Former Washington Post reporter Scott Armstrong’s initial idea was to create a public depository for documents concerning U.S. national security, foreign policy, military and intelligence activities obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests. Acquiring documents turned out to be just the start. Most of what the National Security Archive does now is assemble and index topical collections from primary sources to provide “as complete a documentary record of recent and contemporary policymaking as possible within the constraints of security classification.”
Current projects range from the history of U.S. military uses of space to the evolution of U.S. policy toward South Africa 1960-87. The Archive sells such collections and their indexes as
