Where can you find official documents for the US

Factual Questions
1

In a GD debate a poster is asking where one could find official correspondence between the US and the Taliban the run up to the war. Basically the back and forth signals traffic including the official language the previous administration used to request that the Taliban surrendered custody of Bin Laden and the other top AQ leaders to the US, and the official responses for the Taliban’s reply.

I know there are searchable government data bases with all kinds of this stuff in them…I just don’t know where to look. Google is a fine took for something things, but no matter which way I word the question I always seem to get a ton of garbage that has little to do with my question…mostly things from news outlets who are just saying things like ‘Today President Bush rejected the Taliban’s offer, and says we will begin attacking at X’…but surly that communication would have had to go through the state department and be given officially to the Taliban, no? Assuming it was, they there has to be a way to look it over to see what was said. I know this information is out there…I would really appreciate it if a 'doper would help a struggling 'doper out here.

-XT

2

There are a couple problems with this. First, diplomatic correspondence is often not a matter of public record, or is only made public decades later, so it won’t be found in public databases maintained by the GPO or NARA. Second, the US never recognized the Taliban regime and only maintained official relations with Afghanistan’s government-in-exile. That means any high-level communication between US and Taliban officials was either conducted informally or through a neutral intermediary.

So I think you’d be very unlikely to find any primary source material on this subject. In a few decades, maybe a transcript will turn up in the National Archives, but until then I think all you’ll have to go on is the word of the people involved.