My posting about the corporate archivist drew a private message which
implied that I was siding with the corporate archivist's criticism of
SAA.  His original posting referred to some issues that came up last
year with SAA and its journal.

I'm not a big fan of caveats, but let me say that I do not know enough
about the SAA-related controversies referred to elsewhere in the
corporate archivist's posting to take a position on them.  I was not a
member of SAA when the controversies he described occurred last year.
Sorry if that sounds mystifying to most of you - I do realize there
only are a few of you who subscribe both to the Recmgmt-L and to the
Archives List.  This caveat is intended for the few that read both
Lists.  The rest of my posting is intended for anyone who reads the
Recmgmt-L.  But be forewarned -- the story I tell is long by Recmgmt-L
standards.

I do believe that people need to know as much as possible about what
they are getting into before they accept jobs in the private or public
sector.  I've received off list messages from people who have told me
that they were shocked or angered by things they were asked to do on
the job.  Had they known more about the environment, they might have
steered clear of those jobs.  Obviously, some of the problems are not
suitable for discussion in a public forum, especially for people who
want to continue working in those fields.  Sometimes you just learn
things the hard way.

Because I once worked at NARA, I can caution people that -- in a worst
case scenario -- positions with its Presidential Libraries may place
you in uncomfortable positions.   The rest of NARA generally is a
comfortable place to work and I would recommend it to anyone.  As I've
mentioned, my late sister was a senior archivist in NARA's Records
Declassification division, specializing in reviewing
security-classified State Department records.  She _loved_ her job.  I
also know people who have had very happy and satisfying careers on the
records appraisal side of NARA.

I, on the other hand, worked on screening for public access the Nixon
tapes as an archivist at NARA from 1976 to 1990.  This isn't the place
to debate the Nixon records act, a statute which called for the release
of "the full truth" about "governmental abuses of power" at the
"earliest reasonable date."  The fact is, that is what the law told us
to do and we archivists worked to comply.  The point of my posting is
that some issues relating to  NARA or Presidential records have no
relation to politics.  (In fact, as you read the following story,
forget the political party Nixon represented.  Feel free to substitute
for Nixon's lawyers the names of any former President's lawyers of
either party.  The issue is power, not politics)  Rather, they relate
to broader issues such as separation of powers, bills of attainder, the
transition from private to public control of White House records, etc.

Imagine being asked to screen and identify the records that show a
powerful individual at his very worst, as the Nixon records statute
asked us to do.  Think most people in Nixon's position would sit back
and say, ok, go ahead and release the stuff about me while I am alive?
Nah, that's not how things work.  Understandably, the former President
battled disclosure to the full extent of his power.

NARA was involved in several court cases with Nixon.  I testified in
one of them in 1992.  As attorneys do, Nixon's lawyers first attacked
the regulations implementing the Nixon records statute, then, when that
failed to halt disclosures from Nixon's records, they went after the
archivists who had worked to apply it.  They really went after my
former immediate supervisor, a man I respected greatly.

Seymour Hersh wrote about the court case in 1992, drawing on my
testimony and that of other present and former archivists.  Hersh noted
of my boss that his "three days of testimony turned ugly, with Stan
Mortenson, the attorney for Nixon, in effect putting [the supervisory
archivist] on trial by repeatedly asking questions implying that he was
biased against Nixon."

The lawyers were powerful and they used steamrolling tactics.  That's
the way things work sometimes.  But I thought my boss didn't deserve
being attacked.  I assessed the risks associated with my own testimony
and concluded that the fairness issue mattered more to me than the
power of the former President's lawyers.  When I was called to testify,
I fought back.  I spoke up strongly to defend my boss and sparred with
the former President's lawyers.  You see, I knew that my boss was a
Vietnam veteran who had voted for Nixon.  In 10 years of working with
him, I had heard nothing to indicate he was biased against Nixon.  To
my knowledge, to this day, he never has voted for a Democrat, but only
for Republican and Libertarian candidates.  Hersh later referred to
some of that in his article.  To me, it seemed cowardly of the lawyers
to focus on my boss's supposed but nonexistent bias against Nixon
rather than focusing on statutory issues.  But I understand that
lawyers often work that way.

My boss's personal political views and previous votes for Nixon had
_nothing_ to do with his work with the Nixon tapes.  He was a man of
great moral courage who followed the law and screened Nixon's materials
with all the objectivity the public depends on.  He didn't deserve to
be brutalized by lawyers.  I'm glad I was one of the few people to
stand up strongly to defend my boss.  I would have had more respect for
the lawyers if they had taken the high road of arguing about the
constitutionality of statutes instead of trying to tear down my boss.
But anyone who has watched a high profile court case knows that that is
not always the road that lawyers choose.

My boss left NARA soon after the court case and had a very successful
career as Chief Archivist at the Marine Corps Historical Center at the
Navy Yard in Washington.  After the case had ended (NARA eventually
settled the lawsuit after Nixon died in 1994), I started speaking up in
public forums in an effort to protect archivists from going through
what my boss had gone through.

In 1996, a spokesman for the Nixon estate challenged something I had
said in a published letter to the editor in the Chronicle of Higher
Education.  He referred to me as not being a "pro-Nixon Republican,"
assuming from my stance on the Nixon records that I was anti-Nixon and
that my motives were political.  But I could prove otherwise.  I worked
on Nixon's presidential campaign and am pictured in The Inaugural Story
(1969).  And I later interviewed for a job at the White House.  In
2004, I asked the National Archives to release from the Nixon White
House's files any documents about me.

Nixon's files contain many letters of support from me and my sister on
the Vietnam war and other issues when we were in college.  My "name
file" showed that I had applied for a job with the Nixon White House in
September 1973 -- after the Senate held its hearings on Watergate.
Because I had not yet found a job when I graduated with a degree in
history, my sister Eva and I initially volunteered to help out in the
office of Sen. Howard H. Baker (R - Tenn.), vice chairman of the Senate
Watergate committee.

The released Nixon White House name file included notes stating I was a
Republican in October  1973.  A Nixon White House official checked me
out and noted, "Per Gary [Sisco] - Exec. Asst.  Sen. Baker - Maarja was
1 of twin[s] who worked for Baker - bright girl - final product good -
good worker."  The WH offered me a job but I had to turn it down
because I just had started work at a Federal agency.

For the last 15 years, I have described myself as an Independent.  No
one needs to know how I vote and you never will.  My personal views as
a partisan are irrelevant to and unrelated to my present and past
professions.  However, many people have assumed that they know my
political views because I have been a strong advocate of archival
independence and have argued for the proper handling of Nixon's
records.  It is dangerous to stereotype people as acting politically
when they are not and I would caution you not to do it. .

My point is that sometimes people advocate positions for ethical or
professional rather than political reasons.  Many of you are
uninterested in the archival side of NARA, that's fine, you don't have
to be.  I'm not offended by that.  But for those who are interested in
looking in the window of my former world, or considering the non-RIM
challenges the U.S. Archivist faces, there should be a way to share
stories in public forums about what happens at agencies such as NARA.
Or, as the corporate archivist did, to discuss what survival means in
his world.  If we aren't allowed to talk about this stuff, how else can
we learn about each other's worlds?

Some of you move between the worlds of archives and RIM, and between
the public sector and the private sector, taking jobs in one or the
other during the course of your careers.  If nothing else, young
professionals entering the world of RIM or archives need to understand
more what they will face in the workplace, so they will know which jobs
they are suited for and where they may be uncomfortable.

To those of you who bothered to make their way through my LONG posting,
my thanks for your patience.

Maarja

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