I knew him in a different context. In the 111th congress, he directed a project for the senate libraries. It was in that context that i got to know him. I will never forget the feeling of relief i had when anthony brought the experiment of the subcommittee and decided the budget to come on a tour. As the librarian, i got to give the tour. Correct me if used some very colorful language, and i walked through the library and explained to him how we were going to turn what had been a private library into a nonprofit library. It was a joy in disbelief for them to see. It was a joy to know they were supportive of what we were doing. I will always be grateful to him for that. I am equally grateful, and thats why he is here today, that he took time to write a book. He was working on this before he started working for the government. Some people go into government and then write a book. But he wrote this before. There are not many people in our country who think deeply about the Library System. Anthony is the only one who writes having seen the inside. That is a very important perspective. Most of us, we see the president ial Library System with bifocals. Some use the lower part of the archives and youre looking at the archives and you have a set of the check dips. Objectives. If you are a director or a student youre looking up at the museum. It is amazing how often what you see in the bottom and top are very different. There are people who try to make sense of that total view and try to bring together the museum and the archives. Anthony is one of them and he has some very important thoughts on what to do. 1 million americans benefit from this system every year. This system can be made much better and i look forward to hearing from him. Im thankful you are here today and i think cspan for coming today as well. Once we get to the question and answer section, please use the microphone over there. Thanks a lot. Welcome anthony. Welcome anthony. Thank you tim, thank you to your staff in the library and the center for the United States and the cold war for having me. I wrote a book about president ial libraries. I know what youre thinking, why did he write a book about president ial libraries . In about an hour, you might be thinking, why did he only write one book about president ial libraries what are president ial libraries . They are legislatively, archives for records in materials. Materials. That is the original intent. They have become self commemorating monuments for of history and costing hundreds of millions of dollars and furthering the Political Goals of political parties. Most people who visit a president ial library dont know that. They see the museum, they see a public event but they dont see the archives and most people who research in the archives dont see the museums. If youre on a tight travel budget, youre not going to spend time going to both. Ive had museum goers tell me, so what if the records arent open in the archives, its a great museum. Ive had researchers say so what if the museums are skewed, i have access to the records. The problem is most researchers are working with records before the president ial records act came into effect with president reagan. I know hoover scholars and roosevelt scholars who were very happy about the president ial library because many of those records are open. They dont know whats going on in the museum and dont pay much attention to it. They can produce their phds in their documents and their documentaries. But if your phd student now looking up the cold war or afghanistan or the first gulf war, then if you want to post your phd study when youre in your late 70s, you might have a chance. No one alive today will see the opening of the barack obama president ial records because it will take over 100 years to open them. That goes for goes for the records of Ronald Reagan, George H Dubya bush, bill clinton and george w bush. Thats not because of legislation or the physical limitations of our universe. Its because policymakers have decided to place more emphasis on commemoration and their version of history then preserving the records. Franklin roosevelt began the Library System because he wanted one single, simple place to preserve and make available his records and materials. He was the worlds, he had the Worlds Largest him collection at the time. He had a worldclass naval ship collection as well. He opened his library in the summer of 1941, and so it is not coincidental that he wanted to build a bomb proof, fireproof building for his papers. Thats not what the new libraries are. They are interactive displays and monuments to president s that are still alive and they dont benefit from Scholarly Research because the records arent open. The Ronald Reagan very opened in 1991 and fewer than 40 of the records are open. Its are open. Its going to take decades and decades. That is what they are. Why i wrote a book about them is that so much of what i read is either celebratory or incomplete or downright inaccurate. I started out wanting to write about, kind of kind of a simple history of president ial libraries. Get it all down, and say what they are. While while i was researching i came across some difficulties. For example, the National Archives stop me from accessing 40 years of their own records about president ial libraries, and for two years they fought me. The first only they werent available then they told me they needed them for daily operations. These are records going back 40 years but they needed them for every day and thats why they werent available. Then they encourage me to file freedom of information act requests and i did. I went through my goldilocks phase and i sent in my first request and it was denied because it was too big. I was i was encouraged to narrow it. I narrowed it and it was denied for being too narrow and there werent enough records requested. Then i stumbled across across something that changed the course of the book and really change the course of my life. I want to read a passage here because i want to get this part right because, first of all, i dont want people to read the book and get the idea that the staff level archivists that are working to preserve and open these records are the problem, because theyre not. They are the are the treasures of the Library System. Theres not a single instance where i wasnt given access to everything a staff level activist could give me access to. It was the higherlevel officials that didnt want to have the dirty laundry aired. Youll read in these pages bout a president of the United States who by load violates the law. For some, some, that might not be surprising, but maybe this president violated the law and tried to build his library on a prime piece of federal property that is prohibited. Whats more surprising is the story had never been recorded. I discovered i discovered the information in fall of 2006 who were researchers in room 2000. I have consulted with them for every day for weeks. At the end of each day i would ask are you sure those are all the records you have about the origins of that library. They would pretend to be exasperated with me asking the question one more time, at least i think they were pretending, and answer yes. It became a bad running joke. Finally when we thought we had exhausted all the records in question that were there at the time, i asked one more question as i was out the door, through the window of a consultation room where they worked, i saw them exchange a look except for those boxes marked Nixon Library at camp pendleton. They didnt end up building there so it wouldnt be any help for you. That answer changed everything and help me discover the story. Richard nixon illegally grabbed 4000 acres from the United States base in camp milton. He tried to build his library on the most spectacular piece of property the federal government owns. Had he he not encountered one small bump in the road and had to resign from office, he would have built the library there. How a president pics where the President Library will be is an interesting process. The Barack Obama Library will be located in chicago. You might imagine finding that information encouraged me to look for other Site Selection information to see what i could find and thats where the trouble began because the National Archives cap denying my request. Finally i said, i have to get some official answers. I made an appointment to interview the official in charge of the system. She told me the reason my requests were being denied for records about the Site Selection process for present president ial libraries is that they played no role in that process and therefore since they played no role, they held no records. That was it. That was the official, on tape answer. That was a friday afternoon in june of 2008. The following monday, i received a fedex from the National Archives. This was in request response to an earlier request. Inside was this memo, and all zoom in for you to see and show you a little closer and its a talking point memo in 1997 given to the archivist of the United States in advance of his first meeting with president clinton to talk about president ial libraries. Then we go to the next page and you can see briefing points for the clinton president ial library. In fact, if you look at the bottom bullet point, now i can play a key role and in assisting the president to make a decision. If you go go to the next page you will see it says now that they have a long history of assisting the president in this process. Now how do we know that they were of it aware of that 11 years earlier. I would like like to give her the benefit of the doubt were not for the fact that she was not the author of that memo. I went to the general counsel of the National Archives and said, this could be exhibit a in my lawsuit or you could give me access to the records of the reagan, bush, and Clinton Library selection process. That weekend weekend i got 500 pages of how the president s decided to build their libraries and where they decided to build them. The reason they didnt want me to see them was the same reason they didnt want me to see and investigate them when i was working in congress. There is a tremendous amount of politics and the tremendous amount of money in the system, and they would like the public just to think these are great places like hyde park new york, independence new misery and its where real americans celebrate history. For the early libraries thats true, but for the more recent libraries there are two problems. One is that president s write their own history and no president is going to admit to problems, mistakes, theyre going to try to spin something. The Reagan Library took a different path. Most places, most president ial libraries have met some controversies with spend or explanations, but the Reagan Library dealt with the biggest scandal by ignoring it and by not having it at all in the museum for over 20 years and that was their way of doing with dealing with it. The other problem is that these records arent available yet. If if a president writes the history of an historian and researchers and students can look at those records, then we can have a public debate. But we cant have that because the records arent available, and because the president s write their own history. Now the Nixon Library began in controversy and it continued in controversy. It was the only library to be operated privately for 17 years. The process is that a president creates a foundation, raises the money, money, filled library according to architectural standards and then hands it over to the government and kind of donates it to the government. Then the government operates that library on behalf of the american people. We spent 1 billion a a decade operating these libraries. There are over a dozen legislative authorities that require the archivist to preserve records, make them available. Theres one theres one mention of museums in the law. Theres over a dozen about the archives but theres just one about the museums. Yet so much focus, energy, energy and effort is placed in commemoration, in these exhibits and in these public exhibits that celebrate president s that the archival, i know tim and i had discussed some things about this and i make a case from the congressional side that if we didnt put the money into the exhibits, we might be able to put them in the archives. From his president ial Library Director position, although he has pointed out and corrected me , the congress wouldnt give more money to the archives, they would just take it away. But ive come to the conclusion that, i started out thinking there might be a way to reform the libraries and to balance out nonpartisan history with access to records, but ive come to the conclusion that the National Archives should get out of the Museum Business. Weve had debates for decades on whether we should support president ial libraries. Every time we we do, in 1955 in 19741978 2006, we talk about the archive. We havent had a National Debate over whether the National Archives should be in the Museum Business and we havent had a congressional havent had a congressional debate about it either. About 25 of the National Archives that it goes to the president ial libraries. They are just under 500 million pages of records in the president ial libraries and just over 11 billion pages in the National Archives. Yet 25 of the budget goes there. But i guess the question is, what does it matter . What does it matter if president ial libraries dont tell the truth about their president s . What what does it matter of a phd student has to find different research. We lose great opportunities to learn from the many mistakes made if we dont open these documents. Now according to these libraries it appears president s no longer make mistakes. We no longer learn from their mistakes. What if the Kennedy Library had addressed their election issues . Has a president not entered an election in less than truthful times . What if the Clinton Library had been more open about personal character and its impact on moral leadership . If that depends on what the definition of is is. They gave us clear skies and healthy ford initiatives that led to the promise that said if you like your Health Care Plan you can keep your Health Care Plan what if the Reagan Library had examines the difficulty of National Principles and security challenges. If the Library Library had taught us about the seriousness of succession crime in an open insist see her sincere process. What if the Johnson Library had been candid about vietnam and honest about how lbj squandered a chance for social change in southeast asia. His quest for greatness he lost the war in vietnam and on poverty. He lost the best chance for social change and the argument argument for social agenda. Ultimately he lost his presidency. He escalated from 16000 advisors when he took the flight to air force one in dallas. We couldve learned a great deal about what vietnam cost us in the country and the world yet no president ial libraries offers those. So iraq, afghanistan and so on until we and the president s we elect lead us. I think it matters. Its actually just over 2 Million People visit the president ial libraries each year and in some states the president ial libraries produce the components for those states schools in teaching them about their president s. Some of those residential libraries that educational component is founded by the president ial foundation. Are you going to give 10 million to a president ial foundation that said the president was wrong or said the president did bad things or broke the law . Youre youre not gonna support that in Educational Programs or exhibits. Just one more thing here, does any of this ultimately matter . Does does the conduct of president s past have any relations to the conduct of the future president s . What they didnt do, what they they ought to have done make any difference in our lives . Does the way they present their history affect art regiment in creating our own future . If the answers is no weve both wasted a lot of time and we the country are wasting 1 billion a decade. We should stop wearing about what president s do. If we do that though, we should stop worrying about president s and how we elect them too. If it matters who was president and what he or she does then it matters and so to the records. I encourage you to visit a president ial library and read about them and tim mentioned an author that wrote a book about president ial temples and there is a lot more coverage of what a president ial library is and what it does and whether it belongs on a college campus. Now 30 years ago, stanford rejected the Reagan Library for having such an institution on a college campus. Now colleges seek and reach out and fight each other to get a president ial library. Is that the best use of a universities time and endowments and scholarship, especially when president ial libraries began with an archival building and a curiosity room to show fdrs gifts that he received in his items. Then they added bigger museums and in the mid to thousands the Reagan Library added a 90000 squ