National Security Archive Update, July 2, 2008

New! National Security Archive launches Guatemala Project Web site

For more information contact:
Project Director Kate Doyle, kadoyle@gwu.edu

http://www.nsarchive.org/guatemala

Washington, DC, July 2, 2008 - The National Security Archive launches its new Web page for The Guatemala Project today, with links to information, analysis and declassified documents relating to all the Archive's Guatemala work over the past 14 years. After decades of civil war and genocide, Guatemala has become a virtual laboratory of international and transitional justice, with a genocide case underway in a Spanish court, another about a Guatemalan Army death squad logbook before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and teams of researchers combing through the dilapidated archives of the former Guatemalan National Police for evidence of human rights violations committed during the internal conflict.

The new site includes information on:

* The Genocide Case, with summaries of testimonies given this year to the Spanish judge
* The Death Squad Dossier: Military logbook of the disappeared
* The Guatemalan National Police Archives
* Drugs and the Guatemalan Military
* The CIA and plans for assassinations during the 1954 coup

The Guatemala Project, directed by Archive senior analyst Kate Doyle, has been pressing for the release of secret U.S. files on Guatemala since 1994. The project's first objective was to support the investigations of the UN-sponsored truth commission that was charged with analyzing the origins of the country's brutal 36-year civil conflict. After the commission published its report in 1999, the Archive began working with Guatemalan human rights organizations to mine the U.S. records for use in pivotal human rights cases. In the years that followed, the project also assisted in the dissemination and analysis of the first records to emerge from Guatemala's secret archives, including the notorious "death squad dossier."

Visit the new Guatemala Project Web page to read original declassified documents, check out photographs of the recovery of the National Police files, watch videotaped testimony given in the "death squad dossier" case before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission last October, and more.

http://www.nsarchive.org/guatemala

THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals.