National Security Archive - History

History

On October 1, 2007, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly reversed George W. Bush on archive secrecy, issuing a 38-page ruling that the U.S. Archivist's reliance on the executive order to delay release of the papers of former presidents is "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and not in accordance with law". National Security Archives, at George Washington University alleged that the Bush order severely slowed or prevented the release of historic presidential papers.

The Archive operates under an advisory board which is directed by Tom Blanton and is overseen by a board of directors. The Archive's research was awarded in late 2005 by winning an Emmy Award for its work on the documentary Declassified: Nixon in China. More recently, the Archive uncovered a secret reclassification program operating since 1999. This program was underway to reclassify documents related to American foreign policy during the 1940s and 1950s, at the National Archives and Records Administration. The materials in question had all been declassified during the Clinton administration.

From 1985 until 1998, the Fund for Peace, Inc., was the archive's fiscal sponsor. Among the Archive's more prominent institutional supporters today are the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, the Freedom Forum, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Congressional Quarterly, and Cox Enterprises. The Archive receives funding from these and other, organizations via their donations to the National Security Archive Fund, established in order to administer the Archive's finances.

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