e-FRUS: All Of The History, None Of The Dust

E-books will always lack the nice satisfactory heft of a brown leather bound reference volume, not to mention the dusty ambiance of library stacks. And I like those things, because I'm a bit of a Luddite at heart. I even write with fountain pens.

But, hey, it's 2012 and we're long overdue for the E-Books Initiative from the Office of the Historian:

The Office of the Historian at the U.S. Department of State is pleased to announce the release of its Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series in a new e-book format that is readable on popular electronic devices such as the Amazon Kindle and Apple iPad. The e-book edition combines many of the benefits of print and web publications in a new form that is portable and extremely convenient. During the pilot phase of the FRUS e-book initiative, five selected FRUS volumes are available here. The public is invited to download the new e-books and provide feedback to help improve the FRUS e-book edition. At the conclusion of the pilot phase later this year, the Office will work to offer e-book versions of many more FRUS volumes both through the Office website and on a wide array of e-bookstores. The Office will continue to expand and enhance its e-book offerings, as part of the ongoing FRUS digitization effort.

The FRUS e-book initiative is an outgrowth of the Office of the Historian’s efforts to optimize the series for its website. Because the Office adopted the Text Encoding Initiative’s open, robust XML-based file format (TEI), a single digital master TEI file can store an entire FRUS volume and can be transformed into either a set of web pages or an e-book. The free, open source eXist-db server that powers the entire Office of the Historian website also provides the tools needed to transform the FRUS TEI files into HTML and e-book formats.

For questions about the FRUS e-book initiative, please see our FAQ below; for other questions or to provide feedback, please contact history_ebooks@state.gov.

I'm putting away my ink pot and downloading one now.

1973: Arab-Israeli War, And The First Oil Shock

The latest volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series publishes the foreign policy documentation surrounding the Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1973:

This volume documents U.S. policymaking toward the Arab-Israeli conflict between January and December 1973, i.e., during the months before, during, and immediately after the Arab-Israeli war of October 1973. Documentation in the volume includes memoranda; records of discussions both within the U.S. policy-making community, as well as with foreign officials; cables to and from U.S. diplomatic posts; and papers that set forth policy issues and options, and which show decisions or actions taken.

This volume covers an important period in the history of the U.S. engagement with the Arab-Israeli dispute. The October 1973 War represented not only a renewed clash of Arab and Israeli forces, it ignited an energy crisis brought on by an Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) oil embargo against the United States, and led to the threat of a direct superpower confrontation. The war also prompted the United States to undertake an unprecedented role in the pursuit of a negotiated settlement to the dispute.

Conference Proceedings Available For "The American Experience in Southeast Asia, 1946-1975"

The Office of the Historian has released the proceedings of its September conference on U.S. policy and the war in Southeast Asia.

Go to its website (here) and you'll find transcripts and videos for the following:

Opening Address by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
Address by Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
Keynote Address by Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke
The View from Hanoi: Historians from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
Senior Scholars’ Interpretations of the American Experience in Southeast Asia
Media Roundtable Discussion
Address by Ambassador John D. Negroponte
With Friends Like These: The United States and its Allies
Fighting While Negotiating: Force and Diplomacy in the Vietnam War
The Battle for Hearts and Minds: Counterinsurgency and Reconstruction Programs in Vietnam
Ours to Reason Why: Intervention in Vietnam, Reaction in America

A New FRUS Volume Is Released

This one is on the topic of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). Here's the press release:

The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XXXII, SALT I, 1969–1972. This volume documents United States policy toward the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks from January 1969 until October 1972.

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks produced a series of comprehensive arms control agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union that for the first time limited the deployment of ballistic missiles and anti-ballistic missile systems. Commonly referred to as “SALT I,” the agreements were signed by President Richard Nixon and the General Secretary of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev at the Moscow Summit in May 1972. This volume documents the negotiations leading up to the agreement, the internal deliberations among U.S. policy makers, and reveals the play of political and national security considerations that factored into U.S. policy decisions.

The volume is organized chronologically covering the period of analytical preparation before SALT began, the various rounds of negotiations with the Soviet Union alternating among the cities of Helsinki, Geneva and Vienna, the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs Henry Kissinger's secret trip to Moscow in April 1972, discussions between President Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev at the Moscow Summit in May 1972, and the Nixon administration's efforts to secure congressional approval of the SALT agreement and ratification of the ABM treaty.

Sources for this volume include documents generated in the White House, the National Security Council, the Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. The editor included extracts from memorandums of conversation between Henry Kissinger, and Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, telephone transcripts and meeting memoranda prepared by chief SALT negotiator, Gerard Smith, and a significant number of backchannel messages among Smith, Kissinger and Alexander Haig, Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs. Additionally, the editor transcribed specifically for this volume more than twenty excerpts from conversations recorded among the President and his advisors on the secret White House taping system.

Download it here.

"X" Marks the Spot of Latest FRUS Volume

Another day, another new FRUS volume:

The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume X, Vietnam, January 1973–July 1975. This specific volume covers U.S. policy towards Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from the signing of the Paris Peace Accords on January 27, 1973, to the fall of Phnom Penh and Saigon in April 1975. The final chapter covers the May 1975 SS Mayaguez incident.

This volume addresses the ending of the Vietnam war; a story central to the U.S. experience in the 20th century. Similar to other Foreign Relations volumes, this collection of documents emphasizes the formation of policy over day-to-day diplomacy. Several themes dominated U.S. policy and policy objectives in Indochina during this period: the relationship between force and diplomacy, the struggle between the President and Congress in the formation and implementation of U.S. policy, U.S. credibility in the world, and the limits of American power. These themes dictated the selection of documents in this volume. Soon after the fall of Saigon in April 1975, American officials in several agencies began looking back at U.S. policy toward, and political and military actions, in Vietnam in an effort to understand and learn from the American experience in Indochina beginning in the early 1960s. This volume places those analyses within the broader documentary context.

This volume concludes with documentation covering the May 1975 seizure by Cambodia of the SS Mayaguez and the successful recovery by U.S. forces of the ship and its crew. The documents cover the crisis deliberations in Washington among civilian and military officials that led to President Ford’s decision to use military force to recover the ship.

You can download Volume X (here) courtesy of the Office of the Historian's website, and read it from the comfort of your own home or favorite Wi-Fi hotspot. Is that the greatest thing ever, or what?

Diplomatic End Game of the Vietnam War

The Department of State's Office of the Historian released today a new Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) volume, one that documents U.S. policy toward the war in Vietnam from October 8, 1972, to January 27, 1973. From today's press release:

This volume documents the marathon four-day negotiating session between Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Le Duc Tho in Paris (October 8-11, 1972). The peace agreement they reached was rejected by South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu. The United States attempted to convince Thieu that he was wrong, and in November Nixon sent Kissinger back to Paris to renegotiate 69 points on behalf of the South Vietnamese. The North Vietnamese, fiercely disagreeing with the U.S. move, decided that they too would renegotiate issues previously agreed to. By mid-November, the talks were on the verge of collapse. Consequently, the central goals of U.S. foreign policy over the next few weeks were to compel both South Vietnam and North Vietnam to accept, in its main tenets, the agreement that the United States had negotiated with the latter in October.

A cynic might say that the central goal of our policy was to compel the South to accept terms that would more or less ensure it's eventual destruction, while also compelling the North to wait a decent interval after the withdrawal of U.S. forces before continuing its war against the South.

This was high drama. Our special negotiator was Secretary of State Kissinger (who was dual-hatted, serving simultaneously as both SecState and the President's National Security Adviser). His meetings with delegates from the North were conducted secretly in Paris. And the tools of persuasion he employed included thousands of naval mines dropped in North Vietnam's harbors to interdict Sino-Soviet bloc merchant shipping, and 741 sorties by B-52 Stratofortress bombers that dropped 15,237 tons of ordnance on 18 industrial and 14 military targets.

I remember being a high school student with a draft card in my wallet in 1972, absorbing every bit of news I could get about the last act of the Vietnam War, including listening to the reports put out by Radio Hanoi. It was exciting stuff then, and it's even better now that I can read the internal documents.

You can download the new FRUS material here. Well worth reading.

Another New FRUS Volume is Released

The Office of the Historian has announced the release of another volume in the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, this one Volume VII, Vietnam, July 1970-January 1972:

The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume VII, Vietnam, July 1970–January 1972. This volume documents U.S. policy towards the war in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from July 1970 to January 1972. It is the second of five volumes covering the end of the Vietnam war under Presidents Nixon and Ford, 1969–1975.

During the period covered by this volume, July 1970–January 1972, the Nixon administration expanded the Vietnam war into Cambodia and Laos as part of its strategy. This volume covers South Vietnam in the context of this larger war in Southeast Asia; therefore, the volume begins in July 1970 in the aftermath of the Cambodian incursion.

-- snip --

In late 1970 and early 1971, the focus shifted to decision making regarding plans to implement a major South Vietnamese out-of-country operation called Lam Son 719, launched in early February 1971.

-- snip --

In the waning months of the period covered by this volume, deadlock had set in. Neither side appeared able to win militarily, or even to weaken his adversary sufficiently to make him negotiate in good faith. There were signs, however, that Hanoi might be preparing to mount a major military effort in 1972. Its purpose would be to break through this impasse without having to travel a diplomatic path. The volume concludes at this point.

Reading this description gives me the funny feeling of realizing that events I lived through when they were daily news are now bona fide history. Wow, am I old!

New FRUS Volume on Vietnam, January-October, 1972

The Department of State's Office of the Historian today announced the Release of Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume VIII, Vietnam, January-October, 1972.

Excellent! This volume is full of deep, deep, inside foreign policy matters and candid discussions the likes of which would have made Wikileaks green with envy back in the day.

The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume VIII, Vietnam, January–October 1972. Few issues engaged President Richard M. Nixon and his Assistant for National Security Affairs, Henry A. Kissinger, more than those associated with the Vietnam war. This specific volume documents U.S. policy toward the war in Vietnam from January 20 to October 7, 1972.

The Easter Offensive, and its ramifications, represents the most significant event in Indochina for U.S. policy in this period, and documentary coverage of the event dominates the volume, concentrating mainly on what happened in North and South Vietnam, policy formulation and decision-making in Washington, and the negotiations in Paris. Only a very small number of documents relate to events and policy in Laos and Cambodia, and then only as they relate to events and policy in Vietnam.

Documents in this volume examine the link between force and diplomacy in U.S. national security policy toward the Vietnam war. In the period the volume covers, force drove diplomacy. Only by recognizing this can the process by which America’s Vietnam war policy was formulated and implemented be fully understood. Controlling the process was a small circle of men, led by President Richard M. Nixon, and which included the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, Henry A. Kissinger; the President’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs, Major General Alexander M. Haig; and a few National Security Council officials trusted by Kissinger.

Sources for this volume include messages and memoranda that illuminate the decision-making process in a bureaucracy. They can be found in Nixon’s papers, in Kissinger’s papers, in military and diplomatic records in the National Archives, and in other repositories. Transcripts of Nixon’s taped conversations with senior policy advisers, as well as a collection of transcripts of Kissinger’s telephone conversations, provide an additional level of detail. A third collection, less well known than the other two but almost as significant, is that of Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and includes diary excerpts and telephone conversations. This volume, therefore, documents the implementation of U.S. policy toward Vietnam during the Easter Offensive more thoroughly than ever before.

The volume and this press release are available on the Office of the Historian website [here]. Copies of the volume will be available for purchase from the U.S. Government Printing Office online at http://bookstore.gpo.gov (GPO S/N 044–000–02623–6; ISBN 978–0–16–079429–2), or by calling toll-free 1–866–512–1800 (D.C. area 202–512–1800). For further information, contact Susan Weetman, General Editor of the Foreign Relations series, at (202) 663–1276 or by e-mail to history@state.gov.

By the way, I collected some historical documents in this series myself, sort of. The very first safe I was provided when I went to work for State as a contractor in - oh my! - 1986, had a piece of trash wedged behind the bottom drawer, which irritated me so much that I pulled the drawer apart to fish it out. The paper turned out to be a Secret memo, dated in 1965, and entitled "Possible North Vietnamese Reactions to American Bombing Campaign." Maybe I should have kept that as an historical artifact, rather than shredding it?

Another FRUS Volume: Korea, 1969-1972

The State Department's Office of the Historian announced today that HO has released the latest volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, Volume XIX, Part 1, Korea, 1969-1972.

The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XIX, Part 1, Korea, 1969–1972. (Part 2 of the volume on U.S. bilateral relations with Japan, 1969–1972 will be published at a later date.) During the first Nixon administration, Washington confronted an array of difficult foreign policy questions concerning the Korean peninsula. The preponderance of documents published in this volume concern security issues. As in earlier years, U.S. policymakers continued to deal with North Korean provocations between 1969 and 1972, the most serious being the North Korean Air Force’s destruction of a U.S. surveillance (EC–121) airplane over the Sea of Japan in April 1969. The U.S. military presence in South Korea also surfaced as an important topic. During Nixon’s first term, the United States reduced its forces in Korea from 63,000 to 43,000 soldiers. Although President Park was unable to prevent the U.S. drawdown, he did extract aid with which to modernize the South Korean military. Other records in this publication relate to the deployment of South Korean combat forces in Vietnam.

This volume documents U.S. satisfaction with the Republic of Korea’s increasing confidence as an international actor, a result of the South’s burgeoning economic prosperity and its (uneven) growth in political stability. Park successfully thwarted efforts to improve the relationship between Japan and North Korea. Instead, South Korea made its own contacts with the North Korean Government, an initiative that yielded few tangible results but did promote regional stability. Nonetheless, the Nixon administration was not fully successful at allaying Seoul’s misgivings about two of Nixon’s most important foreign policy initiatives: the improvement in relations between the United States and China, and the U.S. departure from Vietnam. Park’s fears about U.S. reliability added to tensions that resulted from economic competition, especially in the textile trade.

The Republic of Korea’s skepticism of the U.S. security guarantee was used to justify authoritarian domestic policies. In 1970 Park and his party amended the Korean Constitution to permit his election to a third term as the country’s president. The following year, the two titans of late 20th century South Korean politics, Park Chung Hee and Kim Dae Jung, competed for the presidency. Department of State officials endeavored to demonstrate balance by making themselves available to both candidates. When Park, victorious in the 1971 election, declared martial law in October 1972, the U.S. Government expressed frustration with this blow to the Republic of Korea’s political institutions. U.S. officials feared that alliance with South Korea could be seen by some as implicating them in Park’s actions. Given Park’s determination to adopt anti-democratic measures, U.S. efforts to respond by punishing South Korea would likely be either ineffective or create instability there, either outcome potentially damaging the U.S.-Korean relationship.

The volume and this press release are available on the Office of the Historian website at http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v19p1. Copies of the volume will be available for purchase from the U.S. Government Printing Office online at http://bookstore.gpo.gov (GPO S/N 044–000–02610–4; ISBN 978–0–16–077108–8), or by calling toll-free 1–866–512–1800 (D.C. area 202–512–1800). For further information, contact Susan Weetman, Acting General Editor of the Foreign Relations series, at (202) 663–1276 or by e-mail to history@state.gov.

"Much Has Changed" Since 2009 at the Office of the Historian

And changed for the better, according to the brief treatment - only four and a half pages - given to the U.S. State Department's Office of the Historian (HO) in the Inspector General's February 2010 Inspection Report of the Bureau of Public Affairs.

The HO sounds like an incomparably happier place than it was last summer. So much angst back then!

On pages 36 and 37 of the OIG report there is a good description of the difficult editorial process that is involved in producing the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series. Timely production of new FRUS volumes will always be a struggle, in part due to the unavoidable delays and interagency hassles entailed in declassifying the relevant documentation. As I noted before:

It's no secret that the CIA is the main obstacle to the clearance of material in the FRUS series. You can read the arguments for and against CIA openness with the HO here. The policy conflicts between the CIA and the HO are regularly aired in public with each publication of the minutes of the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation (like this one from last December). I'm sure the declassification process is much more frustrating for the wienies in the HO than it is for interested onlookers like Anonymous and me.

By the way, I still think "The History Weenies" would look good on office coffee mugs. I once made a similar recommendation to an intelligence unit within the Drug Enforcement Administration in Colombia ("Geeks with Guns") and they put it onto logo hats and T-shirts.

Diplomats Among Warriors

John Prados, a senior fellow of the National Security Archive in Washington, DC, has some remarks for diplomatic historians on the blurry border between diplomatic and military matters. A single quote will convey his point:

As a matter of historical study, however, we have too long been at pains to separate the diplomatic from the military. These are conceived as different fields of inquiry, and camps of historians working each side of this street have looked askance at colleagues on the other curb. Academic programs did not require much in the way of training across these subject boundaries. As for the relevant professional organizations, the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations and the Society for Military History, for a very long time you could not find a historian who held membership in both those groups. Then there was one, then a few. The situation today is somewhat better but still far from where it needs to be. Diplomatic historians tend to regard military specialists as too narrow, military historians tend to see diplomatic experts as naïve and superficial. Not only does this bifurcation exist in an environment in which both schools of history are under challenge from other historical specialties, but in a real world in which, as argued here, both disciplines are necessary to properly analyze developments.

New Executive Order Will Expedite Declassification of Records

The White House announced today, as expected, that President Obama has signed a new executive order on classified national security information.

William H. Leary, the senior director of records and access management at the National Security Council, summarized the EO on the White House Blog. Three points jumped out for me:

[The Executive Order] establishes a National Declassification Center at the National Archives to enable agency reviewers to perform collaborative declassification in accordance with priorities developed by the Archivist with input from the general public.

and,

It eliminates an Intelligence Community veto of certain decisions by the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel that was introduced in the Bush order.

also,

The Order also significantly modifies the “third agency rule” [TSB note: this is the previously sacrosanct government policy that information from another agency should only be released with that agency's permission] to permit re-dissemination of classified documents by receiving agencies without the approval of the originating agency, except when the originating agency has indicated on the documents that such prior approval is required.

It all sounds very good for the producers and consumers of historical documentation.

Another Day, Another FRUS Volume

Today, the Office of the Historian announced the release of another volume in the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series covering the Nixon-Ford years. Yesterday it was Global Issues, today it's Foreign Economic Policy. Read it here. Keep them coming!

Here's the press release (Release of Foreign Relations, 1969-1976, Volume XXXI, Foreign Economic Policy, 1973-1976:

The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XXXI, Foreign Economic Policy, 1973-1976. This volume documents the major decisions of Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford in the realm of foreign economic policy, focusing in particular on international monetary relations, international trade policy, and efforts to redress global economic inequalities.

By the time of Richard Nixon’s second inauguration in January 1973, there was a clear need to reform the international monetary system. The system of fixed exchange rates envisaged at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference had been under pressure for some time; indeed, it had already broken down in the wake of the Nixon administration’s August 1971 New Economic Policy, only to be restored by the Smithsonian Agreement of December 1971. The final collapse of the fixed exchange rate system is chronicled in the volume’s first chapter, which examines the exchange crises of February and March 1973. Efforts to restructure the international monetary system, with particular emphasis on the issues of exchange rate flexibility and the role of gold, are examined in the volume’s second chapter. The third and fourth chapters document the origins of the Group of Seven (G-7) summit, an initiative that arose out of the unsettled international monetary environment and the more general economic decline in the industrialized world.

The fifth chapter, which covers trade policy, demonstrates more than any other chapter in the volume the influence of domestic politics on U.S. foreign relations. The chapter documents the White House’s struggle to secure passage of a major piece of trade reform legislation, the Trade Act of 1974, in the face of significant domestic opposition. The most serious challenge faced by the Nixon and Ford administrations was that posed by the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which was designed to link extension of most favored nation (MFN) status to the Soviet Union with its policies on Jewish emigration. The chapter also documents the beginning of the Tokyo Round of trade negotiations, held under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), with particular emphasis on the role of agriculture in those negotiations. The Nixon administration’s 1973 decision to impose export controls, as well as foreign fears of U.S. protectionism, are also covered in this chapter.

The volume’s sixth, and final, chapter examines commodity policy and North-South relations. It chronicles the United States attempts to grapple with the global trade in primary commodities in a post-1973 oil embargo world, as well as its efforts to redress persistent economic disparities between the industrialized countries of the northern hemisphere and the less developed countries of the south.

Like all recent Foreign Relations volumes, the emphasis of this volume is on the formulation of policy, rather than on its implementation or on day-to-day diplomacy. As in other volumes in the Nixon-Ford subseries, the National Security Council and the Department of State play key roles in the policy making process; however, in this volume, other agencies and offices, such as the Department of Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Office of the Special Representative for Trade Negotiations, are also prominent.

The volume is available as a downloadable PDF on the Office of the Historian website at http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v31. Hard copies of the volume will be available in early 2010 for purchase from the U.S. Government Printing Office online at http://bookstore.gpo.gov (GPO S/N 044-000-02615-5; ISBN 978-0-16-079992-1), or by calling toll-free 1-866-512-1800 (D.C. area 202-512-1800). For further information, please contact the Office of the Historian at history@state.gov.

Cold War Records Could Be Unfrozen Soon

There is reportedly an executive order pending that could result in the expeditious declassification of more than 400 million pages of Cold War-era documents, as well as instituting procedural changes that would reduce the number of government records kept from the public.

Secrecy News has a post about this, along with a link to an Associated Press story that came out yesterday. See New Executive Order Awaits Presidential Decision:

A new draft executive order on national security classification and declassification policy is expected to be presented to President Obama this week for his personal resolution of issues which remain in dispute among policymakers and affected agencies, especially intelligence agencies.

This marks the first time since the first Bush Administration, nearly two decades ago, that a President has needed to make a final determination on the contents of an executive order because staffers and agencies were unable to reach a consensus view. (Correction: There is a more recent precedent for such presidential involvement. According to Morton Halperin, President Clinton was presented with a “split memo” in 1995 on the question of whether to include a public interest balancing test for declassification in executive order 12958. President Clinton decided against it.)

The currently disputed issues are believed to include the composition of the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, including whether it should include representatives of ODNI or CIA or both, and whether the intelligence agencies should continue to have the veto over Panel declassification decisions that was granted by the George W. Bush Administration.

The final order, which is likely to be issued before the end of December, is expected among other things to direct agencies to conduct a Fundamental Classification Guidance Review in order to eliminate obsolete classification requirements, and to establish a National Declassification Center to coordinate and expedite declassification of historical records, as described in a previous draft dated August 4, 2009.

See “Obama Plan Could Limit Records Hidden From Public” by Pete Yost, Associated Press, December 20, 2009.

No doubt there are legitimate reasons to keep some documents classified indefinitely, but surely 99% of Cold War era records could be safely released at this point. I've done research into U.S. policies and programs for what was then called psychological warfare - and today would be called public diplomacy - directed toward Hungary in the years preceding the 1956 Uprising and I find it hard to believe there could be any good argument for not releasing the few remaining classified records on that matter, to name just one significant episode of the Cold War.

Incidentally, one side effect of more declassification would be to benefit the State Department's Office of the Historian (HO) in its competition with non-official entities such as Georgetown University's National Security Archive. Non-official archivists of public records are free to post classified documents that were leaked or otherwise improperly released, giving those academic freebooters an advantage over the HO, which must strictly respect the archival principle of provenance. Once Cold War diplomatic documents are properly declassified, they will enter the public record via the HO and its Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series.

FRUS Volumes Not Coming Fast Enough To Suit Everybody

Secrecy News, the blog of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Project on Government Secrecy, noted today's release of the latest Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) volume and took the occasion to voice its displeasure with the pace of publication of the FRUS series.

See: State Dept Series Falls Farther Behind Schedule

The U.S. State Department’s official Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series had another disappointing year in 2009 with only two softcopy volumes published to date, including one released last week on “Global Issues, 1973-1976.”

The FRUS series is supposed to provide “comprehensive documentation of the major foreign policy decisions and actions of the United States Government” and it must must be “thorough, accurate, and reliable.” As such, it is a potentially vital tool for advancing declassification of significant historical records and assuring government accountability, at least over the long run.
Publication of FRUS is not optional. By statute, “The Secretary of State shall ensure that the FRUS series shall be published not more than 30 years after the events recorded.” But that 30 year goal, which has rarely if ever been met, is now receding further and further from realization, leaving the Secretary of State in violation of the law.

State Department spokesman Ian C. Kelly did not respond to a request for comment on the Department’s continuing violation of the law on FRUS publication.

But William B. McAllister, the Acting General Editor of FRUS, expressed a hopeful view of the future despite recent turmoil, which included the last-minute withdrawal of person who was to become the new FRUS General Editor. He said that a third FRUS volume on “Foreign Economic Policy, 1973-1976″ would appear before the end of the year, and at least one other in January 2010.

Likewise, Dr. Robert McMahon, who chairs the State Department’s Historical Advisory Committee, said “We continue to be optimistic about publication prospects for FRUS volumes in the near future despite the disappointing number of volumes that came out this year. There are four Vietnam volumes alone that should be published in 2010.”

“We anticipate being able to fill all [employment] vacancies in 2010, many of them rather early in the year,” Dr. McAllister wrote in an email message. “The Office of the Historian is … well on its way to resolving the multiple infrastructure, document handling, and archival access issues that impact FRUS production…. The Office of the Historian has launched several initiatives to address systemic impediments that slow the declassification process.” And over time, “we anticipate returning to a more typical production cycle.” But a typical production cycle has never yet meant regular compliance with the mandatory 30 year FRUS publication requirement.

The latest FRUS volume on “Global Issues, 1973-1976″ has a number of interesting features and a few peculiarities. Oddly, all of the documents were marked as declassified in December 2008, so this collection was apparently ready for publication online a year ago. And unlike other contemporaneous FRUS volumes, audio tapes are not listed as a source and were apparently not used in the collection. No explanation for this omission was offered.

New FRUS Volume Released

The State Department's Office of the Historian today released a new volume in the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series. It's Volume E-3, Documents on Global Issues, 1973-1976, and you can read it here.

From today's press release:

The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E–3, Documents on Global Issues, 1973–1976, as an electronic-only publication. This volume is the latest publication in the subseries of the Foreign Relations series that documents the most important decisions and actions of the foreign policy of the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Volume E–3 is available to all free of charge on the internet. Approximately 25 percent of the volumes scheduled for publication for the 1969–1976 subseries, covering the Nixon and Nixon–Ford administrations, will be in this format.

This volume documents United States policy concerning global/transnational issues during the Nixon and Ford administrations: Antarctic resource exploitation, international drug control, human rights, oceans policy, space and telecommunications, and terrorism. Additional global issues, including energy, disarmament, food policy, population control, and women’s issues are treated in other volumes in the 1969–1976 subseries.

The Nixon and Ford administrations addressed an impressive list of global issues, including the management of Antarctic resources, drug trafficking, the promotion of human rights and the monitoring of rights abuses, telecommunications, space exploration, the redefinition of maritime regimes, and the emergence of transnational terrorism.

Regarding terrorism, the press releases states:

[A] fundamental redefinition of the problem of terrorism occurred as the Nixon administration entered its second term. The March 1973 attack on U.S. diplomats in Khartoum and increased concern about the safety of foreign emissaries at the United Nations in New York City caused federal officials to engage in a variety of measures to promote security at home and abroad.

Most unfortunately, Volume E-3's section on terrorism does not contain the one document I would most like to see (Document 206, a chronology of the Khartoum incident), because it was not declassified in time for publication.

You Are Cordially Invited

To the public session of the December 2010 meeting of the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation:

The Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation will meet in open session from 1:30 p.m. through 2:30 p.m. on Monday, December 14, 2009, in the Department of State, 2201 “C” Street NW, Washington, D.C., in Conference Room 1205, to discuss declassification and transfer of Department of State records to the National Archives and Records Administration and the status of the Foreign Relations series.

Prior notification and a valid government-issued photo ID (such as driver’s license, passport, U. S. government or military ID) are required for entrance into the building. Members of the public planning to attend must notify Margaret Morrissey, Office of the Historian (202-663-3529) no later than December 10, 2009, to provide date of birth, valid government-issued photo identification number and type (such as driver’s license number/state, passport number/country, or US government ID number/agency or military ID number/branch), and relevant telephone numbers. If you cannot provide one of the specified forms of ID, please consult with Margaret Morrissey for acceptable alternative forms of picture identification. In addition, any requests for reasonable accommodation should be made no later than December 7, 2009. Requests for reasonable accommodation received after that time will be considered, but might be impossible to fulfill.

Questions concerning the meeting should be directed to Ambassador Edward Brynn, Executive Secretary, Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation, Department of State, Office of the Historian, Washington, D.C., 20520, telephone (202) 663-1123, (e-mail history@state.gov).

Jobs for Diplomatic Historians

The State Department's Office of the Historian has had its ups and downs lately, so I'm happy to see that they are hiring two new staff historians.

USAJOBS.gov has two GS-12 openings for historians listed today: vacancy announcement numbers PA-2010-0002 and PA-2010-0003.

I hope this signals a return to normality for the HO.

Next Meeting of the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation

It's that time again.

The Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation will meet in open session from 1:30 p.m. through 2:30 p.m. on Monday, September 14, 2009, in the Department of State, 2201 C Street NW, Washington, D.C., in Conference Room 1107, to discuss declassification and transfer of Department of State records to the National Archives and Records Administration and the status of the Foreign Relations series.

The public is invited to attend the open session. See the press release for details.

What Are the Wienies Hiding? Probably Very Little

A commenter on this post has a grievance with me and with the "history wienies at State." He makes a fair point, and I think it's worth replying to him here rather than in a comment to a comment.

"Anonymous" said:

So let me get this straight. First, under the "new, improved, Office of the Historian," the State Department fails to acknowledge the existence of a chapter on Uruguay. Then the "new, improved, Office of the Historian" changes its tune to lie about the existence of a chapter on Uruguay, lamely claiming that one was never done due to "space considerations." Then, the "new, improved, Office of the Historian," changes its tune yet again, but only after Steve Aftergood (author of the HNN piece) takes them to task over this issue.

The bottom line here is that after 8 years of progressively improving openness, the first public act by the "new, improved, Office of the Historian" is to lie to the American people and, by extension, violate the spirit and letter of the law. Acting General Editor Dr. William B. McAllister's terse reply to Aftergood's entreaties comes off like that of an irritated child who just got caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar. This is a sign of "good management"??? What's next? More important, what else are the history wienies at State hiding?

To review the matter of the revised Preface to the new FRUS volume on Latin America during the Nixon years, here's the current, revised, text with my bolding:

This volume includes documentation on U.S. relations with Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. Coverage of El Salvador and Honduras is limited to a chapter on the U.S. response to the 1969 “Soccer War” between those two Central American countries. Chapters on Bolivia and Uruguay will be added once they have completed the declassification process. Due to space constraints, relations with Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and the colonies and overseas territories of European powers are not covered here. Documentation on relations with Chile between 1969 and September 1973 will be published in a separate volume.

The "history wienies" (which, BTW, I think would look great on office coffee mugs) changed two things from the original version. First, a future chapter on Uruguay is now promised upon completion of the declassification process. And, indeed, the FRUS volume's index now has placeholders for both Bolivia and Uruguay, whereas the original version had one only for Bolivia. Secondly, the revised text mentions the Caribbean countries and overseas European territories that will not be covered due to space constraints. Evidently, there really are such things as space constraints in electronic publications, although I'm sure that wasn't the reason for omitting Uruguay in the original release of the volume.

The bottom line is that when the Office of the Historian (HO) was challenged about the absence of a Uruguay chapter, it said mea culpa and added a placeholder for it, just as it had already done for Bolivia. Why didn't the HO do that in the first place? I don't know, but I doubt it was because there was a conspiracy to lie about something. To believe that, I'd have to believe that there is something about U.S. foreign relations with Uruguay between 1969 and 1972 that's even more sensitive, more embarrassing, or more highly classified than there is in our relations with Chile or Bolivia during those same years. I'd also have to believe that those devious history wienies expected that critics like Anonymous just wouldn't notice the absence of any mention of Uruguay. That's too much for me to believe. I can more easily believe in bureaucratic oversights, slips, and screw-ups.

We're simply going to have to wait for the declassification process to run its course before we see all the FRUS material on Latin America in those years. It's no secret that the CIA is the main obstacle to the clearance of material in the FRUS series. You can read the arguments for and against CIA openness with the HO here. The policy conflicts between the CIA and the HO are regularly aired in public with each publication of the minutes of the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation (like this one from last December). I'm sure the declassification process is much more frustrating for the wienies in the HO than it is for interested onlookers like Anonymous and me.

How interesting will that classified material be, once it is declassified and published? Maybe we'll all be absolutely blown away by earth-shaking revelations that change our current understanding of diplomatic history. Or maybe it will be nothing but a big yawn-fest over stuff that we've long known about from unofficial sources and memoirs. As it happens, I've read some of the CIA's internal and classified histories of key events in South and Central America, and they were, at best, only mildly interesting. Deep, dark, official secrets are always best when you don't know them and can still imagine that they must be something spectacular. Once you get access to them, well, my reaction has always been like that old Peggy Lee song, "is that all there is?"