Charlotte writes of the general public's lack of interest in government records: "I think most of us think of a state archive as the repository for old 'government' documents, not necessarily anything that would be of interest to them." My experience lies in the area of Federal rather than state archives. I have an interest in what Federal records contain not only as an historian and former archivist, but also as a citizen. Here's how that plays out for me. How many other people react this way? I don't know, I don't claim to speak for anyone but myself. This is just how I see the importance of archival records as opposed to other sources of information. I put this together during my lunch break. But if some of you are not interested in my lengthy musings on the value of government records, stop right here and go ahead and delete this, I won't mind, LOL. Take the issue of the Vietnam War. As an undergraduate at GWU in Washington, DC during 1969-1973, I strongly supported the Nixon administration's domestic and foreign policies. On campus, I was a member of the conservative group Young Americans for Freedom; I wore a "Silent Majority" button during the Vietnam War: and I even was photographed with David Eisenhower at the White House during a visit there around 1973 or 1974 among a group of Young Republicans. Stephen Colbert famously has said in character that "facts may change, but my beliefs remain the same." That's not me, LOL. Of course, I have core values. But I also am open to learning more about what was going on during the time period of the Vietnam War than was available to me at the age of 21. And what the options were for the U.S. And why things played out as they did. Basically, I'm interested in archival disclosures about Presidential decision making, whether they support the way I voted in 1972 (for Nixon) or not. I have no regrets about having voted for Nixon, I know and understand why I weighted issues the way I did at age 21. But I do have great interest in understanding the individual characteristics -- both of a President as a man and of his administration -- that lead Presidents to do what they do, whether the outcome is good or bad. And I'm fascinated by Presidents' interactions with advisors. And how they and their spokespersons integrate (or don't integrate) the no-holds-barred nature of a political campaign with the need sometimes to speak from a position of moral authority once in office. Chief of Staff H. R. "Bob" Haldeman's published diary is a great source to see much of this on display during the Nixon administration. I am very interested in revelations from archival records which show how Richard Nixon and his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, grappled with the Vietnam War. (Remember my recent posting about the release of records about the Gulf of Tonkin incident.) Is that because of my general intellectual curiousity or because working with the Nixon tapes and documents so humanized the Presidency for me that I developed a lifelong interest in such matters? I don't know. Whatever the reason, I'm very interested in LBJ's and Nixon's struggles. And struggle they did. Consider what Newsweek wrote in 2001 about Michael Beschloss's LBJ book, REACHING FOR GLORY, which relied on archival tapes and records: "In March 1965, LBJ confessed to his old paternal confidante, Senator Richard Russell, how terrified he was that the presence of the Marines would draw the U.S. into a Vietnamese land war -- and that the American people would realize what was about to happen. "Airplanes ain't worth a damn, Dick ... Bombing [everything]? ... I guess they can do it in an industrial city. I guess they can do it in New York. ... [But] that's the damndest thing I ever saw. The biggest fraud. Don't you get your hopes up that the Air Force is going to [win this war.] ... " The president went on to add: "The more bombs you drop, the more nations you scare, the more people you make mad, the more embassies you get -- " Beschloss also recounted what LBJ told his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, in 1965, ""I can't get out [of Vietnam], and I can't finish it with what I have got. And I don't know what the hell to do!" And what a White House tape recording showed President Johnson saying on February 1, 1966: "Well I know we oughtn't to be there, but I can't get out. I just can't be the architect of surrender.... I'm willing to do damn near anything. If I told you what I was willing to do, I wouldn't have any program. [Republican Senate Minority Leader Everett] Dirksen wouldn't give me a dollar to operate the war. I just can't operate in a glass bowl with all these things. But I'm willing to do nearly anything a human can do, if I can do it with any honor at all." How much of this sort of thing should the public know -- and when should they know it? Obviously, there's a limit to what people can know while a President is in office. At what point then should the disclosable facts be revealed -- not with an aim to hurt anyone, but so appropriate lessons can be learned, within government as well as outside? Is there a place for such disclosures, and if so, how to accomplish them objectively? That to me goes to the heart of many public access issues related to government records. Unfortunately, the public rarely hears about what goes into sytematic release of archival records. And the hurdles archivists face in doing their jobs. And what the consequences would be if archival releases were handled differently than they presently are. Keep in mind that available sources for the study of the Presidency have changed over the last 60 years or so. I'm not thinking only of the passage of the Presidential Records Act. Before World War II, we didn't see the plethora of tell-all books that now are on the market. In fact, The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes (written by the the man who was Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior from 1933-1946) stunned observers when it was published in the early 1950s. Since then, countless Presidential advisors have published memoirs. And journalists such as Robert Woodward and Ron Suskind -- neither of whom is an historian -- now publish books about a President's administration while he still is in office. (One such book is reviewed in today's Washington Post today. http://shrinkster.com/g0i or http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/19/AR2006061 901211.html (registration required) As an historian, I read some of these books with interest and even learn something from them. But I remain much more comfortable with the process of systematic archival disclosure, rather than accepting at face value what is written either in what ofaten seem like self serving memoirs or, on the other hand, tell- all-books, where it can be difficult to trace the motives of often anoymous sources. Gene Healy, a Libertarin blogger, recently quoted from the Nixon tapes when he posted about how times have changed. See http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/26702.html . Unfortunately, like most of the bloggers on HNN, Healy writes about the role of reporters in writing about governmental actions but rarely if ever mentions archivists. If only more bloggers thought about what goes into releasing the records they so blithely quote from! Interestingly, while H. R. Haldeman spoke in 1971 about the issue of Presidential infallibility, Nixon's former chief of staff later decided to publish his own diary, which provides a very candid look at the operation of the Nixon White House. Bob Haldeman also gave us Nixon archivists a very insightful series of oral history interviews around 1986-1987 (these are the ones I tried unsuccessfully to order copies of from NARA earlier this year). When I talked to Haldeman back then, I picked up what seemed to me to be a genuine vibe of his wanting to share the lessons of mistakes made, why things happened and how. All in all, I'm more comfortable with the systematic release of archival records over time rather than tell-all books written by journalists. But, I recognize that members of the public may have trouble gauging the importance of objective archival releases, given everything else that is in the mix. Unfortunately, the public is more likely to hear about tell-all books rather than the painstaking narratives of government actions later captured in history books by reputable scholars. (Yes, I do believe there are some such creatures, although there also are historians who are an embarrassment to the profession.) Finally, I'll mention that I recently discovered that David Wallace of the University of Michigan has a blog at Huffington Post. Since there are few archivists who blog, I'll provide the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-wallace/ . A number of you have asked why I don't have a blog. If you look at the people posting comments on David's entry at HoffPo, you'll see why! I prefer the relatively controlled and neutral environment of the Archives List to the wild world of Net blogging! If anyone else runs into blogging archivists (please, no shots about this post being a blog entry, I already apologized for its being so long, LOL), do let us know on the List by providing links! Maarja ________________________________________________________________________ Check out AOL.com today. Breaking news, video search, pictures, email and IM. All on demand. Always Free. 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]>