Human Rights Evidence Program works to bring authenticated previously secret documentary evidence to bear on the investigation and prosecution of human rights abusers around the world.
The Archive has provided primary source documentation from U.S. government files to every truth commission around the world since 1989. Often the only primary source evidence available to investigators or prosecutors because of the lack of access to military and security service files in the country where abuses took place, the Archive’s documentation has contributed to the prosecution of human rights abusers in more than a dozen countries including the Special Court for Sierra Leone conviction of warlord Charles Taylor in 2012, Peru’s conviction of former dictator Alberto Fujimori in 2009, U.S. immigration court convictions in 2010 of the Guatemalan special forces perpetrators of the Dos Erres massacre, the Uruguayan court conviction in 2010 of former dictator Juan Bordaberry for crimes against the constitution, and the Argentine conviction in 2012 of former dictator Rafael Videla on systematic baby kidnapping charges for stealing the children of the “disappeared” and giving them for adoption by military families.

A focused investigative and public education effort to open the classified record on the internal U.S. debates over alternative nuclear postures and the possibility of nuclear abolition. President Obama’s public commitment to the long-term abolition of nuclear weapons has already generated major debate over ways and means to bring the U.S. force posture closer to that goal. This new context offers an extraordinary opportunity for activists and researchers to look closely at past episodes where policymakers considered fundamental changes in nuclear force levels, including the possibility of nuclear weapons abolition, and why those efforts and initiatives did not succeed. Such “usable history” will add fuel to the current debate, put alternative postures in the news through the Project's Nuclear Vault portal, and open the veils of secrecy that have obscured these important controversies.

The Open Government and Accountability Program actively advocates for and defends open government and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Using litigation, amicus briefs, congressional testimony, rulemaking comments, public education, and government-wide audits of federal agencies’ administration of open government laws, the Program advances government transparency on multiple fronts.

The Archive’s Russia and Eurasia Program advocates for human rights and access to information, and works for declassifications of documents on US-Russian relations at a time when Russia is enacting restrictions that make it harder for Russian groups and other non-profits to do so by potentially making the publication of former secrets a prosecutable offense and targeting any group receiving foreign grants. This increasingly dangerous work is performed with a coalition of freedom of information NGOs in Russia, Georgia, and Armenia such as the Memorial Society and Moscow Helsinki Group and the Institute for Information Freedom Development. The Program will have to contend with alarming developments in the political situation in Russia, where the economic crisis coincided with the Putin/Medvedev authoritarian trend, the rising number of political assassinations, and a government-encouraged campaign to present human rights NGOs as agents of external hostile forces, make work exceptionally difficult. The Program continues to work to advocate for measures that will prevent the current regime from regressing on fundamental transparency measures, steadily expand our FOI network, and keep publishing and repatriating documents that we have collected.

The Mexico/Migration Project protects the rights of Mexican and Central American migrants by working directly with organizations committed to protecting them, and strengthens their capacity to employ transparency laws to obtain and use government information on federal and local migration policies and practices. This initiative directly challenges the enduring secrecy surrounding Mexican and U.S. security institutions and migration bureaucracies that has severely restricted the ability of groups to develop informed advocacy strategies to protect the human rights of migrants.

Working with partners in the global freedom of information movement to promote more open and transparent governments that are accountable to their citizens and to establish the right of access to government-held information as a fundamental human right through a leadership role in the Obama Administration's Open Government Partnership; expert assistance to FOI implementation challenges in countries ranging from India to Brazil to Russia; and founding and supporting freedominfo.org--a one-stop virtual network that describes best practices, consolidates lessons learned, explains campaign strategies and tactics, and links the efforts of freedom of information advocates around the world. It contains crucial information on freedom of information laws and how they were drafted and implemented, including how various provisions have worked in practice.

The work of making the National Security Archive’s millions of documents searchable, usable and accessible is done by a core group of professional librarians and information technology experts who staff the Archive's Information Systems and Publications Program and whose key task of document management is critical to the Archive’s ability to publish or distribute portions of its collections in customized databases, on its Web site, in books, and in the Digital National Security Archive (DNSA)--the comprehensive online version of the topical collections of the National Security Archive, organized according to defining events or policy issues.

The Digital National Security Archive contains over 40 digitized collections of more than 94,000 meticulously indexed documents and is subscribed to by a wide range of universities, research institutions, and U.S. government agencies and by institutions in a dozen foreign countries ranging from Australia to the United Arab Emirates. More than 100 institutions have purchased permanent access to the DNSA subscription.

The Information Systems and Publications Program staff are also responsible for the fully automated and digitized database for tracking incoming and outgoing correspondence and documentation received through the roughly 1500 Freedom of Information Act requests made by Archive staff on a yearly basis.