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Nonprofit Overview
Causes: Education, International, International, Foreign Affairs & National Security
Mission: The Archive’s mission is to serve scholars, journalists, policymakers and the public by obtaining and disseminating the U.S. government documents that are indispensable for informed public debate on U.S. foreign relations and security activities. The Archive is the most prolific and successful non-profit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, has opened millions of pages of previously secret files to public view, has published nearly 500,000 pages in books, microfiche, CD-ROMs, and on the Web, and has built partnerships in more than 30 foreign countries ranging from Peru to Romania to Iran to Japan with like-minded openness advocates, including journalists, institutes of academies of science, university professors, human rights NGOs, and truth commissions. The Archive’s motto comes from the founder of the first historical society in the U.S. (Massachusetts in 1791), Jeremy Belknap: “There’s nothing like having a good repository, and keeping a good lookout, not waiting at home for things to fall into the lap, but prowling about like a wolf for the prey.”