Cold War & Internal Security Collection Blog: Posts highlight specific documents, government bodies, and historical topics contained within the CWIS Collection and its contents.
1. Digitized Documents
Central Intelligence Agency: Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room: Official repository of full-text, declassified, CIA documents.
Cold War International History Project: Venona Project and Vassiliev Notebooks Index and Concordance: "This index and concordance indexes twenty-one volumes of KGB archival material: nine notebooks written by Alexander Vassiliev and twelve compilations of the Soviet international telegraphic cables deciphered by the U.S. National Security Agency’s Venona project. Indexed are proper names, cover names, and organizational titles along with some geographic entities, events, diplomatic conferences, and subjects." Also has full text PDF copies of the actual Venona intercepts.
FBI Records: The Vault: Official database of declassified FBI files requested through the Freedom of Information Act. Browse by topic or search.
Internet Archive: House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) Publications Contains numerous digitized hearings and other publications from HUAC, with no access restrictions. (ECU users can access virtually all hearings and committee prints online through ProQuest Congressional and committee reports and documents via the U.S. Congressional Serial Set.)
National Security Agency: Venona: Features declassified transcripts of Soviet intelligence cables intercepted by the U.S. government during the 1940s. A valuable primary resource on American Communist involvement in Soviet espionage during World War II.
Wilson Center Digital Archive: Vassiliev Notebooks: Digitized copies of the notes made by Russian journalist Alexander Vassiliev while researching KGB archives in the mid-1990s. Vassiliev's research has been used as the basis for the books The Haunted Wood and Spies.
2. Online Exhibits and Educational Resources
Communism in Washington State: History and Memory: Highly detailed historical resource, featuring lengthy narratives, a timeline, primary documents and oral histories. Part of the University of Washington's Pacific Northwest Labor and Civil Rights Projects.
Famous Trials: The Alger Hiss Trials: An overview of the Hiss-Chambers controversy, from the HUAC hearings to Hiss's perjury trial, with an overview of the case, chronology, transcripts, images, and a bibliography. By Douglas Linder, law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Famous Trials: The Rosenberg Trial: An overview of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case, with an overview of the case, chronology, trial transcript, images, and a bibliography. By Douglas Linder, law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
In Our Own Backyard: Resisting Nazi Propaganda in Southern California, 1933-1945: Online exhibit of digitized primary source materials concerning domestic Nazi and fascist groups, from Oviatt Library at California State University, Northridge.
John Earl Haynes Historical Writings: Personal website of a noted historian of American Communism and Soviet espionage. Features articles and other writings by Haynes, as well as a sizable bibliography of American Communism.
Library of Congress: Climate of Fear: A brief online exhibit on blacklisting and the chilling effect of McCarthyism on entertainers and broadcasters.
The Literature & Culture of the American 1950s: A sizable topical collection of articles, documents and excerpts from lengthier writings covering McCarthyism and the Cold War, from University of Pennsylvania English Professor Alan Filreis.
Modern American Poetry: About McCarthyism (Internet Archive): Archived collection of articles and essays by historians such as Ellen Schrecker, formerly posted to the University of Illinois' Modern American Poetry site.
National Endowment for the Humanities: Anticommunism in Postwar America, 1945–1954: Witch Hunt or Red Menace: A set of three lesson plans for educators to use in teaching about this period.
Seattle Black Panther Party -- History and Memory Project: Highly detailed historical resource, featuring lengthy narratives, photographs, newspaper articles and other primary documents and oral histories. Includes transcripts and exhibits from the 1970 HCIS hearings into the Panthers. Part of the University of Washington's Pacific Northwest Labor and Civil Rights Projects.