Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

John F. Kennedy and Latin America: The "Thorough, Accurate, and Reliable Record" (Almost)

1999; Oxford University Press; Volume: 23; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/0145-2096.00181

1467-7709

Stephen G. Rabe,

Cuban History and Society

U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. 10, Cuba, 1961-1962 U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. 12, American Republics, 1961-1963 Public Law 102-138 (1991) seems to have revivified the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series. The statute, with its relevant Section 198, required that the FRUS series “be a thorough, accurate, and reliable record of major United States foreign policy decisions and significant United States diplomatic activity.” The volumes of the series should include “all records” needed to provide comprehensive documentation and should be published “not more than 30 years after the events recorded.” The statute, however, allowed the Historical Office of the U.S. Department of State until 1996 to reach the thirty-year line. The new law further strengthened the oversight responsibilities of the scholarly advisory committee, the Historical Advisory Committee.1 Historians of U.S. foreign relations know that the new statute addressed a crisis in the FRUS series. In the 1980s, scholars began to question whether the series had a future after the State Department released volumes on Iran and Guatemala for the 1952–1954 period.2 Informed observers understood that President Dwight D. Eisenhower had authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to destabilize the regime of the Iranian nationalist Mohammed Mossadegh and the popularly elected government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán of Guatemala. Had citizens limited their reading of the Iranian and Guatemalan episodes to the FRUS volumes, they would have never surmised that the United States had assisted the overthrow of the two governments.