As part of our ongoing project to document Central Intelligence Agency activities around the planet, we’re compiling a curated list of links to records in the CIA archives, divided by country and presidential administration. Today we’re looking at the Near East (the Middle East and North Africa).

Yesterday’s Quarterly Report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan had a very different tone from the President’s remarks regarding transparency on efforts in the Middle East. While it may be true, as Trump claims, that “We no longer tell our enemies our plans,” according to the SIGAR report, we’re no longer telling Congress, much less the American people, either.

Nearly 50 years before President Trump’s controversial decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel, a SECRET Central Intelligence Agency report had already declared the issue of the city’s ownership a “stumbling block” which could sink the entire peace process, and worse, one “without prospects” for a solution.

On Monday, Saudi Arabia announced that it would cutting diplomatic ties to Qatar, leading a collection of the oil-rich peninsula country’s closest neighbors in a regional economic shutout. However, it wasn’t always this way - a quick trawl through the CIA’s CREST database reminds of us an arguably simpler time in Saudi Arabia-Qatar relations, when something as potentially serious as where one nation ended and the other begun was a relative non-issue.