In the immediate aftermath of the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, President John F. Kennedy stood before the nation accepting the total blame for what had happened. He referred to an old saying about victory having a thousand fathers, but defeat being an orphan, and identified himself as the responsible officer in the government. Even though the whole initiative had been first devised and planned by the Eisenhower administration.
JFK’s poll numbers moved dramatically—up. There is something refreshing—though sadly rare—about a political leader saying “My bad.”
In the 19th century, a British politician stood in Parliament and remarked that trying to get his particular point across was akin to flogging a dead horse to make it pull a load. We call this beating a dead horse today. And every time President Obama or a member of his administration plays the blame Bush card, he is beating that proverbial dead horse. It is also getting really old.
Everyone on Facebook has an information page and there is an entry labeled “relationship status.” Some mark “married” or “in a relationship,” others say “single.” Then there are those who put: “It’s complicated.” When it comes to Presidents and those who come before or after, it’s really complicated. Some chief executives have managed to rise above the propensity for personal paltriness—others, not so much.
And it goes way back.
Thomas Jefferson, who ran a particularly aggressive campaign against former-and-would-be-again-much-later friend, John Adams, in the 1800 race, continued the attack on his predecessor well into his own presidency. He regularly smeared Mr. Adams for maladministration of presidential powers, though apparently willing to benefit from things Adams had done that he had opposed at the time. The anti-military, anti-big government Jefferson, had no qualms about using navy Adams had built (opposed by TJ) to deal with the Barbary Pirates; nor did he hesitate to use broad executive powers in the whole matter of the Louisiana Purchase—the kind of action candidate Jefferson would have likely decried as tyrannical.
Democrat Andrew Jackson wouldn’t even pay a courtesy call on outgoing President John Quincy Adams. Mr. Adams then refused to attend his successor’s inauguration. Jackson spent significant time in office tearing down his predecessor—blaming Adams and the whole fierce campaign for his wife’s death after the election. That one was very complicated.
Speaking of Presidents and courtesy calls, Dwight Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie, sat famously in the car under the White House portico, snubbing the Trumans. But when it came to blaming his predecessor for the mess he inherited, he chose the path of just ignoring and dismissing Mr. Truman like the junior military officer he saw him to be.
Abraham Lincoln had great reasons and resonant issues to use to place blame for the country on the verge of disintegration he inherited in 1861 because his predecessor, James Buchanan, did virtually nothing to deal with the brewing national disaster. But Mr. Lincoln seemed to have a capacity to rise above cheap politics—dealings with his own Cabinet-made-of-would-be-rivals also demonstrated the 16th President’s ego tempering skills.
Of course, many times Presidents have succeeded men from the same party and, though they might have wanted to really make the guy before look bad, they realized that it was political suicide. Martin Van Buren could certainly have blamed the panic of 1837 on Andrew Jackson, who destroyed the National Bank, but party realities forbade it.
Warren Harding didn’t spend a lot of time or energy blaming Woodrow Wilson for the nation’s woes in the early 1920s. Ronald Reagan used Jimmy Carter as a punching bag for a short while, but quickly moved on. Even Richard Nixon didn’t waste time passing the buck back to LBJ. In fact, their relationship was remarkably good, considering their history.
Now, Franklin Roosevelt—well that’s another story. He used predecessor Herbert Hoover as his whipping boy for at least a decade—and one wonders if this example is the one that resonates with the current administration.
FDR ran a skillful campaign against Hoover in 1932, allied with the forces of economics and history in play at the time. Hoover was an unpopular president as a result of the onset of the Great Depression. Once hailed for his genius at organization and engineering, his name was even part of the vocabulary signifying good economy, as in the popular 1920 Valentine’s Day card:
“I’ll Hooverize on dinner,
On fuel and tires too,
But I’ll never learn to Hooverize
When it comes to loving you.”
By 1932, however, his star had fallen and shantytowns across America were dubbed, “Hoovervilles.” However, today’s prevalent narrative that Hoover was a do-nothing president and then the great activist Roosevelt rode to the White House on a white horse, is at best an apocryphal exaggeration—at worst, it’s a lie.
In fact, Mr. Roosevelt, famous smile and all, was simply an effective and cynical politician who knew how to practice demagoguery with the best of them. He was also a very petty man. One example is in the naming—better, renaming—of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. It had been named for Herbert Hoover in 1931 not just because he was the President at the time (there were already dams named for Calvin Coolidge and Theodore Roosevelt extant), but also because he had been a major driving force in the project since the early 1920s during his highly successful tenure as Secretary of Commerce. He, being an engineer by training and trade, even played a crucial role in how it would work and be constructed—effectuating something called the Hoover Compromise allowing the project to go forward at a critical juncture.
After his humiliating defeat by the Roosevelt juggernaut in November of 1932, Mr. Hoover stopped at the construction site of the dam and remarked for the press:
“It does give me extraordinary pleasure to see the great dream I have so long held taking form in actual reality of stone and cement. It is now ten years since I became chairman of the Colorado River Commission—This dam is the greatest engineering work of its character ever attempted by the hand of man—I hope to be present at its final completion as a bystander. Even so, I shall feel a special personal satisfaction.”
But by the time the project was completed in 1936, it had been renamed by the Roosevelt administration as the Boulder Dam and Hoover was never invited to be part of any festivities. Of course, by that time Mr. Roosevelt was running for reelection against Republican nominee Alf Landon of Kansas.
But FDR was really running against Hoover one more time.
The other day, during that good-for-nothing White House meeting on health care, there was a telling exchange between President Obama and Senator John McCain. He told McCain that the campaign was over. He meant their campaign.
The battle against all things George W. Bush, however, still rages. And most likely this will continue through the 2012 campaign. After all, if you can’t run on a record of accomplishment—find a dead horse to beat and hope the people are dumb enough not to notice the abuse and absurdity.
The big question is: Will George W. Bush be as durable a whipping boy as was Herbert Hoover—or better yet—is Barack Obama as arrogant, cynically petty, or politically cunning as was Franklin D. Roosevelt?
“The battle against all things George W. Bush, however, still rages. The big question is: Will George W. Bush be as durable a whipping boy as was Herbert Hoover…”
Or Bill Clinton, against whom the G.W. Bush administration blamed everything from 9/11 to the financial collapse in the fall of ’08. And pretty much everything else that went wrong in between.
The point isn’t to be partisan, but to suggest that blaming your predecessor is a bi-partisan past-time. See also: Clinton blaming the Bush-Reagan years, Reagan scapegoating Carter and the 60′s, Carter blaming Ford and Nixon, etc.
Mr. Stokes, I had not realized until today that the essays you post here are the same ones you post also at a blog you have at a conservative advocacy forum, Townhall.com.
I didn’t know that. If I had, I would not have posted comments under your essays. (I know that David Emig, whom I have come to know here, might say, “oh, go ahead,” but that is not possible for me to do. Perhaps my virtual friend John Taylor, founder of the TNN blog, might say the same. But as much as I consider what John says, even he could not persuade me on this.) You may not take it as a compliment that I used to comment here, given the fact that my outlook differs from yours (I’m an Independent and someone who takes a “people person,” humanizing view of presidents of both parties). But I had thought it was ok to do so.
I had clicked on your bio here. I knew you were not an historian or political scientist, as a result, but thought you were an ordinary private citizen, a pastor of a church in Northern Virginia who is a history buff who likes to read about presidents. Had I known you were writing these essays for Townhall rather than for TNN, I wouldn’t have chatted here under your essays. Would you consider adding that to your TNN bio so people will be aware of that?
Please keep in mind that I worked for 14 years at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration and have seen people I know and respect severe;u affected by actions taken by Nixon’s supporters and by conservative media outlets. If you have read Seymour Hersh’s piece on the Kutler litigation, you know what happened to me and my colleagues, including one of my former supervisors. However, there is more.
You may not know about what happened to a highly respected archivist who headed NARA in the mid-1990s. David Corn wrote in the Nation on April 4, 1994 that “The archives have been neck-deep in controversy lately. In the final days of George Bush, archivist Don Wilson signed a questionable agreement granting Bush exclusive control of all computer records of his presidency; soon after, Wilson took a high-paid job as executive director of the Bush presidential library center. . . Archives officials, yielding to the arguments of lawyers for Richard Nixon, have sat on Watergate records for twenty years. Most important, the National Archives generally has failed to seek electronic records of the federal government and to protect them aggressively. It also has been besieged by management problems and internal rifts, some boiling over onto the pages of the right-wing Washington Times, which has carried blistering articles on acting archivist Trudy Peterson. She is well regarded by leading historians and archivists but has peeved the right. . . ”
Corn mentioned three candidates for the then open U.S. Archivist position (Dr. Peterson was Acting Archivist). He wrote that “Leading academic advocates prefer Peterson, but her chances are weak because of her offenses against conservatives.”
The Washington Times left open ended its reporting and editorial attacks on Dr. Peterson and what it called “liberal activists” and never told its readers about an Inspector General report which examined and explained the internal problems. (NARA OIG Report 94-05, 9/2/94). As a friend of Dr. Peterson’s and as someone who had dealt with presidential records issues, I had some contact with the NARA I.G. on the matter, I should mention. I’m mentioned my position although not by name in a sentence in the I.G. report. Perhaps the outcome of the I.G. investigation did not fit the Washington Times’s narrative. However, it changed forever the way I view conservative leaning media outlets. Although you have no connection to the WT and the events of 1994, that you blog at Townhall is sufficient for me to back away from your essays here.
Again, please consider adding a note to your bio explaining that you blog for Towhall and TNN simultaneously and that some of the same essays appear in both places. I very much wish I would have known that.
Todd, you’re right that politics involves pointing out a predecessor’s mistakes. If you’re interested in a good, in-depth look at the policy and political side of Richard Nixon, I recommend H. R. “Bob” Haldeman’s The Haldeman Diaries. Absent release of all the disclosable portions of the Nixon tapes with which I once worked as a NARA employee, the book provides the best glimpses of the calculations that can go into these things. As the released tapes and meeting notes show, Bob Haldeman’s diary is a pretty faithful rendering of what happened. I met Bob Haldeman in 1987 and liked him very much.
PS Reader comments posted here do not carry Eastern Standard Time timestamps. Consequently, I need to point out that the message posted by me which shows as “5:11 pm” was posted by me from home at 7:11 pm EST. I did not post it from work using employer provided equipment.
Most people who read the TNN have no idea what some of us federal archivists who have worked with presidential records, specifically Nixon’s, have gone through. In the 1990s, after I had left NARA’[s employ, I was the subject of a very minor I.G. inquiry because I had gone out to the National Archives to look at Nixon’s released records. I formerly had worked at the NARA Nixon Presidential Project as a federal archivist. I was doing research in Nixon’s records to gather information on disclosure standards, which had been a subject of contention in the Kutler Nixon tapes litigation. Someone who seemingly didn’t want me researching those issues complained to NARA’s I.G. that I had been there during a workday. I easily proved that my research was done on personal time, not on my employer’s time. I had signed for a vacation day and my time and attendance records showed that.
This was a separate issue from the one described in the Inspector General report about Dr. Peterson. That dealt with matters occurring at NARA after I had left its employ. I was a peripheral player in that, and simply am mentioned as a “former employee” whose name had come up in passing.
Again, for the record, if anyone in the conservative media decides to examine what I wrote here while I thought it was ok to do so, please keep in mind the times do not reflect Eastern Standard Time. To the extent I used to post under Mr. Stokes’s essays, it was from home on personal time. Occasionally I used my Smartphone to post on TNN while out to lunch. Oh, and for the record, I took an extended vacation in December 2009 as well as in December 2008, being home nearly the entire month, as Christmas is my favorite time of year.
Best I can do to try to immunize myself.
Posted at 8:4o Eastern Standard Time
FOR my friend “Rev-STOKES” = TWO OBSERVASTIONS in passing.
# 1 = On BUSH bashing, recommend reading “A CHARGE KEPT = The Record of the Bush Presidency, 2001 – 2009″ – edited by Marc A. Thiessen [published by Morgan - James Publishers - n/d].
# 2 = ONE ‘POTENTIAL RESOLUTION AVENUE’ to the un-acceptable status quo == Encourage past presidents and staffs , as I have to Messers “W” Bush and R. Cheney to “DECLASSIFY as many of their records and recollections in offices” as quickly as possible, “without revealing methods or sources” —
— AND NOT[!!] ALLOW the N.A.R.A. archivists — whose motives have been long-ago & clearly revealed as their own ‘long-term job security’ — to control timing on release of public papers, despite a current N.A.R.A. monopoly mandated by U. S. public law!!!.
“The FIRST DRAFT of HISTORY” – historically by the print media – has just proven un-reliable over time!
WE NEED THE RECOLLECTIONS of those who served in high office – WITH THEIR ORAL HISTOIRES for a near-term accurate accounting, IMHO!
Mr. Phillips, like all past Presidents and Vice Presidents, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney now are private citizens. They have no more declassification authority than does Chelsea Clinton or Sasha Obama. Proper handling of classified material resides in the hands of present government officials. Look at it this way. If you once worked at Ford as a corporate lawyer, and then went to work at Toyota in the same role, could you come in to Ford and look at internal documents and release them to consumers? Of course not. Your responsibilities and authorities regarding Ford terminated when you left its employ.
Mr. PHILLIPS: I don’t imagine that oral-histories would be the most accurate source of information. Many wish to peruse and/or advance their personal or political agendas. Other perspectives and documents help the historian, and ultimately the American people through that.
Since this is the last time I can comment under one of Mr. Stokes’s essays, let me take the opportunity to let Mr. Phillips know that far from being focused on “job security,” NARA’s archivists have sacrificed their own careers in order to ensure that regulations are followed and materials are open. Mr. Phillips, please consider the following, which appeared in The New Yorker on December 14, 1992. These are not the actions of self-involved people, rather ones who take extremely seriously the notion of the public trust no matter what side one falls on in the internal dispute over how to comply with 36 CFR 1275:
“The [NARA Nixon tapes] group was led by Frederick J. Graboske, an intense and energetic native of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania., who had joined the National Archives in January of 1976. He and his colleagues were quiet and sturdy workers who understood that their political ideology must not interfere with their professional responsibilities. Graboske had voted for Nixon in 1968 and 1972 but had grown skeptical of his performance during Watergate. Maarja Krusten, who by all accounts was one of the most dedicated and talented members of the group, had been an enthusiastic volunteer in Nixon’s 1968 Presidential campaign, and was until she put in some years Iistening to the tape recordings, at least, a Nixon admirer. She had worked on the staff of Senator Howard H. Baker, Jr., of Tennessee, a Republican. She was eventually put in charge of training archivists assigned to the Nixon-tape project. The Graboske group had a strong sense of mission and spirit. “I enjoyed it,” Paul A Schmidt, of Salt Lake City . . . recalled.
. . .Nixon and his attorneys did object [to the proposed release of Watergate tapes], in mid-1989, and they registered their objections by going directly to one of [then NARA Presidential Libraries chief John] Fawcett’s deputies with a list of seventy deletions they required from the tapes to be released, none of them Watergater elated. It was the same issue that had been haunting the processing of the former President’s documents since 1977.
Nixon claimed that the archivists were violating his privacy. The archivists . . . feared that management was prepared once again to cave in, as it had caved in to the Justice Department’s intervention in 1985. Fred Graboske, unfortunately, was no longer around to lead the protests: after eleven years on the job, he had moved on to an important new archival assignment, in the White House. The fight was waged by Maarja Krusten and Paul Schmidt; Joan Howard, then the Archives’ leading expert on the Nixon papers, joined them.
. . . Krusten, Schmidt, and Howard, among others, met in late August of 1989 with John Fawcett and protested Nixon’s intervention. . .The handling of the seventy contested items was nothing more than a normal dispute among archivists, Fawcett said, and therefore, instead of compelling Nixon to file a formal objection, as the guidelines stipulated, he had decided to refer them to a panel of senior archivists for review. [NOTE: According to NARA's regulations, a senior archival panel has no jurisdiction over external claims against release of Nixon's records. Those are supposed to be handled by a higher level Presidential Materials Review Board -- which includes NARA office heads and one outside historian. A senior archival panel only can advise on disputes or questions raised among archivists.]
If that panel agreed with Fawcett, the offending passages would be removed, and would be reported on the official withdrawal sheet as independent archival objections. Scholars and journalists listening to the tapes would believe that the deleted items had been removed by the Archives for any of a variety of substantive reasons, including national security and personal privacy. Fawcett explained to his colleagues that he was seeking to handle the tapes in a manner that was ‘fair’ to Nixon.
The Nixon-tape archivists felt betrayed. They knew that the seventy contested items had reached Fawcett not because of a legitimate archival dispute from their peers but because Nixon’s attorneys had taken them to him. If Nixon wanted to object to the processing of the seventy items on privacy grounds, his only recourse was to file a complaint with the Presidential Materials Review Board and take his chances, like everybody else. The odds of success there were very much against Nixon, the archivists believed, because all sixty hours of the White House tapes provided in the Watergate case had been screened for privacy before court use by Judge John J. Sirica, of the United States District Court in Washington – the Watergate judge – and also by Sirica’s law clerks; another goal had been to insure that the tapes were responsive to the Special Prosecutor’s subpoena.
. . . Maarja Krusten later testified, in a deposition, that she had been appalled at Fawcett’s insistence at the meeting that the Nixon deletions be recorded as archival actions. She quoted Fawcett as saying that ‘he did not understand why we were so concerned” about how the deletions got recorded, “because the end result would be that [the tape] would be withdrawn from researcher use.’ At that point, she testified, Paul Schmidt responded that he did not ‘feel comfortable lying to researchers’ and that he ‘objected to being asked to do something that was unethical, improper, and possibly illegal.’ Krusten had already applied for another job: ‘I did not like where the project was headed. . .. The tapes were completed in 1987 and no further action was taken toward opening any of them. . . . That was demoralizing to the staff who had spent ten years working on them.’
. . . [By 1991] Graboske and Krusten had moved on to other jobs, and Joan Howard had been demoted and banished to a regional archives center in Denver. The original members of the Nixon-tape project who had stayed on were convinced that Howard was being punished for volunteering to join in the protest to Fawcett.”
[END EXTRACT]
Source: Seymour M. Hersh, “Nixon’s Last Coverup: The Tapes He Wants the Archives to Suppress,” New Yorker, December 14, 1992.
Some stereotypes simply do not fit although politics often depends on people reaching for myths such as fed bashing. Mr. Phillips, please consider also this account by Maarja Krusten of the career of her late twin sister, who had worked as a supervisory archivist and team leader in NARA’s records declassification divisioon. NARA’s staff are not lazy, selfish, faceless bureaucrats. Some of them continue to work for the government, striving to ensure the declassification of records and winning awards for their often painful, a mere two months before death, even in the face of a diagnosis of Stage IV cancer. Consider this account written a few years ago:
“Notice of Death of National Archives’ employee. Eva Krusten, archivist, died on December 16, 2002 at the age of 51, after a valiant 18-month battle with cancer. She worked as an archivist, supervisor, and team leader at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) from 1983 until her death. Ms. Krusten was a senior archivist in NARA’s Initial Processing and Declassification Division, where she specialized in screening State Department records. Most of her career was spent in reviewing U.S. government records for declassification. She also worked for a time on processing Freedom of Information requests at NARA. . . .
Ms. Krusten’s archival expertise, institutional memory, people skills and
patience stood her in good stead as she trained many newly hired government archivists in records declassification review. She also worked closely with other federal agencies’ employees and contractors on declassification issues, winning praise for her professional expertise, amiability and helpfulness. Eva was diagnosed with malignant melanoma in July 2001 but continued to go to work full time for many months thereafter. She was unable to go to her office at the National Archives in College Park after she began radiation, followed
by chemotherapy, during the spring and summer of 2002. Through December 2002, when her health permitted, she continued to work for the Declassification Division from home.
Ms. Krusten received a NARA award in October 2002 for her contributions to a declassification work process committee. During her last days, many colleagues sent notes of gratitude for her unselfish willingness to help so many people on the road to career success at NARA. Eva Krusten was my twin sister. In a letter sent to her family after her death, John Carlin, Archivist of the United States, noted that Ms. Krusten “was considered as committed a NARA employee as can be found, and gave guidance and assistance to anyone who needed it.” Eva Krusten’s news obituary in the Washington Post
is available at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15303-2002Dec19.html
To the extent it is relevant, please Eva Krusten was a lifelong Republican. Unlike her sister, who became an Independent in 1990, she never voted for anyone but a Republican in a federal, state, or local election. Maarja Krusten testified in 1992 about internal disputes at the National Archives as follows, “Shortly after the meeting [with Mr. Fawcett] took place, [my supervisor] and I had a conversation in which [he] told me that various options were being considered, and I, again, told him I hoped we would follow the regulations, that I was a life-long Republican–whatever relevance that may hve, but I found it necessarty to inform him of that–but that I was very distressed to act outside the regulations.”
[Civ. A. 92-662-NHJ, Kutler v. Wilson, September 22, 1992, Krusten dep., 99]
NARA’s archivists often work with a larger goal in mind yet they actually can be protective of former Presidents such as Nixon in a broader sense. The umbrella of regulatory conformance and integrity is large enough to shelter former President’s as well as ordinary civil servants. Maarja Krusten testified under oath in 1992 that after the 1989 meeting, in talking to colleagues at the Nixon Project, “I also expressed an opinion that we weren’t serving the former president very well, and that’s based on the fact that I had worked on Mr. Nixon’s ‘68 campaign and was known amongst staff members as someone who had supported him in his policies and had some personal sympathy for him. I felt that the worst thing that could happen to him would be to be accused of covering up the cover-up, and that we should protect him as well as ourselves and act in conformance with our regulations.”
It simply is not true that NARA’s archivists look out for themselves alone. Even when it has the potential to harm their own careers, they strive to do what the laws require.
.
I’ve avoided getting into all that but see no other way to get this point across. What have I got to lose?
Mr. Stokes, here is how I found out that you write for Townhall. I’ve been trying to figure out recently what is the mission of The New Nixon site. I first discovered the site late, after it had been up already for half a year. I never read the earliest postings here. Yesterday, I went back to the February 2008 archived postings on TNN and read what John Taylor, the founder of the blog, wrote at
http://thenewnixon.org/2008/02/18/message-from-the-executive-director/
Yours was one of the first posted comments and you mentioned having a blog at a conservative advoacy site, Towhall in your comment I then looked at Townhall yesterday and discovered that the essays you post here are posted there, as well. Had I know that, I never would have engaged you here. It’s too late now. As much as I, like any human being, would prefer not be punished or face actions I fear might be based on retribution for lack of political purity, if some conservatives associated with other sites are angry at me for posting under a Townhall blogger’s essays here, I’ll have to live with that.
John Taylor wrote in his opening post for the TNN that “those who participate in the dialogue on this New Nixon blog will themselves be part of creating the next new Nixon, the nuanced new Nixon — the Nixon who will live for generations to come as an architect of peace, who strove in times of controversy and war and peace to find for his country a better place in the world and for the United States to be a better example to the world.” I didn’t realize that he had said that. I came to the blog much as an anthropologist would, seeking to understand the people associated with the Foundation with which my former employer, NARA, must work.
John Taylor once had called me and my fellow archiviss “junior prosecutors.” But when I showed up at TNN, he welcomed me here and said I could comment. We learned from each other. Over time, John and I became mutual friends. Indeed, I came to admire him. To some extent, I think we both forgave the other for things said in previous verbal battles, at least I did. There was a pay-off for the Foundation in my ability to forgive, as I wrote in a letter published in December 2008 in the Los Angeles Times to defend it. Here is the text, copied from my outgoing email box – the LAT published it without change under the title, “Nixon sneering,” as it referred to an article which had sneered at the Nixon Foundation:
“As an archivist, I once faced fire from Richard Nixon’s lawyers, and I fired right back. Yet even I am troubled by sneers at the Nixon foundation.
Starting with the first one in 1941, all presidential libraries, not just Nixon’s, have had federal and private-sector components. Government archivists work with presidents and their families to open records. Archivists also work on exhibits funded in part by presidential foundations. Time usually smooth[e]s the rocky path the partners sometimes navigate initially.
The federal Nixon Library opened in 2007, but tough battles about Nixon’s records actually lessened over time after he died in 1994. I have no problems with what federal archivists and Nixon’s estate (through his foundation) have released about Watergate and other issues since 1996.
However, given the library’s unique situation, the public needs greater procedural transparency from the National Archives and the foundation — as well as more thoughtful reporting.
Maarja Krusten
Arlington, Va.
The writer is a former Nixon tapes archivist with the National Archives”
I would have been more popular with some of my fellow historians, if I would have decried the fact that Nixon’s family and Foundation by custom or regulation work with the National Archives. Many historians would prefer that the families and Foundations be out of the picture altogether. But I called as I saw it – then. Engaging with John Taylor at TNN had convinced me that the Foundation deserved my speaking up for it. My letter lead to this exchange here at TNN with John Taylor:
“John H. Taylor on December 13th, 2008 3:50 pm
It was one thing to see your letter on my screen, but I happened to see a paper paper this afternoon as I wandered through my old seminary’s library, reminding myself how it smelled (bet you know how that goes). Very exciting to see it in print. Our thanks, MK!
As for transparency on the Foundation side, when Tim and I set procedures in place for the processing of Foundation-owned files, we had an exchange of documents, or e-mails, or something. I’d be delighted to have it released. As for the Presidential collections, my guess is that our pattern of non-objection could be easily documented, should a reporter or historian ever set out to do so.
Thanks again. Reading your letter was an unexpectedly moving experience.
Maarja Krusten on December 14th, 2008 7:46 am
You’re welcome. Kind of a “Nixon goes to China” thing. Having once recipient of some “slings and arrows” (as one of the generation of archivists who grappled with RN’s lawyers, I’m uniquely positioned to say, “hey, wait a minute” now. And, of course, I know what’s in many of the records so I can judge how present releases compare with what my generation of archivists once marked for opening. If *I* say openings have worked much as they should have — in terms of outcomes — it *means* something.”
Since then, my sense of optimism that NARA and the Nixon Foundation can reach a modus vivendi and a proper modus operandi has waxed and waned. Right now, it is on the low side. That is in part because John is gone and there is no one here who is anything like him in terms of the way he worked with Richard Nixon, once dealt with the National Archives, and learned about NARA and evolved. Sometimes I read your essays, sometimes I don’t. I often was baffled what your purpose was, as I kept trying to figure out where your writing fit in among those directly associated with the Nixon Foundation. Now that I know you are a Townhall blogger who posts the same essays in both places, I’ll read them at Townhall so I can see how the readers there react in the comment boxes. I’ll learn more about conservatism that way. Of course, I won’t post there, I’ll only lurk. But I very much would like to know, what led you to look for an additional site at which to post your Townhall essays? What has been your goal and purpose? Why have you posted the same essays at both sites? Did you ever consider crafting different ones for the two sites?
Were you aware of the extent to which NARA’s employees, including those who voted straight Republican during their NARA careers, such as I, have faced adversity and attacks from conservative media outlets? Did you know about the perceived punishment of the Supervisory Archivist who was transferred out of her job after the 1989 meeting, the fleeing of staff from the Nixon Project in the last years of the George H. W. Bush administration, and so forth? Did you know about the document production oversights and the problems with gaps in the NARA responses to interrogatories in Kutler, as filed by the Bush DOJ in the summer of 1992? And how the facts not covered in the interrogatory responses emerged with extreme difficulty as witnesses were placed under oath? (I had to face Nixon’s lawyers and state under oath, when they asked why we were troubled by some of what we felt we were being asked to do with Watergate tapes, “As far as I know, no federal employee likes to lie.”)
All of that explains the baggage that the Nixon Presidential Library trails, unfortunately. For my part, I wouldn’t trade any of my federal experiences for anything. Working as a Nixon tapes archivist was my dream job, one I never wanted to give up. I left, but my heart remains forever at NARA. At first it was shocking and painful to decide to look for a new job, but I’ve come to place what happened to my colleagues and to me in historical context. I understand and accept that my generation of federal archivists were players in a difficult transition from private to public control of presidential records. (I’ve sought to sensitize my fellow historians to why seizure of his records must have been painful, even shocking for Richard Nixon to face.) I accept that if the two sides couldn’t work things out, there had to be sacrificial lambs. I’m at peace with that now, although it took me a long time to get there. What John Taylor did here at TNN helped mitigate some of that for me. John seems to be to be an incredibly strong, brave, wonderful man, God Bless him. What the rest of you do is up to you.
I do appreciate your not deleting these comments, as John said at the start up of the blog, the dialogue on TNN will be part of the record of The New Nixon.
The Republicans and other conservatives want us to participate in the same collective amnesia that they do. It would help their cause greatly if we as Americans can just forget that period between the 20th of January 2001, through noon on the 20th of January 2009. You know, when George W. Bush was President of the United States, and the Republican Party was in control of Congress.
After all, it was this leadership team that turned a 200 million dollars surplus into a 1.3 billion dollars deficit. (Didn’t VP Cheney say, “Deficits don’t matter.” The Republicans in power sure acted like they didn’t. Where were the Tea-Partiers then?) This is the leadership duo that started two wars, without the means to pay for them. Passed two tax cuts for the upper class, via the infamous and “undemocratic” reconciliation process; while increasing the deficit. An administration that disregarded a memo stating “Bin Laden Determined to Attack U.S.,” one month before 9/11. The Republicans have their typical bout of amnesia about the current “War on Terror,” in the form of more successful drone attacks against Al-Quida by this administration than the previous administration. And finally, and most recently, the unconditional love in the form of a bank bailout without accountability.
One of the knocks that the Republicans have (other that they aren’t in control right now), is that President Obama hasn’t fixed all of the problems fast enough! The deficit is still there, and unemployment is still 10%.
Didn’t this administration promise that unemployment wouldn’t get past 10%? Ummm…. Didn’t Wolfowitz say in 2003 that the War in Iraq could end in months, and that “we are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.” To steal from the former Alaskan Governor, “How did that turn out for ya?” “Promises, promises, promises.” As accurate today as when Burt Bacharach wrote the song. Guess they are different according to who makes the promise, or just perhaps the situation on the ground.
Oh….and by the way, wasn’t Hoover a Republican??
Oh…and one more thing. Explaining the true record of those eight years isn’t kicking a dead horse, or “abuse and absurdity.” It’s just the facts.
David, since you work in law, you know how oral history fits in among documentation. Stephen Haycok, a professor of history at the University of Alaska (Anchorage) wrote an interesting essay about this in the Anchorage Daily News on December 6, 2002. He discussed differing memories of the construction of the Alaska pipeline. (Vice President Agnew broke a tie on a key vote). Dr. Haycock explained discrepancies in memory:
“Repeated studies have demonstrated that human memory is constructed, not reproduced. In his classic “Remembering” (1932), psychologist Frederick C. Bartlett showed that in each construction of memory, people reshape, omit, distort, combine and reorganize details from the past to fit their changing notion of the world, of who they are and who their audience is. For this reason, neither historians nor attorneys put much faith in unaided human memory. For reliability, memory has to be corroborated by documentary evidence. The documents may not always be “true,” but unlike memory, they stay the same unless they’ve been altered, which is why in court extraordinary measures are taken to verify the authenticity, originality and unaltered character of the documents.
A common method of searching for truth in legal proceedings is to introduce the documents, then question the witness. Historians use a similar method, checking the assertions of memoirists against the rest of the documentary record, including other writers’ assertions, official letters, memos and orders and the like.”
You know this from your work, as I from mine. When I’ve done oral history interviews, I’ve usually brought some documents with me and asked subjects to comment on them. It works much better than just asking “what do you remember?”
As always, grateful for your perspective, given your line of work in the law.
And that is what we do with depositions. There are books of depo exhibits, and some of them become trial exhibits. Documents prove facts in my business. So control of documents is critical in any litigation, large or small.
For me anyway, my work on document control in a legal environment, and historical documents work hand and hand. Actually one feeds off the other. I’m unafraid of large document productions, because I’m unafraid of 42 million documents. It is a mentality for me.
Yes, you’re right, one feeds off of the other. I too am unfraid of 42 million documents. It’s the creators of records and those with a stake in how a story is told who struggle with documentation. I had several related goals for coming to TNN. One of them was to see whether a rapprochement between the two was yet possible.
In Nixon: A Life, Jonathan Aitken quoted Nixon as then writing in his diary that he must “live through the agony of the balance of the tapes whatever they are; fight over the papers.” John Ehrlichman wrote in 1986 that Henry Kissinger reportedly told him, “You know you and I are going to look pretty stupid when those tapes are all out.” I think it was a tremendous shock for people whose words were recorded on Nixon’s tapes to know that they would be released to the public over time, except when national security or privacy prevented release.
When is it appropriate to start opening material? How should it be done? The members of the public are of little help here, as they tend to lobby to have the records of the opposing party’s president thrown open but find excuses for why those of a man for whom they voted should not. That doesn’t help the process, it impedes it. But some people do help. I noted during the Haldeman thread that Bob Haldeman did us at NARA a huge favor by publishing his diary. In 1987, NARA released for public research a number of documents from H. R. Haldeman’s White House files. Nixon had the right to file claims against release.
For the period from mid-November 1972 through December 20, 1972, for which Nixon’s agents blocked release of an entire folder of Haldeman’s meeting notes, Haldeman’s diary indicated that Nixon discussed with his chief of staff a number of topics of historical interest, including government reorganization, Vietnam, and Watergate. Based on my comparison of the withdrawal sheets filed on behalf of Nixon with Haldeman’s published diary, in 1994 I filed a petition with NARA under 36 CFR §1275.56. I argued that substantial portions of the “H notes” were being improperly withheld from public release. I asked NARA to reject Nixon’s objections to release of materials dealing with disclosable governmental matters and to open such classes of materials in the White House Special Files to the public.
After Nixon died in 1994, NARA released a number of the documents its staff had tried to open in 1987. (This is why the issue of disclosure standards was so very important in the Kutler litigation in which I testified in 1992.) Of the items Nixon’s agents sought to remove from government custody, the National Archives retained 33,199 documents and returned to the Nixon estate 8,992 documents. Of the retained documents, NARA opened to the public 28,035 documents. Among them was a note from November 18, 1972 about efforts to end the Vietnam war, in which Haldeman wrote, “”K having probs. w/ Thieu – P. told him to go ahead – get best deal let Thieu paddle his own canoe.” Nixon had claimed the items in the folder of notes from November 17 through December 20, 1972 were personal and privileged. He asked that personal material be returned to him.
Had Nixon succeeded, Haldeman’s note about Thieu would have remained unseen by the public. That a similar passage occurred in the diary Haldeman published in 1994 enabled me to push NARA to reject Nixon’s claim and to open it. Nixon died right before Haldeman’s diary was published. Would NARA have opened the note about Thieu in the blocked file, if he still were alive? I’ll never know. But I do know I did the right thing in scouring the diaries and scouring the withdrawal sheets in the Nixon files which indicated what Nixon had blocked us at NARA from releasing and filing a petition for improper withholding. Some of my colleagues at NARA came to refer to me as a “legend” for fighting on their behalf. But that doesn’t stop me from thinking about why what is records can be so scary for presidents and their associates and how to make the process work better for all the stakeholders. It might have been better just to seal all of Nixon’s for 25 years, I don’t know. (And to do the same for those of other presidents, regardless of party.) I wish all the best to the archivists who work at the libraries of Nixon’s successors, including Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II.
Thank you for that insight. I tend to agree with the current law, which I believe is 10 years after the Presidency. I think this was Obama’s first executive order. Twenty five years is too long. You release the documents and allow the historical chips fall where they may.
The Obama E.O. essentially takes NARA back to the Reagan E.O., although not precisely. The anomaly was the Bush E.O., which extended the right to claim privilege to a President’s heirs (who didn’t hold office). The PRA states that members of the public can file FOIA requests for presidential records 5 years after a president leaves office. Whether they are released in part or in full depends on the application of exemptions, which change after 12 years (the one covering unc lassified deliberative information disappears at that point). Classified can be protected beyound 12 years, as can certain types of private information (social security numbers, certain information in job applications, medical and certain financial information, etc.) I tend to be wary of what members of the public say about any of this, as most argue from the viewpoint of the guy for whom they voted and against the one they opposed. There aren’t a lot of “do what the law says” types out there. You’re one of them as you are immersed in a legal culture. I appreciate that.
Especially Presidential history fall into catagories; doesn’t it? Immediately after the President leaves, the memoirs come out. For example, GWBs is coming out in November and Cheney’s will come out next year. Hopefully the GWB library, or something along those lines; is working on oral histories of those who won’t write memoirs. Then the first biographies based on this limited information and scholarship will come out. Upon the death of the subject president will produce the tribute biography…which after a time will be responded to, and reinterpreted by the revisionist biographers. Only until the documents are released, the three dimensional viewpoint and the true history can be told.
I think the current law is fair to all interested parties. I don’t get nor appreciate those like Chief Justice Burger who close their files for 50 years. I understand of course, his papers have nothing to do with the presidential archival law.
Thank you for your battles on behalf of history. Still I would be fascinated if someone from the Foundation could give us the other side…especially the justification to close the files for 25 years — in spite of Haldeman’s hope that they be released sooner.
It’s worth keeping in mind that the people associated with the Foundation now were not the ones making the initial decisions on how to respond to the passage of the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act in December 1974. But I can tell you more about what’s on the record on this issue. When Congress considered regulations for the Nixon records act, Lyle W. Denniston testified on behalf of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. He explained in 1975 that “The experience in the [donor-restricted] Presidential Libraries Act has suggested. . . that when the Archivist of the United States, however self-assured . . . is confronted with the eminence of a former President (or . . . heirs of a former President) . . . he shies away from anything like a confrontation.”
Nixon’s lawyers argued that his records should be treated like those of other
Presidents. But the record hardly was reassuring. Theodore White noted in his book, Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon, that Nixon formed a library committee soon after he took office in 1969. The committee, which included Ross Perot and Taft Schreiber, visited a number of archival repositories.
“‘One thing came through loud and clear,’ said Schreiber, ‘that, starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt, every President had emptied his archives and left his files empty.’” That is an exaggeration — over time, the pre-Watergate Presidential Libraries have released many useful materials. But the road to public disclosure often was rough.
Perot and Schreiber flew down to Texas to meet with former President Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ told them he wanted to get a paper shredder for his Library.
White wrote that LBJ’s attitude caused problems for “the chief archivist at the Johnson Library, who confessed that he did not really enjoy the task of expurgating the historical record that had been left in his care. Historians, observed the librarian, don’t like to work with material that is salted.”
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Nixon’s lawyers sought to delay disclosure. From the start there were clues that they would focus on “personal privacy.” In 1981 the Los Angeles Times reported that Mr. Nixon’s lawyer argued during the litigation over the PRMPA that all of Mr. Nixon’s conversations, without exception, should be kept private. “If he elects to be profane with an adviser, solicitous of a particular congressman or contemptuous of a political adversary, he can do so without being inhibited by the specter of the prying eye or uninvited ear,” Nixon’s lawyer claimed.
During the 1970s, Mr. Nixon’s lawyers argued that the mere review of his records by government archivists would “chill expression because he [Mr. Nixon] will be ‘saddled’ with prior positions communicated in private, leaving him unable to take inconsistent positions in the future.” They objected to public access screening by the Archives because their client’s “most private thoughts and communications, both written and spoken, will be exposed to and reviewed by a host of persons whom he does not know and did not select, and in whom he has no reason to place his confidence. This group will decide what is personal . . . and what is historical, to be opened for public review.”
When the Supreme Court upheld the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act in 1977, “lawyers for Nixon were encouraged by the possibility of developing the idea of a right of political privacy. ‘Many people don’t realize,’ one of the lawyers said hopefully, ‘that 99 percent of what a President does is political.’” (Washington Star, June 29, 1977). This presaged the later effort by filing claims with NARA to recover by as “personal” documents and tapes dealing with Vietnam, Watergate, and other governmental matters.
Nixon’s lawyers argued that NARA should consider not releasing non-Watergate materials until they were 25 years old or until after Nixon’s death. When the court rejected that argument, Nixon’s advocates looked to the Kennedy Library. In 1985, Nixon’s lawyers met with representatives of the Reagan Justice Department. They discussed how the Kennedy Presidential Library was releasing only “the most favorable” items and how unfairly they believed Nixon was being treated, by comparison. The lawyers discussed with DOJ the possibility of a Nixon “veto” over tape releases. The New York Times provided a glimpse into backroom bargaining on December 2, 1986, when it described demands by Nixon’s attorney for a “selective veto until 1999” over National Archives’ tapes releases.
The Department of Justice then tried to force NARA to accept without discretion privilege claims against disclosure, only to be stopped by a court decision (Public Citizen v. Burke, 655 F. Supp. 318 (DDC 1987)). The battles then moved inside, as some of my postings above showed. In 1987, Nixon filed claims against the release of documents from the White House Special Files, which included Haldeman’s “H notes.” It was while we at NARA were waiting to see how our agency’s Presidential Materials Review Board ruled on those claims that the internal dispute over how to handle deletions from the Watergate Special Prosecutor tapes occurred. One reason my colleagues and I argued for use of the Review Board was to get Nixon’s input into the record, as had been the case with the White House Special Files that NARA opened in 1987. To this day, one still can see the objections Nixon filed in 1987 via the public withdrawal sheets that were interwoven throughout the Haldeman and other Special Files collections that were microfilmed by University Publications during the late 1980s. I thought procedural sunshine served all the stakeholders best. The board’s rulings on those objections were not handed down until 1996, four years after I testified in the Kutler litigation.
I shrugged and thought “tough luck, dude,” when Stanley Kurtz complained during the 2008 presidential campaign about access to Chicago Annenberg Challenge records at the University of Illinois (Chicago) because neither he nor anyone associated with National Review’s The Corner had said a peep about battles to open Nixon’s records. Or expressed concern about the Bush executive order. Conversely, outsiders who complained about Bush’s E.O. or the Nixon battles tended to fall silent when the question of access to Democratic presidents’ records came up. My wariness about inconsistency among advocates and the general public explains why I look so carefully at what is posted at TNN to see if authors seem to be writing as partisans or are striving to take an even handed approach to what I mostly see as very complex issues.
It doesn’t look as if I am going to be able to draw you out, Mr. Stokes, on a discussion of what you did or did not know about the baggage surrounding the National Archives and Mr. Nixon’s advocates. I’ll post this to close out the story of what happened. One of the Nixon agents who had looked over what we at NARA sought to release from White House files and who participated in the compilation of objections wrote in a letter to the editor to the New York Times in 1988 that “archives regulations provide for a system of appealing rulings by the archivists. Reasonable people can disagree over these judgments, and the objections of Mr. Nixon’s lawyers typically involve disputes about whether release of specific documents would violate a person’s privacy or whether certain materials contain personal political communications not subject to release under archival regulations.” Keep in mind, this included documents about Nixon’s directive to identify what he referred to as a “Jewish cabal” at the Bureau of Labor Statistics; the comment that South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu would have to “paddle his own canoe” as Nixon sought to wind down the war, and so forth. (Those items later were released by NARA after it rejected claims against release of such classes of information.) Unfortunately, the reasonable people can disagree, let’s work this out vibe didn’t prevail.
On September 3, 1987 the Los Angeles Times reported that “R. Stan Mortenson, a Washington lawyer who has represented Nixon and former aides in the files controversy, insisted that Nixon is acting no differently from Eisenhower and former Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy and Harry S. Truman.
‘They were very solicitous of the confidentiality of communications among their aides and themselves, and Nixon’s withdrawals (of papers) are in keeping with their practices,’ Mortenson said. ‘Nixon has been very circumspect. . . . I can raise your hair on end with what the Archives thinks does not infringe privacy and should be released.’”
By the time Professor Stanley Kutler filed his lawsuit for access to the Nixon tapes (NARA was the defendant, Nixon an intervenor), things had heated up even more. As Sy Hersh reported in December 1992, “At times, Graboske’s three days of testimony turned ugly, with Stan Mortenson, the attorney for Nixon, in effect putting Graboske on trial by repeatedly asking questions implying that he was biased against Nixon.” Graboske did not deserve that nor did I or any of the colleagues who testified about his handling as our boss of his stewardship obligations with the Nixon tapes. Although his political views were irrelevant here, Graboske, who had served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam with the First Infantry Division, in fact had voted for Nixon. Nixon’s lawyers would have done better, and would have earned my respect, if they had focused on the professional archival review standards used by NARA rather than looking for “anti-Nixon bias.”
I hope this background information helps explain why, given my take on the need for NARA and the Nixon foundation to work together, I prefer non-partisan discussion of broad topics such as how government works, what goes into the political process, how voters work their way through issues, and so forth. Given my focus, I’ve gotten the most out of essays here by people who actually worked with Nixon, not surprisingly. And given my background, and the challenges my generation of archivists faced, I’m most leery of what seem like purely partisan political perspectives.
OK, over and out.
For those who weighed in “over-much” profusely on my above posted suggestion that Messrs. “W” Bush and R. Cheney DECLASSIFY as much as possible as quickely as possible – without revealing sources or methods … ID DI THIS BEFORE THEY LEFT OFFICE.
I RECOGNIZED that “The N.A.R.A. Monopoly” over public documents was early on recognized by Dr. HENRY A. KISSINGER, himself – who donated ALL HIS White House and State Department papers for The Library of COngress – rather than to N.A.R.A. for good reason, since Dr. Kissinger is an historian of some note in a “prior life”!
N.A.R.A. rebelled at this independent action – and lobbied Congress to pass legislation to ensure their long-term monopoly on public records — even those from active uniformed military service in wartime.
PERHAPS HENRY could be encouraged to comment on this at The Nixon Center even in late March?
Furhter, my well-founded criktiques of N.A.R.A.monopoly is based on personal experience = On-line : The N.A.R.A. in St. Louis military records repository advertising only “a few weeks” needed.
After four (4!) months and count-less un-answered follow-ups — to which I received no replies — THEN invoking intervention of a veterans service group, also without a response from N.A.R.A. == “I WENT PUBLIC” with my concerns via the “Sgt. SHAFT” monthly column — for veterans who are having long- term problems with Federal bureaucracies — published in “The Washington Times” of DC!
Within DAYS, I had received my earlier requested records, which had been filed with N.A.R.A. — fully four -and- 1/2 months[!] earlier — with a Ph.D. archivist’s formal apology – in writing – for the needless delays!
N.A.R.A. employees offered “NO REASON[S]” for the protracted THE DELAYS, many times longer than advertised on-line with the original records requests to N.A.R.A. in St. Louis, MO!
* * * * *
During USAF Reserves service, following obligatory active duty during the Vietnam (plus Laos and Cambodia) Wars overseas on Okinawa = I kept my commission active by Professional Military Education (PME) — while working on the first of two master’s degrees — on which my publications, by the System Development Corporation (then in Santa Monica) were based on that first, of two, graduate degree research – while I had been simultaneously employed by that RAND Corporation spin-off under Pentagon contracts.
At time of a “below zone promotion cycle” to field grade officer, I was ‘passed over’ at a time which was late during the Nixon Administration.
CINCNORAD — USAF General Daniel “Chappie” James, Jr. — presented my “distinguished graduate” completion certificate at a NORAD Command Ceremony in Colorado Springs, CO — where I was then still a defense contractor representative on ‘systems exercising and training missions’.
Later searches of USAF Air War College records reflected that the Air War College / Registrar’s Office at Maxwell AFB, Alabama had maliciously tamered with my official records THEN callously altered my two year “distinguished graduate” completion records of the non-resident program = Thereby directly & negatively impacting my ‘pass over’ for promotion!
With assistance of the USAF Air Universtiy’s [AU] Command / Office of the AU Command Inspector General, changes to those records were made — but “too late” to positively reconsider my suitability for promotion to field grade officer in waning days of “The Nixon – Ford Presidential Administrations”!
MY PAPERS on ‘ballistic missile defense policy” – esp. ‘SAFEGUARD BMD’ which achieved Interim Operational Capability [IOC] during the G. R. Ford Administration FULLY COMPLIANT under “The ABM Treaty” (1972) and its “Protocol” (1974) ARE STILL BEING RETAINED and ARCHIVED by the US Department of Commerce’S NATIONAL TECHNICAL INFORMATION CENTER [NTIC].
To clarify — I HAVE NEVER RECEIVED “any royalities” ON those SIX (6) RESEARCH PAPERS which were (1) used by the Nixon Administration’s National Security Council Staff -AND- (2) Nixon Presidential Science Advisor’s Staff; while PRESENTED (3) “AT NO COST TO THE GOVERNMENT” by my Pentagon defense contractor / employer at that time.
THOSE DOCUMENTS were originally presented to what was previously the Pentagon’s Defense Documentation Center [DDC] – evolving into the N.T>I.C. in more recent years.
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