8. Declassified and leaked secret documents

  • Cabinet Papers 1915-80 Online. Many of these documents, which are held at the British National Archives in London, are now available here. See also British Cabinet Office releases on Foreign Affairs here.
  • CIA Releases
    CIA documents already released, including those formerly on the CREST site, are to be found in the FOIA Electronic Reading Room here.
  • The National Archives, London: search Diplomacy.
  • U.S. Department of State: Office of the Historian [ALERT FOR RESEARCHERS. The head of the US National Achives, other senior staff and the Librarian of Congress have all been fired by the Trump administration (see Richard Ovenden’s ‘There is no political power without power over the archive’ in The Observer, 12 July 2025). Any future editions of FRUS should therefore be treated with the greatest caution.]
    This page is a valuable gateway to resources for the study of US diplomacy and foreign policy. The ‘Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS)’ collection, particularly beloved by International Historians, is found here. See also the Worldwide Diplomatic Archives Index
  • The National Security Archive [US]
  • Wikileaks: Secret Embassy cables. I did not approve of the leak of these American cables, which was obviously anti-diplomatic, but since they are out there they must be studied. There are only 251,287 of them!