NARA puts over 400,000 State Department records online

The National Archives and Records Administration is making available online, for the first time, over 400,000 State Department records and telegrams from 1973 and 1974.According to NARA, the documents—from State’s Central Foreign Policy Files database—consist of historical telegrams, index references to paper documents created in 1974, and withdrawal notices for telegrams and documents that could not be made public for national security reasons.Included among the are reports of television interviews with former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan about the West Bank and former Syrian defense ministers discussing Israeli nuclear weapons, NARA said.State began digitally archiving its foreign policy files in mid-1973, starting with recorded telegram traffic from the department’s Foreign Service posts, NARA said.The records are in NARA’s Access to Archival Databases system, an online tool that lets the public search the agency’s most popular electronic records.