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U.S. DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS: DESCRIPTIONS OF COLLECTIONS
Most of the documentation included in Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) is declassified for the first time there.
Beyond FRUS, information made available through declassification or Freedom of Information
Act requests has been collected, indexed and microfilmed or digitized by several publishers:
Declassified Documents Reference System (DDRS)
Indexes declassified documents under specific
subject headings, provides a brief description of each document and provides
a microform copy of the actual document. The material in the DDRS originated
primarily in the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and various
components of the Department of Defense; but it also includes documents from
the National Security Council, the White House, and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation. The documents range in size and scope from telegrams,
correspondence and unevaluated field reports to lengthy background studies
and detailed minutes of cabinet-level meetings. The DDRS began with a
retrospective compilation (those declassified from 1972-1975) and has issued
quarterly, or now bimonthly, compilations since that time. The DDRS indexes
and microfiche collection are housed in the Government Documents and Information
Center. A subset of the documents are available in full text online (but see this caveat about what is
available).
Digital National Security Archive
The National Security Archive,
a research institute at George Washington University, collects, organizes, and creates finding aids
and other retrieval systems unclassified and declassified materials. The collections are organized by
subject areas relating to the making of United States foreign policy.
University Publications of America collections on microform
UPA has since 1974 published many microform
collections from among the declassified documents of the U.S. federal government.
Its editorial policy is to film collections without reorganization or substantive
editorial intervention whenever possible and most of UPA's collections meet
these criteria. Among the many examples of this type of collection are the
Confidential U.S. State Department Central Files, the National Security Files,
1961-1969, the documents and meetings of minutes of the National
Security Council, and
the Peonage Files of the U.S. Department of Justice. To determine
and locate Yale University Library's holdings of these collections, search Orbis by keyword="University
Publications of America".
Web sites
Declassified documents freely available on the web can be found at federal agencies' web sites (search the agency's site for "foia" or "electronic reading room"), from presidential libraries, research institutes, or other sites, sometimes presented by subject. Below is a sample of such sites:
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