Nate Jones , The Washington Post; State Department deleted records about risk of inadvertent nuclear war
"I blinked and blinked again, until I was finally satisfied that I was not hallucinating: Key historical records had been removed without explanation.
The State Department had deleted history.
Let me back up. Since 1991, the department has been required by law to publish “a thorough, accurate, and reliable” history of U.S. foreign policy within 30 years of the events. It does this in the Foreign Relations of the United States series, curated collections of primary source documents abbreviated as FRUS.
The State Department has published more than 450 volumes, which include thousands of primary source records detailing the crafting of U.S. foreign policy dating back to the Lincoln administration. The thick, bound ruby buckram volumes are a staple on the bookshelves of many college history departments where they remain an invaluable tool for students, scholars and authors.
But in the internet era, FRUS has become a predominantly digital publication, hosted on the State Department’s website.
And it is easier to delete digital records than to destroy books.
This January, the State Department did just that when it republished on its website a volume about the Reagan administration — without 15 pages on the risk of inadvertent nuclear war sparked by a 1983 NATO exercise."
