While I appreciate Peter Hirtle’s comments about my own work, I strongly disagree
with a few of the points he makes. He points to other opportunities for independent
review of the National Archives, suggesting it is unnecessary for SAA to take a leadership
role in calling for this. My contention is that for too long SAA has avoided critiquing
NARA when it needed to do so, instead deferring to NARA in most instances, and
the result has been a continuing weakening of a strong NARA. This problem extends
back decades by the way. The "Joint AHA-OAH Ad Hoc Committee to Investigate the
Charges Against the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library" was a mixed success, but mainly
because SAA was excluded from the deliberation, weakening the analysis of archival practice.
As to the Heiner Affair in Australia, I would say that the Australian Society of Archivists has come
off looking quite poor, but that case concerned a state archives (Queensland) not
the national archives (Chris Hurley has been the advocate for stronger action by the
ASA in that case, and you can read his version of events in the book I co-edited with
David Wallace, Archives and the Public Good, published in 2002).
However, Peter makes other comments that deeply concern me. He writes,
“I am still concerned about the archival principles at issue in this controversy.
You can't help wonder why good, decent, well-meaning archivists such as Michael
Kurtz found themselves in a situation where they were signing classified memoranda
of understanding. My guess is that they were doing the same sort of balancing act
that all archivists must do when it comes to donations. We sometimes accept a donation
with an inappropriate restriction in the deed of gift in the belief that in doing so, we are
ensuring the preservation of a record that might otherwise be lost - and we
can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that eventually the records will be
opened.” Whoa, I hope there is considerable disagreement with this sentiment.
We should never allow “inappropriate restrictions” no matter what our concern
might be the loss of records. This is a kind of situational ethics that ought to
deeply trouble us, leading to situations such as Janet Malcolm chronicled in her
book, In the Freud Archives, considering the control of Sigmund Freud papers at the
Library of Congress. It is also the kind of argument that has us sitting back
and watching the Presidential Library system spin onward, often bringing in
challenges for access to the records and, at the least, the same kind of control
of the interpretation of the past as we can see in memoir writers (for the
latter, read David Reynold’s recent book on Churchill’s writing of his WWII
memoirs). Since archivists are almost always concerned about the protection
of records and threats to them, the logical extension of this argument would
be to create a rampage of awful access restrictions to collections, frustrating
researchers and undermining the mission of archives everywhere.
I am even more concerned about this comment by Peter: “I suspect that
some at NARA felt that if they were not accommodating towards the CIA and the USAF in what is after all a Congressionally-mandate re-review process, those agencies might be less willing to turn over historical records to NARA. My impression is that similar sentiments drive NARA's support of classification review by agencies prior to automatic declassification. Supporting agencies in their desire to keep material that should remain classified out of the automatic declassification chain may lead to more agency willingness to turn over material to NARA - and less lobbying to short-circuit automatic declassification. In a perfect world, the Archivist would have the authority to demand that agencies turn over all historical files to the Archives, but I am not predicting a perfect world any time soon.” This is essentially the same argument former Archivist Don Wilson made when he defended his own actions in the PROFS case and his signing of an agreement about the Iran-Contra A!
ffair e
mail as he left his NARA post. So, where do we go with this? Do we urge having a National Archives with no role in federal records and information policy, just so some records might survive for future historians. In addition to being an archivist, I am a citizen, and I would like to see a strong NARA protecting and defending open government. I am not naive about that"perfect world," but I hope we can agree that it is worth working for a muchbetter world.
--
Richard J. Cox
Professor
Department of Library and Information Sciences
School of Information Sciences
University of Pittsburgh
Editor, Records & Information Management Report
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Voice: 412-624-3245
FAX: 412-648-7001
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
homepage: http://www2.sis.pitt.edu/%7Ercox/
"What we would like to do is change the world - to make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended for them to do. And we can change the world: we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world." - Dorothy Day
-------------- Original message --------------
From: Richard Cox <[log in to unmask]>
> Bruce Montgomery writes, “Although some believe we should not recall the events
> surrounding Nixon and his presidential materials, they have everything to do
> with how NARA has been transformed into an essentially political (more than
> cultural) executive branch agency. It's a complicated story, but one that
> explains how presidential administrations see the Archives as a repository of
> executive branch evidence that may have a profound influence on how history
> judges their actions. As others know, the Archives has often been subject to
> political pressures from the White House to serve its own interests in
> strengthening the presidential prerogatives of executive privilege. It has
> sometimes been caught in the wider struggle over the separation of powers as the
> executive branch battles to circumvent or nullify much of the post-Watergate
> legislation that was designed to establish a more accountable and open
> government.”
>
> Montgomery provides a pretty good assessment of what has occurred with NARA, but
> in my opinion it suggests all the more reason why archivists need to speak up,
> with or without SAA leadership. It is all the more reason why we should be
> fighting for a strong NARA, not just understanding the situation. If we just
> sit back and allow our government to create a more and more secret regime, is
> there any point at all in trying to function as archivists? Are we going to sit
> back and allow the FBI, and other intelligence agencies, come into our archives
> to shut down our collections in the name of national security and state secrets,
> such as is happening with the Jack Anderson papers being offered to the George
> Washington University? I hope not. (And I am appreciative of the small group of
> individuals posting messages about this case – but it could be a lot more!).
>
> Why is it that the Smithsonian-Showtime agreement has generated such a quick
> response, according to Jacqueline Trescott in the April 18th Washington Post,
> when “More than 200 filmmakers and historians asked the Smithsonian Institution
> yesterday to abandon its production deal with Showtime Networks and reconsider a
> recently imposed policy that limits access to Smithsonian archives and experts”?
> It seems to me that the government secrecy issues represented in the
> reclassification controversy possess far greater implications for us as a nation
> and profession than the intellectual property concerns that we see in the
> Smithsonian controversy. Are archivists just too uninterested in the National
> Archives? Do they merely think that this is business as usual, for both NARA
> and the Bush administration, so why bother? Or are archivists just too willing
> to accept, at face value, any explanation coming from Archivist Weinstein and
> NARA leadership?
>
> BTW, there are an increasing number of books appearing about disturbing aspects
> of government secrecy or government records policy that archivists ought to read
> for both background for this case and, perhaps, to gain appreciation for why we
> need to be vigilant about such matters and desire to have a stronger National
> Archives. Here are some to get people started – read up!
>
> Richard J. Cox, Ethics, Accountability, and Recordkeeping in Troubled Times
> (London: Facet, forthcoming in late 2006)
>
> Mark Danner, The Secret Way to War: The Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War’s
> Buried History (New York: NYRB, 2006).
>
> Verne Harris, Archives and Justice: A South African Perspective (Chicago:
> Society of American Archivists, forthcoming in 2006).
>
> [Verne Harris and others], The Nelson Mandela Foundation, A Prisoner in the
> Garden (New York: Viking Studio, 2006).
>
> Benjamin Hufbauer, Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape
> Public Memory (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005).
>
> Bruce Montgomery, Subverting Open Government: White House Materials and
> Executive Branch Politics (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 2005) [Thanks Bruce]
>
> Margaret Proctor, et al, Political Pressure and the Archival Record (Chicago:
> Society of American Archivists, 2006).
>
> Alasdair Roberts, Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in the Information Age (New
> York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
>
> And, oh, in one of my previous postings I made a comment that it is good that we
> have the National Security Agency watching NARA; I might, of course, the
> National Security Archives – perhaps this was a Freudian slip?
>
> --
> Richard J. Cox
> Professor
> Department of Library and Information Sciences
> School of Information Sciences
> University of Pittsburgh
> Editor, Records & Information Management Report
> Pittsburgh, PA 15260
> Voice: 412-624-3245
> FAX: 412-648-7001
> e-mail: [log in to unmask]
> homepage: http://www2.sis.pitt.edu/%7Ercox/
>
> "What we would like to do is change the world - to make it a little simpler for
> people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended for them to do.
> And we can change the world: we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy
> and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be
> confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world." - Dorothy
> Day
>
> A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List sponsored by the Society
> of American Archivists, www.archivists.org.
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>
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>
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A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List sponsored by the Society of American Archivists, www.archivists.org.
For the terms of participation, please refer to http://www.archivists.org/listservs/arch_listserv_terms.asp.
To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to [log in to unmask]
In body of message: SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname
*or*: UNSUB ARCHIVES
To post a message, send e-mail to [log in to unmask]
Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html
Problems? Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>