As US-Russian Relations Worsen, A Look Back at the ‘Cold War’ Series

Samantha Power, former Archive fellow and current US envoy to the United Nations, recently condemned Russia for “holding the Security Council hostage by blocking even modest efforts to condemn the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict.” Prior to disagreements over Syria, the US and Russia were at loggerheads after Russia granted Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor responsible for revealing the agency’s surveillance practices, temporary asylum in the country.

As the two nations engage each other over a range of issues at this year’s G20 summit, Unredacted highlights CNN’s Cold War series to help contextualize the current tensions. The Archive shared the 1998 Peabody Award for Outstanding Broadcast Series for our substantial contribution to the series, and still maintains a website preserving key documentation analyzed for the acclaimed documentary. Documents featured on the site include official correspondences discussing all aspects of the Cold War, from pursuing a policy of sustained reprisal in Vietnam, developing an anti-ICBM system, to bolstering our scientific and technological relationship with China, and much, much more.

Excerpt from Appendix to Memorandum from McGeorge Bundy to Lyndon Johnson, “A Policy of Sustained Reprisal” (February 7, 1965).

While the world waits to see if the NSA is caught snooping on this year’s G20 participants, take a closer look at the documents and interview transcripts behind the Peabody-winning series.