kissinger’s telephone conversations that set in motion a massive U.S. effort to overthrow the newly-elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. “We will not let Chile go down the drain,” Kissinger told CIA director Richard Helms in one phone call. “I am with you,” the September 12, 1970 transcript records Helms responding.

Washington D.C., July 29, 2008 - Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola of the U.S. District Court today denied a motion by the White House to reconsider his earlier recommendations and reaffirmed his recommendation that the court order the Executive Office of the President (EOP) to search individual workstations used between March 2003 and October 2005 and preserve any e-mails located on those workstations or on portable media used by EOP employees.

Washington, DC, July 2, 2008 - Senior Kennedy administration aides claimed incorrectly that U.S. warships had come “eyeball to eyeball” with Soviet missile-carrying ships during the Cuban missile crisis, a myth that has persisted for over four decades, according to evidence published today by the National Security Archive.

Washington D.C., June 11, 2008 - The National Security Archive’s General Counsel today warned that while “the establishment of trusted pathways for information is obviously essential to coordination amongst federal, state, local and tribal authorities, and private parties, those pathways are just as susceptible to manipulation and failure as individual agencies that jealously guard their secrets and turf.” The Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment of the House Committee on Homeland Security, chaired by Representative Jane Harman, asked for the Arch