Torture

‘Declassified Diplomacy’: Argentina

Washington, D.C., August 11, 2016 – In September 1980, the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires transmitted a detailed six-page cable, entitled “The Tactic of Disappearance,” to the State Department. Although the Argentine military regime had already “won the ‘dirty war,’” the cable stated, the military would not cease using “disappearance” as its preferred form of repression. “This unwillingness does not reflect simple bloody-mindedness by unthinking military men,” the Embassy reported in its comprehensive effort to explain the institutional mindset behind this horrific atrocity.

Operation Condor Verdict: GUILTY!

Washington D.C., May 27, 2016 - As a federal tribunal in Buenos Aires announced guilty verdicts in the historic prosecution of eighteen Argentine military officers for participating in the coordinated, cross-border system of repression known as “Operation Condor,” the National Security Archive today hailed the ruling as a “major milestone for the principle of human rights and the pursuit of accountability for human rights violators.” 

The Merchant of Death's Account Book

Washington, DC, February 23, 2015 –Documents posted for the first time — in a collaboration between the National Security Archive and VICE News — provide insight into the U.S. government's paradoxical and opportunistic relationship with arms dealer Sarkis Soghanalian, whose larger-than-life deals were so well known that he was an inspiration for Nicholas Cage's character Yuri Orlov in the 2005 film, Lord of War.

Torture Report Finally Released

Washington, D.C., December 9, 2014 – The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence today released the executive summary of its long-awaited "Study of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program," describing in more than 500 pages a dysfunctional agency so unprepared to handle suspected terrorist detainees after 9/11, that the CIA bought into private contractors' proposals for torture, and then lied to Congress, President Bush, the Justice Department, the public, and to itself about the purported effectiveness of the program.

The Zelikow Memo: Internal Critique of Bush Torture Memos Declassified

Washington, DC, April 3, 2012 – The State Department today released a February 2006 internal memo from the Department's then-counselor opposing Justice Department authorization for "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the CIA. All copies of the memo (Document 1), which reflect strong internal disagreement within the George W. Bush administration over the constitutionality of such techniques, were thought to have been destroyed. But the State Department located a copy and declassified it in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Security Archive. Philip D.

CIA Inspector General Report Exposes Torture as U.S. Policy

Washington D.C., August 25, 2009 - Today, the National Security Archive posted a side-by-side comparison of two very different versions of a 2004 report on the CIA's "Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities" by Agency Inspector General John Helgerson. Yesterday, the Obama administration released new portions of the report including considerably more information about the use of torture and other illegal practices by CIA interrogators than a version of the report declassified by the Bush administration in 2008. The report was first posted on the Web yesterday by the Washington Independent.

Washington Broadcast Set for Torturing Democracy

Washington, D.C., 17 October 2008 – The new documentary film on the Bush administration’s interrogation and detention policies, Torturing Democracy, will air on Washington D.C.’s WETA-TV tonight at 10 p.m. Produced and written by eight-time Emmy winner and National Security Archive fellow Sherry Jones, the documentary has drawn major online buzz as well as New York Times coverage of PBS’s failure to find a national scheduling spot for the film before President Bush leaves office in January 2009.