The first attempt to sell weapons to Iran through Israeli middlemen failed. Reagan then convened a group of advisors, including Secretary of State George Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Both Shultz and Weinberger, as well as…

The first attempt to sell weapons to Iran through Israeli middlemen failed. Reagan then convened a group of advisors, including Secretary of State George Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Both Shultz and Weinberger, as well as White…

This 1955 government pamphlet, issued by the Federal Civil Defense Administration, warns Americans about the dangers of radioactive fallout in the event of a nuclear explosion, and suggests measures citizens can take to protect themselves. With its…

This 1949 Herb Block cartoon highlights the dangers to civil liberty and intellectual freedoms many Americans saw posed by overzealous and anti-Communist crusaders in the early years of the Cold War. Such fears were not unfounded: during the postwar…

After the creation of the Peace Corps in 1961, communist newspapers and other propaganda outlets in Asia, Africa, and, South American were quick to denounce the U.S. humanitarian program as a trick to stop the spread of revolution in underdeveloped…

Milton Eisenhower, the younger brother of President Dwight E. Eisenhower, served as a special ambassador to Latin America during the Eisenhower administration. He came to see poverty as the major obstacle to economic development and political…

Executive Order 9835, signed by President Truman on March 21, 1947, established a loyalty-security program for the executive branch of the federal government. Federal employees were required to take a political test to identify "subversive"…

In this memo to Kennedy's Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Under Secretary of State Chester Bowles expresses his opposition to the planned Bay of Pigs invasion. Bowles cites as his reasons for concern the invasion's apparent violation of international…

The famous "Long Telegram" was a message sent by George F. Kennan, a high-ranking diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, that provided an assessment of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Cold War. In February 1946, the United States Treasury…

The arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union for nuclear weapons escalated quickly after World War II. After the Soviets detonated their first atomic weapon in 1949, the U.S. conducted a series of atomic tests in remote areas,…