17.919: Declassify This!

Foreign Relations of the United States: From the web site: "The Foreign Relations of the United States series presents the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. The series, which is produced by the State Department's Office of the Historian, began in 1861 and now comprises more than 350 individual volumes. The volumes published over the last two decades increasingly contain declassified records from all the foreign affairs agencies."
List of ALL volumes, list of ONLINE volumes and their summaries.

The National Security Archive: Without a doubt, the best site online for finding declassified documents on a wide variety of subjects.This is a very powerful and usable archive that is arranged into collections, and is also searchable to help find related documents from other parts of the archive.The institution also serves as a public interest law firm defending and expanding public access to government information through the FOIA, and an indexer and publisher of the documents.
The National Security Archive was founded in 1985 by a group of journalists and scholars who had obtained documentation from the U.S. government under the Freedom of Information Act and sought a centralized repository for these materials. Over the past decade, the Archive has become the world's largest non-governmental library of declassified documents. The Archive's holdings include more than two million pages of accessioned material in over 200 separate collections. The Archive's operating budget comes from publication revenues and from private philanthropists. As a matter of policy, the Archive receives no government funding.

Digital National Security Archive Online: A joint effort between the National Security Archive and ProQuest Information and Learning Company to produce the most comprehensive collections available of significant primary documents central to US foreign and military policy since 1945. Nearly 40,000 of the most important, declassified documents (totaling more than 250,000 pages) are included in the database.
The DNSA is comprised of fifteen collections, each focused on one of the following topics:
Afghanistan: The Making of US Policy, 1973-1990
The Berlin Crisis, 1958-1962 The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
El Salvador: The Making of US Policy, 1977-1984
Iran: The Making of US Policy, 1977-1980
The Iran-Contra Affair: The Making of a Scandal
Iraqgate: Saddam Hussein, U.S. Policy and the Prelude to the Persian Gulf War, 1980-1994
Nicaragua: The Making of US Policy, 1978-1990
The Philippines: US Policy during the Marcos Years, 1965-1986
Presidential Directives on National Security from Truman to Clinton
South Africa: The Making of US Policy, 1962-1989
The Soviet Estimate: U.S. Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1947-1991 The US Intelligence Community, 1947-1989
US Military Uses of Space, 1945-1991
US Nuclear Non-Proliferation Policy, 1945-1991

The Avalon Project at the Yale Law School: An excellent comprehensive online source for document collections from pre-18th century to today.They include not only the US internal record, but also declassified and public documents from the United Nations and from the foreign countries involved.
The Avalon Project contains a large collection of digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. They do not mount only static text but rather they add value to the text by providing links to supporting documents expressly referred to in the body of the text. The Avalon Project is a cooperating partner of the International Relations and Security Network.

Presidential Libraries: Collections of website addresses for the available online presidential libraries.Each library contains interesting records and often some online declassified documents not found in the larger collections or archives. The libraries listed on this website include those for George Bush, Jimmy Carter , Bill Clinton , Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry S. Truman. These vary in usefulness and openness, but they are worth examining when studying a period during one of these administrations. The older libraries have much more of interest declassified online, and they all have large hardcopy archives that may be partially viewed by researchers who travel to the library.

OpenNet Declassified Information Database: Collection of recently declassified information from the Department of Energy and the Office of Nuclear and National Security Information. The OpenNet archive allows access to recently declassified DOE information, including that declassified in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. OpenNet includes references to all documents declassified and made publicly available after October 1, 1994, while newer references will be added periodically as they occur. In addition to these documents, OpenNet references older document collections from several DOE sources including the Office of Nuclear and National Security Information.

GulfLINK Recently Declassified Documents: A collection of recently declassified military and intelligence documents concerning Gulf War Illnesses and US policy during the war. A good source for information on US military decision making in the Gulf War concerning health risks of certain weapons (including Depleted Uranium) and of military strategy (including such things as targeting damns and water purification facilities in violation of Article 54 of the Geneva Convention). This is an "official" government site and thus a little hard to use, but still very good.

FOIA Information and Declassified Documents: Links to the Freedom of Information Act mandated websites of all major government departments and agencies. A nice central resource if the information you are looking for is buried in an unexpected place, but since it only points to governmental websites most of the information available is heavily blacked-out, very hard to find, to access, and to interpret.

UT Library Online - Declassified Government Documents: Links to collections of declassified documents from both governmental and non-governmental sources. Has some interesting and otherwise hard to find links to obscure and often very specific document collections. Has a lot of good sites on internal US policies (including intelligence and surveillance actions and US nuclear policy and human testing) as well as US foreign relations.

Project WhistleStop: A collection of important documents and images from the Truman administration, including the decision to drop the Atomic Bomb, the recognition of Israel, and US policy during the Korean War. Project WhistleStop was funded by a five-year education technology challenge grant from the U.S. Department of Education. It brings together documents, pictures, cartoons, and facts from the Harry S Truman presidential library. By February 1 this site will move to the Truman Presidential Museum & Library website (http://www.trumanlibrary.org) where it will reside from then on.

Documents Relating to the Israeli-Palestinian Dispute: Collections of documents on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict maintained by the Mount Holyoke Library. These documents include review articles, internal government documents from the US, Britain, Israel, and the Palestinian National Authority, as well as United Nation's resolutions and debate. The documents span a very wide period (from 1895 to 2001).

NAIL Digital Images Search: National Archives and Records Administration online collection of surveillance images and Photostats of actual US government documents which often include hand written notes and comments of interest. This is a very hard database to use and is not a great first source, but when looking for more detailed information or conformation this can be a useful resource. It is also interesting because of it's inclusion of surveillance photos and other types of media which occasionally reveal more than the dry documentary record.

The COINTELPRO Papers: An excellent collection of documents, resources, and links which provide an extraordinarily detailed description and analysis of COINTELPRO, the FBI's Counterintelligence and Covert Operations program set up by J. Edgar Hoover to destroy progressive movements in this country. The site contains the complete online version of the book by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall which details COINTELPRO both trough original overviews and photo-reproductions of internal memos, as well as excerpts from the Church Committee reports ( the US Senate Committee set up to study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities). The site also provides links to several other major works on the subject.

Documents related to the Iran/Contra affair: A small collection of documents relating to the traffic and sale of drugs by US officials to raise money for the government's illegal support of the Contras. This site was put together by an individual and contains mostly excerpts from the congressional and legal proceedings that followed the uncovering of the Iran/Contra affair and the "prosecution" of Oliver North. It has a couple of unique pieces though that are not found in the larger archives.

FBI - Freedom of Information Act - Reading Room Index: An intentionally poor and hard to use collection of documents released by the FBI under the FOIA.There are, however, some interesting links to documents relating to CONINTELPRO type activities and to some US foreign relations decisions that had large domestic consequences. Thousands of pages of frequently requested (and mostly useless fluff filled) FBI documents that have been released under the provisions of the FOIA are stored in the Reading Room. The FBI has converted many of these documents to PDF format which are available at this website, although only experts of summaries of the longer documents are available online. The website also lists documents which may be viewed only in the actual Reading Room which is located within the J. Edgar Hoover Building at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

NSA and the Cuban Missile Crisis Document Archive: A self serving and self congratulatory archive of the NSA's role in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the importance of signals intelligence (SIGINT) during the stand off.It is, however, one of the only useable NSA databases and thus provides valuable insight into the workings of this powerful and secret agency.
The NSA is the least well known of the intelligence agencies. It is tasked with coordinating, directing, and performing highly specialized activities to control U.S. information systems and produce foreign intelligence information. With the increased importance of electronic surveillance, it is more important than ever to understand the workings of this organization in a crisis. This online archive covers events surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis from October 5th 1960 to June 19th 1963. It contains an interesting, but rather short collection of photo-reproductions of actual NSA documents as well as PDF files of the longer reports.

FAS Project on Government Secrecy: The online archive of the Federation of American Scientists' anti-secrecy project.The site contains both documents that have been declassified though the efforts of the FAS on the US intelligence community and on US domestic and foreign policy as they relate to technology and a good list of links to FOIA sites of US government and military sites. The FAS Project on Government Secrecy works to reduce the scope of government secrecy, to accelerate the declassification of cold war documents, and to promote reform of official secrecy practices. Through research, advocacy, and public education, the FAS project works to challenge excessive government secrecy and to promote public oversight. The archive contains many documents from the recent past including the Clinton and Bush presidencies. The Project is funded by various NGOs and through private donations.

CIA Electronic Document Release Center: The online FOIA site of the Central Intelligence Agency.As with all ofthe "official" government websites, it is harder to use than the private archives and has often less powerful information, but given the incredibly important role of the CIA in US foreign affairs, this is still a very valuable tool. The Electronic Document Release Center is maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency and its Office of Information Management. All agency documents released under the FOIA can be searched from this site and (often heavily censored) photo-reproductions of the reports may be viewed. Documents previously released to the public since November 1996 are contained in this database, which will be occasionally updated to reflect the release of new information. In addition, there are a few pre-assembled collections of documents available which cover topics including the Bay of Pigs invasion and US policy in Latin America.

Documents Relating to the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis: Collections of documents on the US involvement in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and on the US decisions during the Cuban Missile Crisis and blockade maintained by the Mount Holyoke Library. This is an extensive collection of documents which includes review articles, internal government documents from the US, Cuba, and the Soviet Union, as well as speeches and personal correspondences. The documents are primarily transitions and span an impressively wide time period (from 1940 to 1975).

Background on East Timor and U.S. Policy A small collection of review articles and some documents detailing the Indonesian invasion of East Timor and the role of the United States and western Europe in aiding the subsequent genocide.
The East Timor Action Network/United States (the organization that maintains this website) was founded in 1991 to support genuine self-determination and human rights for the people of East Timor in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1960 United Nations General Assembly Resolution on Decolonization, and Security Council and General Assembly resolutions on East Timor. This site is primarily a resource for those first approaching the issue, and more detailed documentation must be sought in larger archives.

MIT Social Justice Cooperative home page
MIT home page

Foreign Relations of the United States:	From the web site: "The Foreign Relations of the United States series presents the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. The series, which is produced by the State Department's Office of the Historian, began in 1861 and now comprises more than 350 individual volumes. The volumes published over the last two decades increasingly contain declassified records from all the foreign affairs agencies." List of ALL volumes, list of ONLINE volumes and their summaries.

The National Security Archive:	Without a doubt, the best site online for finding declassified documents on a wide variety of subjects.This is a very powerful and usable archive that is arranged into collections, and is also searchable to help find related documents from other parts of the archive.The institution also serves as a public interest law firm defending and expanding public access to government information through the FOIA, and an indexer and publisher of the documents. The National Security Archive was founded in 1985 by a group of journalists and scholars who had obtained documentation from the U.S. government under the Freedom of Information Act and sought a centralized repository for these materials. Over the past decade, the Archive has become the world's largest non-governmental library of declassified documents. The Archive's holdings include more than two million pages of accessioned material in over 200 separate collections. The Archive's operating budget comes from publication revenues and from private philanthropists. As a matter of policy, the Archive receives no government funding.

Digital National Security Archive Online:	A joint effort between the National Security Archive and ProQuest Information and Learning Company to produce the most comprehensive collections available of significant primary documents central to US foreign and military policy since 1945. Nearly 40,000 of the most important, declassified documents (totaling more than 250,000 pages) are included in the database. The DNSA is comprised of fifteen collections, each focused on one of the following topics: Afghanistan: The Making of US Policy, 1973-1990 The Berlin Crisis, 1958-1962 The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 El Salvador: The Making of US Policy, 1977-1984 Iran: The Making of US Policy, 1977-1980 The Iran-Contra Affair: The Making of a Scandal Iraqgate: Saddam Hussein, U.S. Policy and the Prelude to the Persian Gulf War, 1980-1994 Nicaragua: The Making of US Policy, 1978-1990 The Philippines: US Policy during the Marcos Years, 1965-1986 Presidential Directives on National Security from Truman to Clinton South Africa: The Making of US Policy, 1962-1989 The Soviet Estimate: U.S. Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1947-1991 The US Intelligence Community, 1947-1989 US Military Uses of Space, 1945-1991 US Nuclear Non-Proliferation Policy, 1945-1991

The Avalon Project at the Yale Law School:	An excellent comprehensive online source for document collections from pre-18th century to today.They include not only the US internal record, but also declassified and public documents from the United Nations and from the foreign countries involved. The Avalon Project contains a large collection of digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. They do not mount only static text but rather they add value to the text by providing links to supporting documents expressly referred to in the body of the text. The Avalon Project is a cooperating partner of the International Relations and Security Network.

Presidential Libraries:	Collections of website addresses for the available online presidential libraries.Each library contains interesting records and often some online declassified documents not found in the larger collections or archives. The libraries listed on this website include those for George Bush, Jimmy Carter , Bill Clinton , Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry S. Truman. These vary in usefulness and openness, but they are worth examining when studying a period during one of these administrations. The older libraries have much more of interest declassified online, and they all have large hardcopy archives that may be partially viewed by researchers who travel to the library.

OpenNet Declassified Information Database:	Collection of recently declassified information from the Department of Energy and the Office of Nuclear and National Security Information. The OpenNet archive allows access to recently declassified DOE information, including that declassified in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. OpenNet includes references to all documents declassified and made publicly available after October 1, 1994, while newer references will be added periodically as they occur. In addition to these documents, OpenNet references older document collections from several DOE sources including the Office of Nuclear and National Security Information.

GulfLINK Recently Declassified Documents:	A collection of recently declassified military and intelligence documents concerning Gulf War Illnesses and US policy during the war. A good source for information on US military decision making in the Gulf War concerning health risks of certain weapons (including Depleted Uranium) and of military strategy (including such things as targeting damns and water purification facilities in violation of Article 54 of the Geneva Convention). This is an "official" government site and thus a little hard to use, but still very good.

FOIA Information and Declassified Documents:	Links to the Freedom of Information Act mandated websites of all major government departments and agencies. A nice central resource if the information you are looking for is buried in an unexpected place, but since it only points to governmental websites most of the information available is heavily blacked-out, very hard to find, to access, and to interpret.

UT Library Online - Declassified Government Documents:	Links to collections of declassified documents from both governmental and non-governmental sources. Has some interesting and otherwise hard to find links to obscure and often very specific document collections. Has a lot of good sites on internal US policies (including intelligence and surveillance actions and US nuclear policy and human testing) as well as US foreign relations.

Project WhistleStop:	A collection of important documents and images from the Truman administration, including the decision to drop the Atomic Bomb, the recognition of Israel, and US policy during the Korean War. Project WhistleStop was funded by a five-year education technology challenge grant from the U.S. Department of Education. It brings together documents, pictures, cartoons, and facts from the Harry S Truman presidential library. By February 1 this site will move to the Truman Presidential Museum & Library website (http://www.trumanlibrary.org) where it will reside from then on.

Documents Relating to the Israeli-Palestinian Dispute:	Collections of documents on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict maintained by the Mount Holyoke Library. These documents include review articles, internal government documents from the US, Britain, Israel, and the Palestinian National Authority, as well as United Nation's resolutions and debate. The documents span a very wide period (from 1895 to 2001).

NAIL Digital Images Search:	National Archives and Records Administration online collection of surveillance images and Photostats of actual US government documents which often include hand written notes and comments of interest. This is a very hard database to use and is not a great first source, but when looking for more detailed information or conformation this can be a useful resource. It is also interesting because of it's inclusion of surveillance photos and other types of media which occasionally reveal more than the dry documentary record.

The COINTELPRO Papers:	An excellent collection of documents, resources, and links which provide an extraordinarily detailed description and analysis of COINTELPRO, the FBI's Counterintelligence and Covert Operations program set up by J. Edgar Hoover to destroy progressive movements in this country. The site contains the complete online version of the book by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall which details COINTELPRO both trough original overviews and photo-reproductions of internal memos, as well as excerpts from the Church Committee reports ( the US Senate Committee set up to study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities). The site also provides links to several other major works on the subject.

Documents related to the Iran/Contra affair:	A small collection of documents relating to the traffic and sale of drugs by US officials to raise money for the government's illegal support of the Contras. This site was put together by an individual and contains mostly excerpts from the congressional and legal proceedings that followed the uncovering of the Iran/Contra affair and the "prosecution" of Oliver North. It has a couple of unique pieces though that are not found in the larger archives.

FBI - Freedom of Information Act - Reading Room Index:	An intentionally poor and hard to use collection of documents released by the FBI under the FOIA.There are, however, some interesting links to documents relating to CONINTELPRO type activities and to some US foreign relations decisions that had large domestic consequences. Thousands of pages of frequently requested (and mostly useless fluff filled) FBI documents that have been released under the provisions of the FOIA are stored in the Reading Room. The FBI has converted many of these documents to PDF format which are available at this website, although only experts of summaries of the longer documents are available online. The website also lists documents which may be viewed only in the actual Reading Room which is located within the J. Edgar Hoover Building at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

NSA and the Cuban Missile Crisis Document Archive:	A self serving and self congratulatory archive of the NSA's role in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the importance of signals intelligence (SIGINT) during the stand off.It is, however, one of the only useable NSA databases and thus provides valuable insight into the workings of this powerful and secret agency. The NSA is the least well known of the intelligence agencies. It is tasked with coordinating, directing, and performing highly specialized activities to control U.S. information systems and produce foreign intelligence information. With the increased importance of electronic surveillance, it is more important than ever to understand the workings of this organization in a crisis. This online archive covers events surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis from October 5th 1960 to June 19th 1963. It contains an interesting, but rather short collection of photo-reproductions of actual NSA documents as well as PDF files of the longer reports.

FAS Project on Government Secrecy:	The online archive of the Federation of American Scientists' anti-secrecy project.The site contains both documents that have been declassified though the efforts of the FAS on the US intelligence community and on US domestic and foreign policy as they relate to technology and a good list of links to FOIA sites of US government and military sites. The FAS Project on Government Secrecy works to reduce the scope of government secrecy, to accelerate the declassification of cold war documents, and to promote reform of official secrecy practices. Through research, advocacy, and public education, the FAS project works to challenge excessive government secrecy and to promote public oversight. The archive contains many documents from the recent past including the Clinton and Bush presidencies. The Project is funded by various NGOs and through private donations.

CIA Electronic Document Release Center:	The online FOIA site of the Central Intelligence Agency.As with all ofthe "official" government websites, it is harder to use than the private archives and has often less powerful information, but given the incredibly important role of the CIA in US foreign affairs, this is still a very valuable tool. The Electronic Document Release Center is maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency and its Office of Information Management. All agency documents released under the FOIA can be searched from this site and (often heavily censored) photo-reproductions of the reports may be viewed. Documents previously released to the public since November 1996 are contained in this database, which will be occasionally updated to reflect the release of new information. In addition, there are a few pre-assembled collections of documents available which cover topics including the Bay of Pigs invasion and US policy in Latin America.

Documents Relating to the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis:	Collections of documents on the US involvement in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and on the US decisions during the Cuban Missile Crisis and blockade maintained by the Mount Holyoke Library. This is an extensive collection of documents which includes review articles, internal government documents from the US, Cuba, and the Soviet Union, as well as speeches and personal correspondences. The documents are primarily transitions and span an impressively wide time period (from 1940 to 1975).

Background on East Timor and U.S. Policy	A small collection of review articles and some documents detailing the Indonesian invasion of East Timor and the role of the United States and western Europe in aiding the subsequent genocide. The East Timor Action Network/United States (the organization that maintains this website) was founded in 1991 to support genuine self-determination and human rights for the people of East Timor in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1960 United Nations General Assembly Resolution on Decolonization, and Security Council and General Assembly resolutions on East Timor. This site is primarily a resource for those first approaching the issue, and more detailed documentation must be sought in larger archives.