Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


January marks the 30th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s inauguration, and the beginning of a fertile period for historians: The State Department is required to periodically publish foreign policy documents relating to events that took place more than 30 years ago. Forthcoming editions of this official history, called Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), will include previously unavailable documents from Nixon’s active — some say unscrupulous — foreign policy operations.

Yet the intelligence community has refused to declassify documents for previous FRUS editions, a problem Congress tried to address in 1991 by appointing a group of independent historians to review all FRUS editions. In the committee’s annual report last year, however, chair Warren F. Kimball wrote that if intelligence agencies don’t start cooperating, FRUS could become “so incomplete and misleading as to constitute an official lie.” The CIA and other agencies balk at declassification, Kimball says, not always out of national security concerns, but more often for fear of embarrassment.

The government recently established a panel of senior intelligence officials to decide disputes over covert operations, and Kimball says he looks forward to the Nixon FRUS editions with guarded optimism: “The issue … is not going to go away. [Nixon] was all over Latin America like a wet blanket.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate