The Quiet Archive
Random

National Security Agency

American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945–1989 (Thomas R. Johnson)

Official history · written 1995 · released 2008

Why this matters

The NSA's own four-volume classified history of U.S. signals intelligence from the end of World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall, by agency historian Thomas R. Johnson. It is unusually frank about failures, including warning gaps in Korea and the mishandled intercepts around the Gulf of Tonkin. The PDFs NSA originally posted have moved or disappeared, so this entry points to an Internet Archive copy, with a Wayback snapshot of the original nsa.gov file.

Read the original

Open source copy Internet Archive (all snapshots) Save a fresh snapshot

https://archive.org/details/NSA-American-Cryptology-Cold-War

Hosted by Internet Archive (official NSA URL dead)

Tags

Part of a collection · step 2 of 9

Cold War Signals Intelligence

NSA's own four-volume history, the backbone for everything that follows.

Part of a collection · step 6 of 8

Graveyards of the Web

NSA moved its files; the Internet Archive kept them.

Cite

National Security Agency. "American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945–1989 (Thomas R. Johnson)." 1995. Released 2008. https://archive.org/details/NSA-American-Cryptology-Cold-War (accessed via The Quiet Archive, QA-0015).

Shelved nearby

  1. 1992 QA-0137
    NSA · Correspondence

    NSA records on the Pentagon's 1992 search for missing Cold War reconnaissance aircrews

    Records released by the NSA in September 2025 and published in October 2026, detailing a 1992 Pentagon effort to work out whether crews of shot-down Cold War reconnaissance flights had been captured by the Soviet Union, China or others.

    Written 1992 Released 9 Oct 2026 Declassified United States Live
  2. 1964 QA-0050
    NSA · Briefing book

    The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, 40 Years Later

    Declassified documents showing how thin the evidence was for the second North Vietnamese 'attack' on U.S. destroyers on 4 August 1964, which justified the Tonkin Gulf Resolution and escalation in Vietnam.

    Written 4 Aug 1964 Released 4 Aug 2004 Declassified United States Live
  3. 1994 QA-0129
    Navy · Report

    Department of the Navy Supplemental Report of Human Radiation Experiments (1994)

    The Navy's 1994 report to the Clinton administration's review of Cold War human radiation experiments, listing Navy-sponsored studies involving radiation exposure of service members and others.

    Written 31 Mar 1994 Released 19 Jan 2026 Never classified United States Live
  4. 1983 QA-0002
    US Army · Report

    Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process

    A 1983 US Army assessment, written by Lt. Col. Wayne McDonnell, of the Monroe Institute's 'Gateway' technique, which uses binaural audio to induce altered states.

    Written 9 Jun 1983 Released Sep 2003 Declassified United States Bot-walled