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Annual Reports
The National Archives and Records Administration
Annual Report 1998
This annual report is available
in two formats: HTML and PDF
(900 KB). The HTML text appears
below. Only the PDF version,
however, contains the tables
and charts listed under "Statistical
and Financial Reports."
The PDF files require the free Adobe Acrobat reader.
Adobe also provides free PDF tools for the visually impaired.
Contents
What Is the National Archives
and Records Administration?
How Have We Served the Public?
Message from the Archivist of the United States
Partnering for Public Access
Message from the President of the Foundation for the National Archives
Special Achievements
Safeguarding the Charters of Freedom
Tracing "Nazi Gold"
Opening the Bush Library
Managing Electronic Documents
Finding JFK Assassination Records
Providing Online Records Information
Strategic Planning and Performance Reporting
Statistical and Financial Reports (Available in the
PDF
version only)
Organization Chart
Holdings and Use of NARA
Financial Operations
Trust Fund and Gift Fund
Disposal of Federal Records
NARA Managerial Staff
NARA Facilities
What Is
the National Archives and Records
Administration?
The National Archives
and Records Administration
(NARA) is our national record
keeper. An independent agency
created by statute in 1934,
NARA safeguards records of
all three branches of the Federal
Government. NARA's mission
is to ensure that Federal officials
and the American public have
ready access to essential evidence--records
that document the rights of
citizens, the actions of government
officials, and the national
experience.
NARA carries out this mission through a national network of archives and records
services facilities stretching from Washington to the West Coast, including 10
Presidential libraries documenting administrations of Presidents back to Herbert
Hoover. Additionally, NARA publishes the Federal Register,
administers the Information Security Oversight Office, and makes grants for
historical documentation through the National Historical Publications and
Records Commission.
NARA meets thousands of information needs daily, ensuring access to records on
which the entitlements of citizens, the credibility of government, and the accuracy
of history depend.
How Have
We Served the Public?
What major services did we
in the National Archives and
Records Administration (NARA)
provide the public in 1997-98?
This report highlights six
developments through which
we helped meet particularly
important needs for valuable
records:
- We helped people from all over the world trace what became of "Nazi Gold"--assets looted from victims of the Holocaust;
- We helped scholars and citizens gain access to a special collection of records
shedding light on the assassination of President Kennedy;
- We helped our Federal Government search for solutions to the problems of
managing, preserving, and providing access to computer-created records;
- We enabled researchers, students, and teachers to find out about records in our
holdings through their computers at school, at work, and at home;
- We expanded opportunities for the public to explore history by opening our
10th Presidential library, the George Bush Library and Museum;
- And we took steps to ensure the continued preservation of our nation's Charters
of Freedom--the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and
the Bill of Rights.
In previous years, we have reported on our activities office by office, program by
program, cataloging our accomplishments. But in the spirit of the National Performance Review
and the Government Performance and Results Act, this report is different. It features, in the front,
major examples of services to our customers. And it begins, in a middle section, a report we will
make yearly of where we are with our strategic plan and performance targets.
Are the six featured items above all we have done of significant service? Far from it. We
could list many other achievements, including ongoing activities such as the following:
- We helped thousands of veterans document their entitlements to benefits;
- We helped thousands of individuals trace their families' genealogies;
- We helped thousands of visitors learn history from original documents in
exhibits in our archival facilities and Presidential libraries;
- We helped Federal officials by pulling thousands of records they requested to
meet needs of their agencies and of the public;
- We enabled numerous researchers to find information and illustrations for books,
articles, films, and television documentaries;
- And through our work on records management, records preservation, and records
processing, and through our grants for records work by others, we helped ensure that
future generations of Americans will find the records they will need.
The archives of a nation document the legitimacy of its government, the rights of its
citizens, and their history as an independent people. One of the United Nations' resolutions that
led to the Gulf War was a condemnation of attempts by Iraq "to destroy the civil records
maintained by the legitimate government of Kuwait." In fighting in the Balkans, public records
documenting ethnic cultures and identities have been deliberately destroyed in Bosnia and
Kosovo. And the charges our founders made against the King of England in the Declaration of
Independence included this one: "He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual,
uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records. . . ."
Keeping public records safe and accessible is our goal at NARA.
John W. Carlin
Archivist of the United States
Partnering
for Public Access
The priceless treasures of
American history placed in
the care of the National Archives
and Records Administration
(NARA) are the heritage of
every American. One of NARA's
strategic goals is to increase
public access to its holdings
on a nationwide basis. The
Foundation for the National
Archives was established in
1992 to help the agency meet
this goal. The Foundation creates
public-private partnerships
to support vital activities
that bring NARA's treasures
to the public, such as documentary
exhibits, educational programs,
special events, and facility
enhancements for public education
and enhanced access.
In the period covered by
this report, the Foundation
has supported numerous events
and projects that both showcase
and enhance NARA's wealth
of historical records. Through
the Foundation, as part of
the White House's Millennium
Program, the Pew Charitable
Trusts granted $800,000 in
support of NARA's project
to reencase the Charters
of Freedom--the Declaration
of Independence, the US Constitution,
and the Bill of Rights. This
particular effort, also supported
by congressional appropriations,
will ensure that these cherished
documents remain safely on
public view well into the
future. In addition, private-partnership
gifts to the Foundation made
possible a traveling exhibit
and educational document
resource book entitled Our
Mothers Before Us: Women
and Democracy, 1789 1920.
Featuring facsimiles of petitions
to Congress from women, Our
Mothers Before Us illustrates
the vital roles American
women played in our public
life and policy debates,
long before they won the
right to vote. Foundation
support also helped take
a traveling exhibit, "Flexing
the Nation's Muscle: Presidents,
Sport, and Physical Fitness
in the American Century,"
to NARA's
Presidential libraries.
Done in collaboration with
the President's Council on
Physical Fitness, "Flexing
the Nation's Muscle" celebrated
our 20th-century Presidents'
encouragement of physical
activity and their personal
involvement in sports. The
Foundation also sponsored
receptions for the "Lincoln
in Congress" exhibit in the
United States Capitol, the
200th anniversary of the
founding of the US Navy,
and an international conference
in Washington, DC, on the
search for Holocaust-era
assets.
The Foundation and its hundreds of participating members believe in bringing the
National Archives and its holdings to as many people as possible. There are numerous
opportunities to participate in and assist with these efforts. The Foundation invites you to become
part of a group committed to furthering the public's understanding of our nation's story. For
more information, please call Naomi Revzin, Director of Development at the National Archives
and Records Administration, at 301-713-6146 or 1-888-809-3126.
Lawrence F. O'Brien III, President
Foundation for the National Archives
Safeguarding
the Charters of Freedom
America's great Charters
of Freedom--the Declaration
of Independence, the US Constitution,
and the Bill of Rights--are
preserved in the care of the
National Archives and Records
Administration. But this has
not always been so. Consider,
for example, the Constitution.
In Philadelphia, in the sultry summer of 1787, 55 men met to create a country. The
Constitution that resulted, like so much work of human hands, was written on perishable
material. The morning after its signing--in a world without floppy disks, word processors,
photocopiers, facsimile printers, or even mimeograph machines--it was placed on the 11 a.m.
stagecoach for delivery to the Congress in New York City. Over the next quarter-century or so,
the document passed through several custodial hands in different places. Then on August 22,
1814, when British troops were advancing on Washington, three State Department clerks stuffed
many government records, including the Constitution, into linen sacks. The clerks loaded the
sacks onto carts and hauled them to an unoccupied grist mill on the Virginia side of the Potomac
River until they could be safely returned to the capital.
Today, of course, about a million people a year visit the National Archives and gaze,
awestruck, at the safely preserved 18th-century parchments of the Constitution and the other
Charters. Their distance from us in time is underscored by their quaint capitalization of every
noun, their proud display of signatures of great men long dead, and their very "handwrittenness."
But the visitors filing by know that the parchments are more than untouchable relics. They
represent an ever-unfolding saga of which our own lives are part. They are still the foundation of
our government. And that is why we are so careful to safeguard them.
For many years now, the
Constitution, the Declaration,
and the Bill of Rights have
reposed in glass encasements
safely protected by an elaborate
security system in the Rotunda
of the National Archives
Building in Washington, DC.
But when a routine examination
revealed small irregularities
on the inner surface of the
glass of the current encasements,
we assembled an expert advisory
committee. It found no immediate
cause for alarm but recommended
that we begin planning for
reencasement, which we did.
Otherwise the parchments
eventually could become obscured
by the deteriorating glass,
and the changing glass boxes
might produce chemical reactions
affecting the parchments
themselves.
So what to do? With the assistance of the National Institute of Standards and Technology,
and with funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts as well as the Congress, the National Archives
is preparing two prototype encasements resembling large, deep picture frames. Seven final
encasements based on the design of the prototypes will preserve the Charters well into the next
millennium. Laminated, tempered float glass and a diamond-turned, plated, and post-polished
seal surface will ensure that the documents can be viewed clearly and safely and that the
encasements are well sealed. The encasements will be filled with an atmosphere of argon, an
inert gas, that will slow chemical reactions by replacing the reactive oxygen of an air atmosphere.
Those who founded our country would be amazed at the technology used by today's
"framers" of the Charters--archivists, architects, engineers, chemists, physicists, and
conservators--who, in the period covered by this report, have begun planning and designing new
boxes in which to "frame" our nation's founding documents. Their work will make it safe for
citizens from all over the country to continue to come see the Charters of Freedom at the
National Archives, gaining new appreciation for the documents that bind us together as a nation.
Tracing
"Nazi Gold"
Jacob Friedman remembered making
seven different trips from
Romania to Switzerland between
1937 and 1938 to deposit his
father's money into various
bank accounts at three Swiss
banks. The trips he took were
extremely risky because, at
the time, it was illegal for
Romanian citizens to hold foreign
accounts. Jacob Friedman's
parents perished in Auschwitz
in 1944. In the early 1970s,
Jacob sent an acquaintance
to Zurich to inquire about
the money in his father's accounts.
Bank officials told the envoy
that they could not identify
the Friedman accounts without
an account number. In 1996
Jacob Friedman's son, Robert,
made similar inquiries on his
own father's behalf, yet received
the same reply.
After the war, another Holocaust-victim descendant, Estelle Sapir, acting on information
that her father shared with her before he died in a concentration camp, contacted a Swiss
financial institution to request the return of all money in her father's accounts. Officials
acknowledged the existence of her father's accounts, yet refused to return the money unless she
could produce her father's death certificate, which, obviously, Sapir did not have and could not
ever obtain.
These stories are representative of those of thousands of Holocaust survivors and their
heirs who were the rightful owners of Swiss bank accounts yet have not been able to retrieve
their money because they did not have sufficient documentation. In many cases, family members
did not even know in which bank their relatives or a representative of their families deposited
their assets. In response to Swiss authorities' initial unwillingness to return assets, thousands of
Holocaust survivors came to rely on research carried out at the National Archives in what has
become known as the story of "Nazi Gold."
As in a wartime spy novel,
the activities of Hitler's
Nazi era have come to light
in documents in the National
Archives' holdings from the
World War II era. The documents
have produced evidence of
looted gems, stolen artwork,
unclaimed bank accounts,
and laundered gold, some
of which Nazis may literally
have ripped from the mouths
of their victims. Revelations
have come from the discovery
of records relating to "Operation
Safehaven," a US Government
intelligence operation charged
from 1944 to 1946 with tracking
down assets that the Nazis
moved into neutral countries
such as Switzerland. The
records suggested that Swiss
banks had not disclosed all
of their Nazi gold holdings.
In fact, the documents revealed
that the Nazis shipped billions
of dollars of assets into
Switzerland between 1938
and 1945. One document contained
a list of 182 accounts held
in a single bank, which,
in today's dollars, would
be worth $29 million.
In an ironic twist, it
became clear that the Nazis
and their victims shared
the same banker. Investigators
descended on the National
Archives. Individual claimants,
historians, foreign government
organizations, authors, law
firms, journalists, and print
and broadcast media sought
access to the files. Reference
requesters ranged from individuals
looking for specific records
pertaining to assets in banks
to Foreign Service officers
engaged in efforts to identify,
recover, and return looted
artworks. The Archives staff
compiled and issued a 300-page
finding aid to the materials
only to follow it up with
a supplemental version that
reached 750 pages. Originally
published in May of 1997,
it described more than 15
million pages of documents
and included records from
30 US Federal agencies.
"All of the research depended directly upon the unfailing support, assistance, and
encouragement of the Archivist of the United States and the staff of the National Archives and
Records Administration," said Under Secretary of State Stuart Eizenstat, head of the Interagency
Group on Nazi Assets. "Our work simply could not have been carried out without this
assistance."
The National Archives staff
subsequently produced an
online
version of the finding aid.
This version is designed
to enable researchers to
do keyword searches. A point
and click on the key term
"looted art," for example,
yields 26 record groups that
contain at least one reference
to the subject. Of course,
a more precise keyword--for
example, the name of a particular
art gallery, artist, or collection--would
allow you to narrow your
search even further. As one
official put it, "This on-line
version of [the] finding
aid has saved the US team
of the ICE ([Swiss] Independent
Commission of Experts) countless
hours of sifting through
boxes of irrelevant material
and has also provided us
in some cases with references
to record groups we might
have overlooked had we relied
on more conventional archival
research methods."
The research into "Nazi Gold" continues along with countless seminars and symposia on
the subject. The Swiss Government helped establish "The Swiss Fund for Needy Victims of the
Holocaust," which is funded by some $204 million from the Swiss National Bank, Swiss banks,
and private individuals, and two Swiss banks have agreed to a $1.25 billion out-of-court
settlement. Additionally, and most notably, the Swiss have begun publishing the names of every
account that was opened during World War II and has remained inactive since. Speaking of the
"Nazi Gold" records, John Carlin, Archivist of the United States, said, "Everyone should
understand the role of records in establishing rights and entitlements, and legitimizing identities
and liberties." The Friedmans and Sapirs among thousands of Holocaust survivors and their
families would surely agree.
Opening
the Bush Library
What becomes of the papers
of Presidents?
In his will, President Washington gave his Presidential papers to his nephew, Justice
Bushrod Washington, to whom they passed upon his death. On Bushrod's death, most of
Washington's Presidential papers passed to Congressman George C. Washington, who, in 1834,
sold the majority of the papers to the United States for $25,000. President John Adams's
materials remained in his family's archives for decades, until they were transferred to the
Massachusetts Historical Society, where they long remained closed to the public. President
Jefferson took with him his own personal Presidential papers, including his Presidential
correspondence, and this material ultimately passed to his heirs. Similarly, Presidents Madison
and Monroe willed their material to their heirs.
In the past, Presidents had tremendous power to dispose of their papers as they saw fit. Of
the first 30 men to hold the Presidential office, only 13 made specific bequests of their papers.
Presidents Van Buren, Garfield, Arthur, Grant, Pierce, and Coolidge are among those who
destroyed significant numbers of their papers. President Van Buren destroyed a large portion of
his Presidential correspondence while he was still in office. Similarly, President Garfield
destroyed many of his Presidential materials in the 2 months between being shot by an assassin
and his death in 1881. President Arthur apparently burned three large garbage cans filled with his
papers.
Franklin Roosevelt negotiated an arrangement with Congress in which he gave his White
House materials to the United States on the condition that they be maintained in a library to be
built on Roosevelt's estate in Hyde Park, NY. A historian is said to have asked Roosevelt why
his papers did not come within the class of official government documents. The President replied
that he was following the precedent set by Washington: "When I came to the White House there
was not a scrap of paper in that room; when I retire, I shall not leave a scrap. The room will be
swept clean for my successor."
The Presidential Records Act of 1978 terminated the long-standing historical tradition of
private ownership of Presidential papers and hence the reliance on Presidential giving for the
government to acquire legal custody. The Act established the public ownership of records created
by Presidents and their staffs in the course of fulfilling responsibilities of their offices. It
entrusted to the Archivist of the United States the task of preserving and providing public access
to such records.
Accordingly, the National
Archives and Records Administration
operates a system of Presidential
libraries covering administrations
back to Herbert Hoover and
Franklin Roosevelt. And on
November 6, 1997, we added
a 10th. In ceremonies that
drew 20,000 guests, the George
Bush Presidential Library
and Museum opened on
the southwestern edge of
Texas A&M; University. Three
months later the library
released its first batch
of records, making public
more than 2 million pages
of documents that provide
insights into the 41st Presidency.
The records include a detailed
daily log of President Bush's
activities, documenting among
other things his urgent calls
to the Middle East when Iraq
invaded Kuwait in 1990.
Such Presidential records, while comprising the first release of documents from the Bush
White House, constitute only part of the 38 million pages of documents stored in the library-museum.
The former President has a long résumé--Vice President, ambassador, envoy to China,
head of the Central Intelligence Agency, soldier, and oil company executive, as well as husband,
father, grandfather, and now, in his "retirement," college professor. At Texas A&M;, the former
President has been involved in the various academic activities of the George Bush School of
Government and Public Service.
The Bush Museum houses memorabilia from the Bush Presidency and the Bush family,
and a number of exhibits use state-of-the-art technology to educate and entertain visitors. There
is a replica of Bush's office at the Presidential retreat, Camp David, a place the public rarely sees
even in photographs. When visitors come, the room darkens, and a beam of light is directed
toward each item as it is described in a narration by President Bush himself. In a mock-up of Air
Force One, visitors can sit in the "plane" as they listen to descriptions of equipment and facilities
aboard.
A portion of the museum is devoted to the war in the Middle East. The stark, realistic
display includes scenes of the desert and men and women wearing sand-colored camouflage. The
fires of Kuwait are pictured in a large mural of billowing, red-orange flames. The gratitude and
respect of the people of Kuwait are demonstrated by an unusual gift--the Door of Kuwait--a
large, rustic door, which, according to custom, expresses the sentiment, "When a man gives you
the door to his home, you are a member of his family."
The Bush Library and Museum welcomed more than 275,000 visitors in 1998 from
throughout the country, including more than 30,000 schoolchildren from across the state of
Texas, broadening their appreciation of the Presidency, the White House, and our shared
American heritage.
Managing
Electronic Documents
Let us suppose you are doing
research that brings you to
the National Archives in search
of a crucial letter written
by some government official
long before word-processing
computers were widely available.
Chances are that the official
drafted it with pen or pencil,
or dictated the draft to a
secretary, who typed it neatly
on official stationery, dating
it and indicating at the bottom
to whom copies were to be sent.
The official would then sign
it, in effect verifying its
authenticity, and the secretary
would send it out, keeping
a carbon copy as a record,
indicating that it was signed.
All, of course, on paper.
Let us suppose also the files were judged important enough to come to the National
Archives, which would arrange and describe them along with others to help you determine which
bodies of records would most likely contain items of value for your research. And after working
with an archivist to determine which record group, series, box, and file might hold records of
help to you, he or she would bring you one or more folders, in which you would find, yes--the
paper letter!
It would be there in part because it got saved in a recordkeeping system, in part because
paper lasts a fairly long time (depending on its quality), and in part because the National
Archives keeps valuable records in storage conditions that enhance their durability. We have a lot
of experience managing, preserving, and helping researchers use records--on paper.
But when your descendants come looking for documents in the National
Archives, things could be very different. Today a government official likely will use a computer
to write an important letter and simply send it electronically, along with copies, by "e-mail" or as
a word-processing attachment to an e-mail message. Quite possibly there will be no secretary, no
"official copy," no verifying signature, no recordkeeping system. Indeed, there could be no
document if the official deleted the letter to make computer space for others or failed to transfer
it to a new computer system before the "old" one "crashed" or became obsolete. The computer
disk or tape "containing" the letter might deteriorate anyway before it ever reached the National
Archives because electronic media are not nearly as durable as paper. And even if the disk did
survive, and today's technology could "read" it, how would we help you find and get a look at
the particular letter you wanted to see amid millions of electronically recorded e-mail messages
or other forms of electronic information?
In short, we are having to cope with entirely new forms of information in mushrooming
quantities. The description above oversimplifies the issues, but it does not overdramatize the
challenges. In the era of electronic information, we must find new ways to deal with records at
every point throughout their life cycles, even reevaluating what "records" are and what kinds of
information about them we need to preserve along with the electronic documents themselves.
Such work is expensive and takes time, but in the period covered by this report we began
to make significant progress, in collaboration with other concerned organizations, public and
private. Here are a few examples:
Front-end electronic records management: With input from our staff, the
Department of Defense developed a set of baseline requirements for the management of its
electronic records and issued criteria for the design of computer software for use in
electronic-records management. After independent evaluation, we endorsed this DoD standard as consistent
with the Federal Records Act and of potential usefulness to other Federal agencies. The standard
does not answer all pertinent questions nor preclude other approaches, but it does provide at least
a starting point for agencies that want to begin implementing electronic recordkeeping now.
Electronic records evaluation and disposition: The Archivist of the United
States created an Electronic
Records Work Group, composed of staff members from NARA and other agencies, supported by outside expert consultants. At his request, the group produced
recommendations on the basis of which we have subsequently issued guidance to Federal
agencies on, among other things, scheduling how long to keep electronic copies of certain
records that remain on an e-mail or word-processing system after a recordkeeping copy has been
produced. In effect, this encourages agencies to evaluate the need for keeping copies that
accumulate in the course of creating and using electronic communications.
Electronic records preservation and access: As the numbers of small,
electronic record files judged to be of long-term public value grow into the millions, can we
preserve them electronically? Facing the fact that available technologies were not adequate for
this task, in 1998 we contracted with the San Diego Supercomputer Center, a national laboratory
for computational science and engineering at the University of California, San Diego, to see if
advanced computer infrastructures could give a "yes" answer.
In addition to preserving electronic records, we must make them accessible in ways that
will enable your descendants to find "letters" they need for research, whatever computer
technologies future researchers may be using. In 1998 we began developing plans to provide
researchers with a single, easy-to-use access tool to search and retrieve records from hundreds of
thousands of electronic files.
Also, we must find a way to screen millions of computer files to identify those we cannot
disclose because of legal requirements to protect national security and personal privacy. So we
contracted with the Department of the Army's Research Laboratory to see if artificial intelligence
could be applied to such screening. Much, much remains to be learned before real success can be
declared, but progress in all three projects is encouraging.
In these projects and others, we are dealing with electronic recordkeeping challenges
from records creation through records use. Such efforts are exciting to us and critical for our
country. In the era of electronic information, continued public access to government
records--ready access to essential evidence--depends on their success.
Finding
JFK Assassination Records
According to surveys conducted
by national news organizations
both before and after the release
of the popular 1991 film JFK,
an extraordinary 80 to 90 percent
of the American public did
not believe the 1964 findings
of the Warren Commission. The
conclusions of that investigating
group, chaired by United States
Chief Justice Earl Warren,
were that President Kennedy
was killed by a single assassin
named Lee Harvey Oswald, who
was himself murdered 2 days
later (while in police custody)
by a second lone gunman named
Jack Ruby.
Public doubt about the lone assassination theory stemmed principally from the
Commission's essential reliance upon the "single bullet theory." Having determined that the
alleged assassin's rifle was capable of firing only three times during the assassination
sequence--one shot striking the President in the head and another hitting a curbstone and causing
a ricochet injury to a bystander--Commission lawyers "deduced" that a third shot traversed the
neck of the President from back to front, struck Texas Governor John Connally in the back, blew
out his fifth right rib on exit, shattered his right wrist, pierced his left thigh, and was discovered
at Parkland Hospital, where it was found on an unidentified stretcher in nearly pristine condition.
Any other scenario would preclude a conclusion that a lone gunman fired on the motorcade.
Doubts about the theory persisted over the years and received renewed emphasis when
Oliver Stone's film JFK dramatized the issue. Public interest in the film led to
legislative action. Without endorsing the film's speculative conclusions about a conspiracy,
several Members of Congress embraced the film's viewpoint that the continuing refusal of the
United States Government to release classified records related to the assassination could be
neither justified nor tolerated. Thirty years of secrecy, they concluded, had resulted in intense
public skepticism and suspicion concerning the assassination and its aftermath--an unhealthy
condition in any democracy.
On March 26, 1992, Senator David Boren (D-OK) and Representative John Conyers (D-MI)
introduced the "Assassination Materials Disclosure Act of 1992," which called for the
"creation of the JFK Assassination Records Collection at the National Archives." The legislation,
which was signed into law on October 26, 1992, required "the expeditious public transmission to
the Archivist and public disclosure of such records . . . most of which are almost 30 years old,
and only in the rarest cases . . . [in need of] . . . continued protection." Congress explicitly made
clear its intention that there was to be a "presumption of immediate disclosure" regarding all
assassination records.
The new legislation directed the National Archives to begin preparing a "subject
guidebook and index" to the collection of records pertaining to the assassination. With narrow
exceptions, all assassination records were to be supplied expeditiously to the National Archives
by government offices and Presidential libraries in whose files they resided. The Archives was
charged with making all such records available to the public within 30 days after receiving them.
The legislation also called for the creation of an Assassination
Records Review Board, which would determine which, if any, of the assassination records
met the national security and other criteria for delayed release. These criteria required
"clear and convincing evidence" that public disclosure would reveal, among other things,
"an intelligence agent . . . an intelligence source . . . [or] intelligence operations that
would demonstrably impair the national security of the United States." In approving the
postponement of public disclosure of an assassination record, the Review Board was obligated
to release "any part of such record not requiring continued secrecy" and to provide a
substitute record or summary of the "postponed" information to the public. Further, the
Review Board was required to file with the Archivist a written justification for the
postponement and a statement explaining the conditions under which the record should be
released.
Among the newly discovered documents were the original notes from Lee Harvey
Oswald's interrogation at the Dallas police station. Also opened was a CIA report of more than
250 pages concerning the activities of Oswald in Mexico City during the months prior to the
assassination. Related to the Mexico City report were files relating to the late CIA Mexico City
Station Chief, Winston Scott.
The Review Board, and the terms of its members, expired on September 30, 1998. By
that time the National Archives had released almost 4.5 million documents previously
unavailable regarding the Kennedy assassination. Have these records served to increase our
collective understanding of what transpired in Dallas's Dealey Plaza that bleak day in 1963? It is
too early to tell. Reaching conclusions was not part of the Board's mission, nor is it part of the
mission of the National Archives. We will exercise ongoing responsibility for adding to the
collection such relevant materials as may come to light and for providing access to records so
that Americans, in this as in many other matters, may investigate the evidence for themselves and
reach their own conclusions.
Providing
Online Records Information
Do you remember the Kennedy
administration? Perhaps, if
you're over 40. World War II?
If you're around 60, you will
have at least a child's memory
of those years. But the ranks
of those who went into uniform
after Pearl Harbor, and those
who waved goodbye, get thinner
every year. World War I? The
Rough Riders? You're not likely
to have any first-hand memories.
And there is no one around
(as far as we know) who marched
with Susan B. Anthony or personally
saw Abraham Lincoln and the
Civil War.
Preserving images of such people and events, however, is a major part of the work of the
National Archives and Records Administration. And now we are making many of the historical
images in our care accessible everywhere by Internet.
Check us out at NAIL online. There you will
now find more than 123,000 digital images of historical photographs, maps, charts, and textual
documents that you can inspect on your computer screen or print out for study and classroom
use. These images came from our archival facilities nationwide.
The digitized material covers a huge range of historical subject matter. You will find
material illustrative of 20th-century Presidential administrations back to Herbert Hoover. You
will find material on the Civil War and subsequent major armed conflicts up through Vietnam.
You will find material on the women's suffrage movement and women at work; on the history of
African Americans, Chinese Americans, and Japanese Americans; on child labor among other
historical social issues; and on many environmental subjects. Included is material on Kitty Hawk
and Project Mercury, on the Titanic and Three-Mile Island, on atomic energy and
Albert Einstein, and on court cases, congressional activities, and even political cartoons. Included
are images from such famous photographers as Mathew Brady, Ansel Adams, and Lewis Hine.
And all this is only a surface description of what we have made accessible.
But even the digitized images are not all that we offer electronically. We have linked
them to descriptions of thousands of documents in our holdings that you can learn about in our
online NARA Archival Information Locator (NAIL). This is a prototype for an Archival
Research Catalog through which we eventually will offer researchers descriptions of all records
in all of our archival and Presidential library facilities, so that if you want to do research in our
documents, you can start at home by searching our computer database for material relevant to
your project. We made major progress with this project in the period covered by this report.
Also in 1997 98, we made major progress in creating electronic access to another of our
services. The National Archives and Records Administration publishes the Federal
Register, a softbound, daily newspaper through which the nation participates in an
ongoing dialogue with its government. After Congress passes a law, agencies of the Executive
branch write regulations to implement it. These proposed regulations are printed in the
Federal Register, and comments from the general public are invited before the
regulations are printed again as finally approved. Five nights a week, 18,000 "hard" copies of the
Federal Register are printed at the Government Printing Office for distribution the
following day to Federal agencies, the Congress, the courts, depository libraries, and 8,000
subscribers. But these numbers represent only a tiny fraction of Federal Register
users.
That is because we have put the Federal Register and associated
publications online, including the entire 200-volume set of the Code of Federal
Regulations (CFR). As one of the public's primary sources of information about the
government, the Federal Register was faced with meeting the call for instant
access to information while also maintaining the integrity of official documents. Every business
day, our Federal Register staff sends the latest changes in regulations through a
high-tech laser beam to the top of a 96-year-old red brick building occupied by the Government
Printing Office, proclaimed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest
printer under one roof. The electronic files travel through a maze of rooms to desktop computers
standing on thick wooden floors that once held vats of molten lead for hot-metal type. The
blending of editorial tradition with up-to-the-minute technology now produces a Federal
Register/CFR database that retrieves 18 million documents for the public every month.
The Federal Register staff continues to explore new electronic pathways for delivering
regulatory information. We are experimenting with electronic submission and online document
management to give our agency customers the tools to submit Federal Register
documents over the Web. The agencies are building on our work by linking their Web sites to the
electronic Federal Register. When these systems work together seamlessly,
citizens will be able to read proposed regulations, immediately send electronic comments to
agencies, and react to other public input posted online. As issues and questions arise, the
agencies will respond by sending updated information to the Federal Register,
creating a running dialogue with the American people. Our investment in information technology
will draw citizens into the workings of their government and bring light to what has often
seemed a veiled process.
Thus we are taking advantage of new technologies to help provide the American public
with increasingly easier access to valuable information past and present. While you are checking
the Federal Register online for the latest information on government regulations
affecting your business, your children can be learning history from digital images of original
photographs and documents available from our NARA Archival Information Locator. And you
can do it via the Internet without leaving office, school, or home.
Strategic
Planning and Performance Reporting
In September 1997, NARA issued
a Strategic Plan entitled Ready
Access to Essential Evidence:
The Strategic Plan of the National
Archives and Records Administration,
1997-2007. It defined
our mission and goals as follows:
Our Mission
The National Archives of
the United States is a public
trust on which our democracy
depends. We at the National
Archives and Records Administration
enable people to inspect
for themselves the record
of what their government
has done. We enable officials
and agencies to review their
actions and help citizens
hold them accountable. We
ensure continuing access
to essential evidence that
documents:
- the rights of American citizens,
- the actions of Federal officials,
- the national experience.
This is our mission--to
ensure, for the Citizen and
the Public Servant, for the
President and the Congress
and the courts, ready access
to essential evidence.
Our Goals
We identified four strategic
goals that we must strive
toward to fulfill our mission.
- One: Essential evidence will be created, identified, appropriately scheduled, and managed for as long as needed.
- Two: Essential evidence will be easy to access regardless of where it is or where users are for as long as needed.
- Three: All records will be preserved in appropriate space for use as long as needed.
- Four: NARA's capabilities for making the changes necessary to realize our vision will continuously expand.
In short, our plan commits
us to strengthening records
management in the Federal Government,
expanding public access to
records, preserving them in
appropriate space, and expanding
our capacity to provide these
services. Extensive stakeholder
and customer input went into
the plan, including the results
of congressional consultation,
open forums with key constituents,
and agency-wide brainstorming
sessions. And the plan identified
strategies for achieving our
goals and targets for charting
our progress.
Measuring Progress
We developed our first Performance
Plan, which details the actions
and outcomes that must occur
if we are to meet the goals
and targets in our Strategic
Plan. In addition to listing
performance goals and measures
for evaluating the agency's
performance, the plan describes
the processes, skills, and
technologies, and the human,
capital, and informational
resources needed to meet
the year's performance goals.
Our congressional budget
request also is linked to
the plan's performance goals.
We use four mechanisms to measure actual performance:
- periodic management reviews,
- formal audits of operations,
- an agency-wide performance measurement system, and
- systematic sampling of measurement system effectiveness.
In 1998 we began the development and implementation of an agency-wide performance
measurement and reporting system. This system allows us to define and measure consistently
data critical to the analysis of annual performance objectives. In the future the system will be
expanded so that our strategic performance is measured using a balanced scorecard approach for
tracking cycle times, quality, productivity, cost, and customer satisfaction for NARA products
and services.
We also will review customer surveys concerning the agency's performance undertaken
during 1999, and will take action to respond to customer service needs identified in these
surveys. Together the program reports and evaluations, audits, measurement system, and
customer surveys will enable us to identify program areas that need attention, analysis, and
possible reengineering.
Our first performance plan was written in 1997-98 for fiscal year 1999. Our first
performance report will be published in our annual report for 1999.
NARA Managerial Staff
Archivist of the United States John W. Carlin
Deputy Archivist of the United States Lewis J. Bellardo
Assistant Archivist for Administrative Services Adrienne C. Thomas
Assistant Archivist for the Federal Register Raymond A. Mosley
Assistant Archivist for Human Resources and Information Services L. Reynolds Cahoon
Assistant Archivist for Records Services--Washington, DC Michael J. Kurtz
Assistant Archivist for Regional Records Services Richard L. Claypoole
Assistant Archivist for Presidential Libraries David F. Peterson
General Counsel Gary M. Stern
Inspector General Kelly A. Sisario
Director, Information Security Oversight Office Steven Garfinkel
Executive Director, National Historical Publications and Records Commission Ann Clifford
Newhall
Director of EEO and Diversity Programs Joyce A. Williams
Director of Development Naomi Revzin
Director, Policy and Communications Staff Gerald W. George
Director, Congressional Affairs John Constance
Director, Public Affairs Susan Cooper
NARA Facilities
National Archives and Records Administration
700 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20408-0001
202-501-5400
National Archives at College Park
8601 Adelphi Road
College Park, MD 20740-6701
301-837-1850
Washington National Records Center
4205 Suitland Road
Suitland, MD 20746-8001
301-457-7000
NARA-Northeast Region
Diane LeBlanc, Regional Administrator
NARA-Northeast Region (Boston)
380 Trapelo Road
Waltham, MA 02452-6399
781-647-8104
NARA-Northeast Region (Pittsfield)
10 Conte Drive
Pittsfield, MA 01201-8230
413-236-3600
NARA-Northeast Region (New York City)
201 Varick Street, 12th Floor
New York, NY 10014-4811
212-401-1620
NARA-Mid Atlantic Region
James Mouat, Regional Administrator
NARA-Mid Atlantic Region (Center City Philadelphia)
900 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107-4292
215-597-3000
NARA-Mid Atlantic Region (Northeast Philadelphia)
14700 Townsend Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19154-1096
215-617-9027
NARA-Southeast Region
James McSweeney, Regional Administrator
1557 St. Joseph Avenue
East Point, GA 30344-2593
404-763-7477
NARA-Great Lakes Region
David Kuehl, Regional Administrator
NARA-Great Lakes Region (Chicago)
7358 South Pulaski Road
Chicago, IL 60629-5898
773-581-7816
NARA-Great Lakes Region (Dayton)
3150 Springboro Road
Dayton, OH 45439-1883
513-225-2852
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NARA-Central Plains Region
R. Reed Whitaker, Regional Administrator
NARA-Central Plains Region (Kansas City)
2312 East Bannister Road
Kansas City, MO 64131-3011
816-926-6272
NARA-Central Plains Region (Lee's Summit)
200 Space Center Drive
Lee's Summit, MO 64064-1182
816-478-7625
NARA-Southwest Region
Kent Carter, Regional Administrator
501 West Felix Street, Building 1
P.O. Box 6216
Fort Worth, TX 76115-0216
817-334-5525
NARA-Rocky Mountain Region
Robert Svenningsen, Regional Administrator
Denver Federal Center, Building 48
PO Box 25307
Denver, CO 80225-0307
303-236-0804
NARA-Pacific Region
Sharon Roadway, Regional Administrator
NARA-Pacific Region (Laguna Niguel)
24000 Avila Road
PO Box 6719
Laguna Niguel, CA 92607-6719
949-360-2641
NARA-Pacific Region (San Francisco)
1000 Commodore Drive
San Bruno, CA 94066-2350
650-876-9009
NARA-Pacific Alaska Region
Steven Edwards, Regional Administrator
NARA-Pacific Alaska Region (Seattle)
6125 Sand Point Way, NE
Seattle, WA 98115-7999
206-526-6507
NARA-Pacific Alaska Region (Anchorage)
654 West Third Avenue
Anchorage, AK 99501-2145
907-271-2443
NARA-National Personnel Records Center
David Petree, Regional Administrator
NARA-National Personnel Records Center
(Civilian Personnel Records)
111 Winnebago Street
St. Louis, MO 63118-4199
314-801-9250
NARA-National Personnel Records Center
(Military Personnel Records)
9700 Page Avenue
St. Louis, MO 63132-5100
314-538-4247
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Presidential Libraries
Herbert Hoover Library
Timothy G. Walch, Director
210 Parkside Drive
PO Box 488
West Branch, IA 52358-0488
319-643-5301
Franklin D. Roosevelt Library
Alan Lowe, Acting Director
511 Albany Post Road
Hyde Park, NY 12538-1999
914-229-8114
Harry S. Truman Library
Larry J. Hackman, Director
500 West US Highway
24
Independence, MO 64050-1798
816-833-1400
Dwight D. Eisenhower Library
Daniel D. Holt, Director
200 Southeast Fourth Street
Abilene, KS 67410-2900
785-263-4751
John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library
Bradley S. Gerratt, Director
Columbia Point
Boston, MA 02125-3398
617-929-4500
Lyndon Baines Johnson Library
Harry J. Middleton, Director
2313 Red River Street
Austin, TX 78705-5702
512-916-5137
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Nixon Presidential Materials Staff
Karl Weissenbach, Director
National Archives at College Park
8601 Adelphi Road
College Park, MD 20740-6001
301-837-3290
Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum
Richard Norton Smith, Director
Gerald R. Ford Library
1000 Beal Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2114
734-741-2218
Gerald R. Ford Museum
303 Pearl Street, NW
Grand Rapids, MI 49504-5353
616-451-9263
Jimmy Carter Library
Donald B. Schewe, Director
441 Freedom Parkway
Atlanta, GA 30307-1498
404-331-3942
Ronald Reagan Library
Mark A. Hunt, Director
40 Presidential Drive
Simi Valley, CA 93065-0600
805-522-8444
George Bush Library
David E. Alsobrook, Director
1000 George Bush Drive West
College Station, TX 77845
409-260-9554
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