The National Security Archive: “. . . combines a unique range of functions in one non governmental, non-profit institution.
The Archive is simultaneously a research institute on international affairs, a library and
archive of declassified U.S. documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, a
public interest law firm defending and expanding public access to government information
through the FOIA, and an indexer and publisher of the documents in books, microfiche, and
electronic formats. The Archive’s approximately $1.8 million yearly budget comes from
publication revenues and from private philanthropists such as the Carnegie Corporation, the
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. As a matter of
policy, the Archive receives no government funding.

The National Security Archive was founded in 1985 by a group of journalists and scholars
who had obtained documentation from the U.S. government under the Freedom of
Information Act and sought a centralized repository for these materials. Over the past
decade, the Archive has become the world’s largest non governmental library of declassified
documents. “