The Central Intelligence Agency’s “The World Situation in 1970” report was a strange mixture of realistic concerns, candid admissions, and forced optimism. In one of its more realistically optimistic moments, the CIA reported that the Soviets believed “rational Americans” would want a stable Europe. In response, President Richard Nixon asked if anything could be done to “cause more trouble” instead.

Records from the CIA’s declassified CREST archives shows how Efraín Ríos Montt’s coup first took the Agency by surprise, with the U.S. government later embracing his violent counterinsurgency campaign, with Secretary of State George Shultz praising it as “impressive progress in human rights.”

According to a recently uncovered memo in the CIA’s Kissinger archive, Jack Anderson let word of Bob Woodward’s investigation into the Nixon pardon slip to the National Security Council.

When J. Edgar Hoover forced William “Bill” Sullivan, the Bureau’s domestic intelligence chief, into retirement he set into motion a chain reaction which nearly forced him into retirement as well.