The September 11th Sourcebooks

The horrific September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon brought all of us here at the Archive feelings of rage at the hijackers, grief for the thousands who were murdered, and also determination that we will contribute to finding the best ways for America to respond. The Archive’s mission is to put on the record the primary source documentation that can enrich the policy debate, improve journalism, educate policymakers, and ensure that we don’t reinvent the wheel or repeat the mistakes of the past.

    To these ends, we have published a series of volumes called "The September 11th Sourcebooks." We have cast a wide net, because the policy debate itself is also ranging widely, from deployment options abroad to wiretap surveillance at home. The first volume contains the documents that our staff experts, led by Dr. Jeffrey Richelson and coordinated by Michael Evans, have selected as the most important available primary sources on U.S. terrorism policy. These materials include CIA biographic sketches of Usama Bin Laden and Taliban leader Mohammad Omar, reports from the Pentagon and the Senate Intelligence Committee on previous terrorist attacks on the USS Cole and the Khobar Towers, the State Department’s overview of global terrorism and the FBI’s review of terrorism in the U.S. We have included several of the most relevant Congressional Research Service briefs, six of the General Accounting Office’s most recent reports on combating terrorism, plus the key policy directives on terrorism from the Pentagon and from Presidents Reagan and Clinton.

    In Volume II, Archive experts John Prados and Svetlana Savranskaya draw on declassified records and the memoirs of former Soviet officials to examine Soviet policymaking, military operations, and lessons learned from the last war in Afghanistan, a bloody, ten-year conflict that pitted Soviet military forces against CIA-backed Afghan rebels.  The collection also includes excerpts from an essay written by analyst Steve Galster as an introduction to the Archive's microfiche collection, Afghanistan: The Making of U.S. Policy, 1973-1990, published in 1990.

    The third volume is a package of documents assembled by Dr. Robert Wampler that shed light upon the decision made by President Richard M. Nixon in 1969 to end all U.S. offensive biological (and chemical) weapons programs.

    Volume IV is a collection of formerly secret U.S. government documents describing the last years of King Zahir’s reign in Afghanistan, in 1970-73.  Archive senior analyst Dr. William Burr obtained the documents from declassified White House and State Department files at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland.

     Uncertainties regarding the cause, pathology and vectors of the recent anthrax outbreak in the U.S. are mirrored in the case of the most deadly anthrax epidemic known, which occurred at a Soviet biological weapons facility located in Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinberg, Russia) in 1979, where at least 68 people died. This incident was a focus of intense controversy and heated exchanges between Washington and Moscow during the 1980s, which would only come to a conclusion with the end of the Soviet Union and a more open Moscow leadership in the 1990s. Still, the heritage of the Soviet biological warfare effort, which was unparalleled in scope and potential lethality, remains a problem today and tomorrow. The documents provided in Volume V give a unique perspective on the Sverdlovsk anthrax issue as it unfolded and the questions it provoked, which remain relevant today.

    In coming days, we plan to publish volumes on specific topics in the current policy debate, such as the U.S. ban on assassinations and the CIA guidelines on recruiting assets. We welcome your ideas, queries and suggestions for other topics and other documents.  How will we make the United States – and the world – both secure and free?