National Security Archive Staff and Fellows

Management Team

Thomas S. Blanton is Director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington D.C. The Archive won U.S. journalism's George Polk Award in April 2000 for "piercing self-serving veils of government secrecy, guiding journalists in search for the truth, and informing us all." The Los Angeles Times (16 January 2001) described the Archive as "the world's largest nongovernmental library of declassified documents." Blanton served as the Archive's first Director of Planning & Research beginning in 1986, became Deputy Director in 1989, and Executive Director in 1992. He filed his first Freedom of Information Act request in 1976 as a weekly newspaper reporter in Minnesota; and among many hundreds subsequently, he filed the FOIA request and subsequent lawsuit (with Public Citizen Litigation Group) that forced the release of Oliver North's Iran-contra diaries in 1990. His books include White House E-Mail: The Top Secret Computer Messages the Reagan-Bush White House Tried to Destroy (New York: The New Press, 1995, 254 pp. + computer disk), which The New York Times described as "a stream of insights into past American policy, spiced with depictions of White House officials in poses they would never adopt for a formal portrait." He co-authored The Chronology (New York: Warner Books, 1987, 687 pp.) on the Iran-contra affair, and served as a contributing author to three editions of the ACLU's authoritative guide, Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws, and to the Brookings Institution study Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1998, 680 pp.). His articles have appeared in The International Herald-Tribune, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Slate, the Wilson Quarterly, and many other publications. A graduate of Harvard University, where he was an editor of the independent university daily newspaper The Harvard Crimson, he won Harvard's 1979 Newcomen Prize in history. He also received the 1996 American Library Association James Madison Award Citation for "defending the public's right to know." He is a founding editorial board member of freedominfo.org, the virtual network of international freedom of information advocates; and serves on the editorial board of H-DIPLO, the diplomatic history electronic bulletin board, and on the board of directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, among other professional activities.

Malcolm Byrne, Deputy Director and Director of Research, has worked at the Archive since 1986, and since 1990 has supervised the research process of identifying and obtaining documentation for the Archive's collections. He currently directs the Openness in Russia and Eastern Europe Project, and the U.S.-Iran Relations Project, both of which promote multinational and multi-archival approaches to the study of recent, controversial historical events. Previously, he served as co-director of the Iran-contra documentation project, and coordinated the Archive's project on U.S.-Soviet relations during the Cold War. His publications include The Chronology (Warner Books, 1987), The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History (The New Press, 1993), and The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents (CEU Press, 2002). He is series editor of "The National Security Archive Cold War Reader" series through CEU Press and co-editor of the Archive's microfiche documentation publication series through ProQuest. His articles have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Columbia Journalism Review, Dissent and other publications, and he has appeared frequently on national television and radio broadcasts. He has also lectured on various subjects at a number of universities.  Previously, he was Assistant Editor for News Systems at The Washington Post, and an editor of Soviet/East European Report. He is a graduate of Tufts University and earned his M.A. in Soviet studies and economics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. In 1977, he taught English language and literature at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. 

Meredith Fuchs serves as the General Counsel to the National Security Archive. Previously she was a Partner at the Washington, D.C. law firm Wiley Rein & Fielding LLP, where she was a member of the Litigation, Insurance, Privacy and E-Commerce practice groups. In that capacity, she supervised complex state and federal court litigation in a wide range of areas. In addition, Ms. Fuchs developed a significant e-commerce and privacy practice and has been a frequent lecturer and author on data privacy and e-commerce liability issues. Ms. Fuchs served as a law clerk to the Honorable Patricia M. Wald, U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and to the Honorable Paul L. Friedman, U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Prior to that she was the Supreme Court Assistance Project Fellow with the Public Citizen Litigation Group. Ms. Fuchs currently serves as an appointed member of the D.C. Circuit Judicial Conference Standing Committee on Pro Bono Services (2001-2004) and previously served as a member of the D.C. Bar Technology Taskforce, Subcommittee on Courts (1998-2000). Ms. Fuchs is a cum laude graduate of the New York University School of Law where she was a member of the Journal of International Law and Politics.

Kate Martin is Special Counsel to the Archive. She previously served as General Counsel of the Archive from January 1995-2002, as part of a joint Freedom of Information project with the Archive and the Center for National Security Studies, which Kate has directed since 1992. Previously, she directed the Litigation Project of the Center for four years. She has litigated cases involving the entire range of national security and civil liberties issues, has written numerous Supreme Court briefs and in 1989, obtained the first court order preventing destruction of the White House e- mail. She also does extensive writing and speaking in the U.S. and abroad on national security and civil liberties issues and teaches at Georgetown University Law School. She has testified before Congress on issues relating to government secrecy and classification, restrictions on the free flow of information across international borders, and government surveillance of individuals. She is also co-director of an international project in cooperation with the Polish Helsinki Foundation to promote oversight and accountability of the former secret police in Eastern and Central Europe and Russia. She is a graduate of Pomona College and the University of Virginia Law School, and in private practice was a partner at Nussbaum, Owen and Webster. 

Senior Analysts

Joyce Battle is Director of Publications and Senior Analyst for the Archive’s projects on South Asia and the Middle East.  She received her B.A. from the University of Michigan in Anthropology and Near Eastern Language and Literature, an M.S. in Library Studies from Columbia University, and an M.A. in Near Eastern Regional Studies from Harvard University.  She directed the Archive’s project on Iraq and edited the set Iraqgate: Saddam Hussein, U.S. Policy, and the Prelude to the Persian Gulf War, 1980-1994.  Currently, she is working on a document collection on U.S. policy toward South Asia and South Asian nuclear issues.

Dr. William Burr, Senior Analyst, directs the Archive's nuclear history documentation project. He edited two of the Archive's document collections: The Berlin Crisis, 1958-1962 and U.S. Nuclear History: Nuclear Arms and Politics in the Missile Age, 1955-1968. He received his Ph.D. in history from Northern Illinois University, was formerly a visiting assistant professor at Washington College, and has taught at the Catholic University of America, George Mason and American universities. In 1998 The New Press published his critically-acclaimed document reader, The Kissinger Transcripts: The Top-Secret Talks with Beijing & Moscow. His review and articles have appeared in Diplomatic History, the Cold War International History Project Bulletin, International Security and Cold War History, among others. He was a contributor to Stephen I. Schwartz, ed., Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Programs Since 1940 (The Brookings Institution, 1998). During 1996-98 he served on the editorial board of Diplomatic History. He is currently a member of the Council of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). He previously served as Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Coordinator for the Archive.

Kate Doyle, a Senior Analyst of U.S. policy in Latin America, currently directs the Mexico Project, which aims to obtain documents on U.S.-Mexican relations. She edited two of the Archive's collections of declassified records - Death Squads, Guerrilla War, Covert Operations, and Genocide: Guatemala and the United States, 1954-1999 and El Salvador: War, Peace and Human Rights, 1980-1994 - and numerous Electronic Briefing Books on Guatemala and Mexico for the Archive's Web site. Since 1992, Doyle has worked with Latin American human rights organizations and truth commissions - in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras - to obtain the declassification of U.S. government archives in support of their investigations. She co-authored the 1994 report of the Washington Task Force on Salvadoran Death Squads, produced for the U.N.-appointed "Grupo Conjunto," which examined the resurgence of death squads in El Salvador after the signing of the peace accords. She published the Guatemalan death squad dossier in Harper's Magazine, and led the group of human rights organizations who briefed the press on the dossier in May 1999. In September 2002, Doyle appeared as an expert witness in the trial of senior military officers in Guatemala for the assassination of Myrna Mack. Doyle also works with citizens groups throughout the region on their campaigns for government transparency, accountability and freedom of information, and has written about the right to information in Latin America and the United States. She is a member of the advisory boards of the World Policy Journal, the Journal of the Right to Information, Libertad de Información-México and the Fund for Constitutional Government in Washington. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, Boston Globe, World Policy Journal, Current History, Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, and other publications. She now lives in Mexico City, directing the Mexico Project for the Archive and serving as a Research Fellow at the Iberoamerican University. In 2002, Doyle was awarded the Iberoamerican University's annual "Right to Information Prize."

Peter Kornbluh, Senior Analyst, has worked at the Archive since April 1986. He currently directs the Archive's Cuba and Chile Documentation Projects. He was co-director of the Iran-contra documentation project and director of the Archive's project on U.S. policy toward Nicaragua. From 1990-1999, he taught at Columbia University, as an adjunct assistant professor of international and public affairs. He is the author/editor/co-editor of a number of Archive books: the Archive's first two documents readers: The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 and The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History, both published by the New Press, and Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba (The New Press, 1998). On the 30th anniversary of the Chilean military coup in September 2003 he published The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, which the Los Angeles Times selected as a "best book" of the year. The Pinochet File has been translated into Spanish and published in Barcelona as Pinochet: Los Archivos Secretos. A smaller book on the United States and the overthrow of the government of Salvador Allende has been published in Chile under the title: Los EEUU y el Derrocamiento de Allende. His articles have been published in Foreign Policy, The New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and many other journals and newspapers. He has appeared on national television and radio broadcasts, among them "60 Minutes," "The Charlie Rose show," "Nightline," CNN, All Things Considered, and "FreshAir" with Terri Gross. He has also worked on, and appeared in, numerous documentary films, including the Oscar winning "Panama Deception," the History Channel's "Bay of Pigs Declassified," and "The Trials of Henry Kissinger." In November 2003, he served as producing consultant on the Discovery Times documentary, "Kennedy and Castro: The Secret History," which was based on his article in Cigar Aficionado, "Kennedy and Castro: The Secret Quest for Accommodation." He is currently a weekly columnist for the Chilean newspaper, Diario Siete.

Analysts

Michael L. Evans is director of the Colombia Documentation Project and serves concurrently as the Archive's Webmaster. He is the author of several Archive Electronic Briefing Books on U.S.-Colombia relations, international counternarcotics policy, the 1975 invasion of East Timor by Indonesian forces and U.S.-China relations. He also writes a monthly column for Semana.com, the online publication of Colombia's leading news magazine. His work has been recognized by The New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and other publications. He has appeared on television and radio broadcasts in the U.S. and Colombia, including the BBC World Service, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's "Counterspin," Pacifica Radio's "Democracy Now!" and RCN Television in Colombia. He joined the Archive in 1996 and worked as a Research Associate on several Archive publications, including Death Squads, Guerrilla War, Covert Operations, and Genocide: Guatemala and the United States, 1954-1999, Presidential Directives on National Security, Part 2: From Harry Truman to George W. Bush, China and the United States: From Hostility to Engagement; and U.S. Espionage and Intelligence: Organization, Operations, and Management, 1947-1996. He is a graduate of Miami University and did his graduate work in international affairs at The George Washington University.

Tamara Feinstein, Analyst, is the director of the Peru Documentation Project and also assists with the Mexico project. She has authored several Electronic Briefing Books related to Peru. She previously worked on the Guatemala Documentation Project, which included assistance in the production of the Guatemala microfiche set (Death Squads, Guerrilla War, Covert Operations, and Genocide: Guatemala and the United States, 1954–1999). She received her undergraduate degree in Political Science and Peace and Conflict Studies from Wayne State University and her Master's of Arts in International Affairs at the George Washington University.

Carlos Osorio is Information Systems Manager, Analyst and Director of the Southern Cone Documentation Project. In 2002, Carlos published several Electronic Briefing Books on state terrorism and U.S. policy in Argentina and Uruguay. He produced a CD-ROM containing the Department of State's entire Argentina Declassification collection along with annotated selections of documents to judges, lawyers and human rights groups. Between 2000 and 2002 he served as advisor to the Supreme Court of Paraguay and the Catholic University of Asunción in support of the "Centro de Documentación y Archivo para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos" (a.k.a. "Archivo del Terror"--"Archive of Terror") of the Memory, Democracy and Human Rights Project. The project catalogued 60,000 documents and microfilmed and digitized some 300,000 documents from the secret police files of Paraguay's former dictator, Alfredo Stroessner. Carlos also worked with the Panama Truth Commission to gather documents on deaths and disappearances in the early 1970's. Previously, Mr. Osorio worked on the Archive's Guatemala History and Accountability Project, which produced documentary and analytical support to the United Nations Historical Clarification Commission in Guatemala. He coordinated the military research and declassification of U.S. files that were the source of the Archive's Guatemala Military Database, which he designed and constructed himself. He has delivered papers and made presentations at various U.S. and Latin American forums on the use of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and U.S. declassified documents to clarify human rights abuses and the structure of repressive military apparatuses. As Information Systems Manager, he supervised the transition of the Archive's computer systems to a Windows network and conducted the migration of the Archive's network to fiber optic. He is currently engaged in the Archive's digitalization process.

Senior Fellows

Dr. John Prados directs the Archive’s Vietnam Documentation Project and is Research Fellow on national security affairs, including foreign affairs, intelligence, and military subjects. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from Columbia University and has authored many books and articles on the subjects of the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Vietnam war. His book on the National Security Council and another on intelligence in the Pacific in World War II were both nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His most recent are Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006), Hoodwinked: The Documents that Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War (New York: The New Press, 2004), and Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). His articles have appeared in Diplomatic History, Intelligence and National Security, Scientific American, Military History Quarterly, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Survival, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and The VVA Veteran.

Dr. Jeffrey Richelson is a Senior Fellow with the Archive. He has directed Archive documentation projects on U.S.-China relations, the organization and operations of the U.S. intelligence community, U.S. military space activities, and Presidential national security directives. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester and has taught at the University of Texas and the American University. He is the author of a number of books, including The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology (Boulder: Westview, 2001), America's Space Sentinels: DSP Satellites and National Security (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999), The U.S. Intelligence Community (Boulder: Westview Press, 4th ed., 1999), A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), and America's Secret Eyes in Space: The US KEYHOLE Spy Satellite Program (New York: Harper & Row, 1990). His articles have appeared in Scientific American, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, The International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, International Security, Intelligence and National Security, and other publications.

Dr. Robert A. Wampler, Research Fellow, has directed the Archive's U.S.-Japan documentation project since 1993. In connection with his work with the Archive's U.S.-Japan Project, he is also co-editor with Akira Iriye (Harvard University) of Partnership (Kodansha Press, 2001) a book of essays by leading American scholars of U.S.-Japan relations commemorating the 50th anniversary of the U.S.-Japan Peace Treaty and alliance. His work at the Archive has also included biological warfare, NATO military planning and the diplomacy of Henry Kissinger. Dr. Wampler's other research interests and recent publications include the uses of history for strategic planning and the public policy challenges posed by emerging technologies such as biotechnology and nanotechnology. He is a founding member of the Department of Defense Historical Records Declassification Advisory Panel, created to advise the Pentagon on policies regarding the declassification of historically significant records. Prior to coming to the Archive, he taught at the University of Maryland Department of History, and was Director of the Nuclear History Program's Project on Nuclear Weapons and Alliance Cohesion. His early scholarly work focused on nuclear strategy and the Atlantic Alliance, in connection with which he organized oral history sessions on the Eisenhower administration and NATO strategy, and helped to develop the Nuclear History Program's primary documents database. Additionally, he has contributed essays, chapters and papers to a number of books and conference proceedings, and has received grants and awards from the Harry S. Truman Library Institute, the Harvard MacArthur Fellowship, the Harvard Knox Fellowship, the Charles Warren Center for American Studies, and the U.S. Army Military History Institute. Dr. Wampler received his undergraduate training at King College, obtained a Master's in History from Wake Forest University and earned his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University in 1991.

Research Fellows

Dr. Vojtech Mastny, Senior Research Fellow, is coordinator of the Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the multinational research effort co-sponsored by the Archive with leading institutions in Switzerland, Austria, Norway and Italy. His distinguished career has included teaching history and international relations at Columbia University, the University of Illinois, and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He has served as a Fulbright professor at the University of Bonn, and his fellowships and awards include research positions at the Norwegian Nobel Institute and the University of Hokkaido, among other institutions. His many books include The Helsinki Process and the Reintegration of Europe, The Czechs Under Nazi Rule (which won the Clarke F. Ansley award), Russia’s Road to the Cold War (which The Economist praised as having “transcended the simplicities of both the ‘cold war’ and the ‘revisionist’ versions to produce a convincingly complex picture”), and most recently, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity (winner of the Bernath Prize). A U.S. citizen, his languages include his native Czech as well as Russian, Polish, German, French and Italian.

Dr. Svetlana Savranskaya serves as the Archive's director for its cooperative projects with Russian archives and institutes and editor of the Russian and East Bloc Archival Documents Database. She earned her Ph.D. in political science and international affairs in 1998 from Emory University, where she studied under Professor Robert Pastor and worked as a Hewlett Fellow at the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta. While completing her Ph.D., she served as a research associate and interpreter for several Archive-Cold War International History Project efforts, including most prominently the Carter-Brezhnev Project of Brown University’s Watson Institute, as well as the End of the Cold War Project. A Russian citizen, she has won several fellowships and awards during her graduate studies, including a prestigious dissertation fellowship from the Institute for the Study of World Politics. She did her undergraduate work in history at Moscow State University.

Dr. Brad Simpson is a Research Fellow and director of the Archive's Indonesia and East Timor documentation project. He is currently an Assistant Professor of History at Idaho State University, where he teaches U.S. history and foreign relations. Brad earned his Ph.D. in U.S. history from Northwestern University in 2003, where he studied U.S.-Southeast Asian relations during the 1960s. He is currently writing a book on U.S.-Indonesian relations during the 1950s and 1960s, examining U.S. support for an authoritarian regime in Jakarta. From 1994 to 1995 he worked as a researcher on the Archive's Guatemala History and Accountability Project.

Fellows

Dr. Hope Harrison is a Research Fellow with the Archive’s End of the Cold War Project and Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University. She obtained her master’s and doctorate degrees from Columbia University.  She taught at Brandeis University and Lafayette College. She held research fellowships at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Davis Center at Harvard University, and the Free University of Berlin. She is completing a book on Soviet-East German relations from 1953 to 1961, which relies extensively on her work in archives of the former Soviet Union and East Germany.  Prof. Harrison took leave for the 2000-2001 academic year to work on U.S. policy toward Russia at the National Security Council’s Directorate on Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia.

Christian F. Ostermann is the director of the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a Research Fellow at the National Security Archive. He received his M.A. in modern and medieval history from the University of Cologne (Germany) and is currently completing a Ph.D. dissertation on U.S. policy towards East Germany for the University of Hamburg. He has received scholarships and awards from the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo (1999), the Harry S. Truman Library Institute (1995-1996), the Institute for the Study of World Politics (1995), the German Historical Institutes in London (1994) and Washington (1991-1992), the Gerda-Henkel Foundation for Historical Scholarship in Duesseldorf (1993-1994), the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at the Free University of Berlin (1992-1993), and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (1974-1991), among others. He has presented scholarly papers at more than a dozen conferences; his article "The United States and the 1953 East German Uprising" (1996) won the 1994-1996 Prize for Best History Article in German Studies. 

Dr. Vladislav Zubok is a Research Fellow, Associate Professor of History at Temple University, and previously director of the Archive's Russia-related projects. Dr. Zubok, a Russian citizen, previously held a Visiting Fellowship at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo; he was Visiting Scholar at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the Woodrow Wilson Center, and has taught courses on Soviet politics and international relations at Amherst College, Ohio University, Stanford University, and the University of Michigan. A Ph.D. recipient and former senior research fellow of the Institute for the Study of the USA and Canada (Moscow), Dr. Zubok has written numerous articles on international relations and two of the first six working papers of the Cold War International History Project at the Wilson Center. His book, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War (with Constantin Pleshakov), published in 1996 by the Harvard University Press, won the 1996 Lionel Gelber Prize as the best book of the year in international affairs.

Freedom of Information Project

Catherine Nielsen is the Freedom of Information Coordinator at the National Security Archive. In this capacity, she works with activists and officials around the world on freedom of information and governmental transparency; monitors the U.S. government's compliance with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA); oversees the Archive's FOIA research; and conducts research on trends in freedom of information policy. She is the Archive's FOIA counselor to the U.S. public, advising the news media, scholars and others on use of the Act. She previously worked as a Research Associate on the Archive's End of the Cold War, Soviet Flashpoints, U.S.-Iran Relations, and Parallel History of NATO and the Warsaw Pact projects. She received her B.A. from Purdue University in 1997, majoring in political science; and her MA in Russian and East European Studies from The George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs in 2001. She was awarded a Fulbright research grant to Austria in 2001-2002, where she conducted research on Austrian neutrality during the 1956 Hungarian uprising.

Kristin Adair serves as Staff Counsel at the National Security Archive. She works principally on the Archive’s FOIA litigation and open government advocacy projects. In addition, she tracks international access to information issues and helps to maintain the freedominfo.org website, serving as a liaison to the international community as part of the Freedom of Information Advocates Network. Before joining the Archive staff, Kristin served as a policy assistant and scheduler during the 2004 presidential campaign and also worked as an intern in the Senate, focusing on judiciary and foreign policy issues. She recently completed her graduate work at the George Washington University, where she received her J.D. and her M.A. in International Affairs in May 2006. Her studies focused on constitutional and administrative law, as well as U.S. national security and foreign policy.

Information Systems

Maria L. Martinez, Database Manager, joined the Archive in June 2002. She received her undergraduate degree in Information Systems from Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral (ESPOL) in Guayaquil, Ecuador. She also earned her MBA at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico.

Suboh Suboh, Assistant Information Systems Manager, is a computer engineer and graduate student at George Washington University. He is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and has previous experience in implementing, supporting and administering Windows NT 4.0 and Netware operating systems.

Library and Indexing

Lisa Thompson, Director of Production, received her undergraduate degree from Arizona State University, a Master of Science in Library Science from The Catholic University of America, and a Master of Fine Arts in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University.

Anne Marie Lyons is an Indexer at the Archive. She received her Bachelor's degree in English from the College of Saint Elizabeth, and a Master's degree in Library and Information Science from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Jo Ella Straley is an Indexer at the Archive. She received a B.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John's College in Maryland and a Masters in Librarianship from Dominican University.

Administration

Sue Bechtel, Administrator, manages the Archive's office and support systems and staffs the Archive's fundraising, marketing and outreach operations. Previously, she worked as the Program Assistant of the Nuclear History Program at the University of Maryland. She did her undergraduate work at Ohio's Wittenberg University and is currently completing a masters' degree in political science at the University of Maryland.

Public Service Coordinator / Research Associate

Dr. Mary Elizabeth Curry, Public Service Coordinator and Research Associate, assists researchers, students and scholars who come from around the world to use the Archive's collections. She also responds to email and telephone inquiries, working closely with Analysts and other staff to make the Archive's collections available to the public. Her specialty is U.S. business history and biography; she appeared as J.C. Penney's biographer in the December 1997 A&E Biography TV program "J.C. Penney: Main Street Millionaire"; a Wall Street Journal article in September 1997 described her research on a 19th Century businessman and philanthropist. Dr. Curry worked as a private investigator for 14 years in New York City and Washington, D.C. for Wells Fargo Investigative Services, the Investigative Group International (IGI), and Kroll Associates. She previously worked for the Winthrop Group, Inc., a Cambridge, MA, history consulting firm; the J.C. Penney Company, and the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Dr. Curry's book Creating An American Institution: The Merchandising Genius of J.C. Penney, was published by Garland, Inc. in 1993 and in paperback in 1997. She is the author of 19 articles on business and biographical subjects published in The Encyclopedia of New York City (1995), The Encyclopedia of World Biography (1985 - 1990) and The American National Biography (1999). In 1977, she was awarded the John E. Rovensky Fellowship in Business & Economic History to complete her dissertation on J.C. Penney. Dr. Curry received her B.A. in History from Le Moyne College, Syracuse, NY; and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in History from The American University, Washington, D.C.

Research Assistants

Christina V. Jones is a Research Assistant for the Cuban Missile Crisis Documentation Project. She received her undergraduate degree in anthropology and history from George Mason University in May 1999. She received her master's degree in history with a focus on Latin American and Caribbean studies from Howard University and is currently a Ph.D. candidate on Latin American and Caribbean Studies with a focus on the Dominican Republic.