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Two interesting items related to archives and history. I'll post them separately. First the one related to the National Archives and the revelation of the reclassification effort:

See Christopher Lee's profile in today's Washington Post, "The Amateur Sleuth Who Gave the Archives a Red Face" at

(registration required)

"The scandal over missing documents that rocked the National Archives this spring came to light not because of the digging of an investigative reporter or a timely leak by a concerned federal insider.

Instead it was Matthew M. Aid, an amateur researcher and historian, who figured out that for at least six years the CIA and the Air Force had been withdrawing thousands of records from the public shelves -- and that Archives officials had helped cover up their efforts."

"It was while revisiting (or trying to) some Cold War-era State Department records last August that Aid realized documents he had seen before -- indeed, he had copies of some at home -- were no longer on the Archives shelves. He inquired about it but was given no explanation. He let it go for a while, but by October, after several other files had gone missing, he demanded answers.

'I had been on a slow burn for months at this point,' Aid said. 'None of the reference librarians would tell me anything. . . . They knew I was suspicious about something, but they clearly had been ordered not to talk about it.'

Finally, someone took him aside and told him the CIA and other agencies had been pulling files since 1999. Aid took the matter to friends at the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research library. Other researchers also had started noticing irregularities, and together they sent a letter to the Archives requesting a meeting.

At the meeting, held at the end of January, Archives officials 'admitted everything,' Aid said. 'They said, "Yes, there has been a reclassification program going on here."'

The next month, the New York Times broke the story. Allen Weinstein, the head of the Archives, soon announced a moratorium on reclassification while the agency undertook an audit of the withdrawn documents."

"Timothy Naftali, a University of Virginia history professor who in October will become the first director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, said Aid had performed 'a great service' in exposing the reclassification program.

'His work helps all of us fight against the culture of secrecy in Washington today. We don't have enough watchdogs,' Naftali said.

Aid applauded the audit and the policy changes. But he said the intelligence agencies are still dragging their feet when it comes to declassifying records.

'This entire experience has been an eye-opener for me,' Aid said. 'What's at the National Archives, I thought, was sacrosanct. It had nothing to do with the secrecy that was prevalent in Washington and I read about in the newspapers. So this has come as a huge shock for me. . . . You don't stand up and take notice until it has a direct impact on you. I'm taking it very personally.'"

Given the ISOO report in April and the press coverage, if the general consensus is that what was happening was at worst wrong or at best flawed, why did it take an apparent leak to an outsider (Matthew Aid) to find redress? Christopher Lee writes his article as if there were no other options, other than leaking to the press. Why was there no way for the National Archives to resolve this internally and to make the necessary course corrections -- without having to turn to the press to publicize the problems?

Where were what Dr. Naftali refers to as the "watchdogs?" When things go wrong at the National Archives, is it only possible to resolve them if external "watchdogs" find out and protest them? (Neither Lee nor Naftali mentions organizations such as SAA, so I don't know if they only are thinking the press as a source for exposing problems or also of professional associations.) Doesn't this put NARA's staff in an untenable position? Are there no internal "watchdogs" to whom Archives staff or officials can turn to ensure that the agency "does the right thing?"

When it comes to powerful governmental forces that seek to affect NARA's mission, it sounds to me as if the agency is no better off now than it was when I worked there and we Nixon Project archivists in 1989 desperately looked for someone to turn to inside the agency to resolve our ethical concerns regarding pressure from former President Nixon to delete segments of Watergate Special Prosecution Force tapes (RG 460). In 1989 we found no one to help us inside NARA. As I later testified in Kutler v. Wilson, we tried meeting with John Fawcett, the head of our reporting chain, and pleading unsuccessfully for 36 CFR 1275 referral to the Presidential Materials Review Board. I testified about how Joan Howard, the most senior archivist to join in our protest, was removed from her position shortly after she joined us in pleading for Board referral. A manager actually told us in 1989 "to never talk about" the protest meeting we Nixon Project archivists had with John Fawcett that year. The reasons had nothing to do with national security classification, which was not an issue either in the meeting or in the tape deletions. Of course, that admonition to stay silent created all sorts of stress for staff when we later were subpoenaed as witnesses in Dr. Kutler's 1992 lawsuit and had to testify truthfully under oath.

While the Aid profile was very interesting, it left me profoundly depressed about how little things seem to have changed at NARA. If NARA has little to rely on other than leaks to interested scholars, the external "watchdogs," then the agency continues to have huge systemic problems in carrying out its mission and providing avenues for staff to resolve ethical problems.