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
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