12 Facts About Matthew Aid

Matthew Morris Aid was an American military historian and author.

Matthew Aid studied the Russian language, while a member of the United States Air Force, and was a Russian linguist for the National Security Agency, and the Air Force.

Matthew Aid has been interviewed by multiple organizations including National Public Radio and C-SPAN and his work has been published in numerous journals, newspapers, and magazines including Foreign Policy, Politico magazine, National Security Archive, and the Associated Press.

Matthew Morris Aid was born on March 11,1958, in New York City.

Matthew Aid's father, Harry, was an attorney for Mobil Oil and his mother, Rita, was a political activist.

Matthew Aid's family lived in France and Libya, when he was a young boy, and he attended an American-run oil companies school, outside of Tripoli, Libya from 1963 to 1967.

Matthew Aid attended high school in New York City, where his interest in collecting declassified documents and love of playing war games, led him to become friends with John Prados, a National Security Archive fellow, who was attending graduate school at Columbia University and at the time, designed board war games.

In 2005, Matthew Aid, a visiting fellow at the National Security Archive, made his first contribution to the National Security Archive, while he did research for his book about the NSA's history.

In 2006, Matthew Aid, was performing research about the National Archives and learned that 25,515 records had been removed from the National Archives by five agencies, namely the CIA, the Air Force, the Energy Department, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Archives itself.

Washington Post reporter Christopher Lee reported that Matthew Aid had been punished 21 years earlier for unauthorized possession of classified information and impersonating an officer while serving as a staff sergeant in the United States Air Force in the United Kingdom.

Matthew Aid was court-martialed for unauthorized possession of classified documents and impersonating an officer, received a bad conduct discharge, and was imprisoned for a year in 1986.

Matthew Aid responded that the release of his military records to the press was done in retaliation for his discovery of the National Archives records removal, which led to an official investigation and press-attention.