Given the many presidential norms we've seen shattered over the past two years, we mourn the loss of someone who brought dignity, respect, and civility to the office of the Presidency. Though not loved by many at the time, eventually President George H.W. Bush significantly gained in popularity. He had the misfortune of following President Ronald Reagan, a very well liked President, and having to also eat his words on “Read my lips, no new taxes.” But since that time, the admiration and respect for both him and First Lady Barbara Bush have only grown. With their passing so close together, we have in a very short time lost two who set a high bar for public service.

My experience with President Bush included work with his Presidential Library, where I was involved heavily with setting up record storage on a temporary basis and working on the construction of the Library to ensure compliance with federal law. Here are some reflections on that time, while I was serving as Archivist of the United States.

Early in the process, the project’s lead archivist developed a relationship with the former President to the point that when the Library opened, Bush 41 wanted him as Library Director. I tried telling the President and his advisors that my man was a very good archivist but not a leader with the skills they would want and need. 41 held out and I appointed that archivist only to be contacted a short time later asking that he be removed. In their experience, he was not capable of working with the power players at Texas A&M, the Library’s home, as well as the many rich and successful supporters of the Foundation.

A special plus for me was the opportunity to get acquainted with Brent Scowcroft. A key member of the Bush 41 administration, he was the lead advisor to the President in his retirement and the person assigned to work with me. I came to know him as not just a person of many talents but the highest of character as well. Since then, he has continued to be active in public service, setting a high standard that too few achieve.

George Herbert Walker Bush will be remembered not only for his lifetime of quality public service but the way he carried out his responsibilities. Given the passage of time, I think history will be very kind to a man and a President who took seriously his role to serve.

In the passing of Karl Weissenbach, Lynn and I lost a good friend and a wonderful former colleague, and our country lost a great public servant. For ten years, Karl was the Director of the Eisenhower Presidential Library, retiring last year. While at the Library, he brought many new initiatives that opened the records to a much larger audience and raised the visibility and learning around President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s life and service.

When I was at the National Archives, he ran the Nixon Project, managing the staff that spent years dealing with the Nixon Tapes and other records. Between the historians, access advocates, lawyers, and the Nixon family, this was very challenging work. Karl was careful, dedicated, and maintained a steadfast commitment to serving the American people. I salute him as an outstanding public servant, at a time when in both Topeka and Washington D.C. public service is disrespected by many, in favor of political friends and financial supporters.

Karl is an excellent example of why career public servants are so valuable. Because he made public service his career, he fine-tuned his skills to more effectively manage and lead workers to serve the Eisenhower Library's mission. When career service is under-appreciated, the system never develops the expertise or the continuity that is so important for wisely serving the public interest. In Kansas, for example, Governor Brownback led the change where now, when a state public employee leaves or retires, the administration can appoint any political friend they want and, in the process, takes that position away from the civil service. And, at the federal level, there have already been plenty of examples of the Trump administration either subverting or showing blatant disrespect for the experts who carry out the people’s business within the various departments. In no way can this action be called good government.

All who knew Karl mourn his passing and share with his wife Jessica and family our condolences. And here’s to a future where more individuals can bring the same level of respect, expertise, and commitment to their careers in public service.

With all the advancements and blessings of technology comes some curses as well. As I reflect more on the Politico article, “Trump Inspires Encryption Boom in Leaky D.C.,” the more concerned I become. The difference between having and not having records in today’s world is the difference between an environment for democracy to survive and thrive through public trust and government accountability versus being drug into total chaos. If government workers can use private devices to exchange messages that self-destruct and leave no record of the communications, it won’t be just history that is lost.

Twenty two years ago, I became the eighth Archivist of the United States, appointed by President Clinton. I followed in the footsteps of a series of academic historians who saw records to be of value almost exclusively for the writing of history. With their focus on history, they had their eyes and interests on permanent records, primarily paper, that would be available long after their creation. Worrying about new electronic records would be left for someone else to deal with many years later.

So it shouldn’t have been too shocking that one of my first lessons at that job was that the National Archives Records Administration (NARA) did not even consider email a record. By my third month, we made it official that emails were records and determined that they must be kept for a period of time, but for the President, all emails would be permanent records. Needless to say, this brought challenges not only to NARA but to all Federal agencies creating email records.   

Next, NARA expanded the understanding of reasons why records are kept, preserved, and made available—​to include holding government accountable as well as protecting rights and entitlements. Regarding accountability, without records being kept, how do citizens, elected officials, and government leaders raise issues of concern for action and resolution? An example I recall was a developer in Virginia who was taken to court and on the way to prison for not following Corp of Engineer guidelines. That is, until records were found that it was the Corp’s fault and not the developer. Regarding entitlements, for example, how could veterans successfully apply for their benefits if there was no record to prove he or she were honorably discharged?

Now fast forward to today, with technology being put to use to basically deny future use and access to records after their initial purpose was served. Before I go on, it is important to distinguish encryption (scrambling of sensitive communications for security purposes) from disappearing messages. Encrypted messages can still be archived as long as someone retains the decryption key necessary to unscramble the message. But messages that self-destruct or automatically erase are difficult, if not impossible, to record.

Keep in mind that it is only natural that many in government today would be happy to know that certain records were never going to come back to haunt them. This is not a hypothetical problem. It is real. And it has become part of daily life in a chaotic and leaky White House that already had problems with public trust and is currently the subject of ongoing investigations where records will be needed to uncover the truth. It is also worth noting that, while some of these encryption apps have reportedly been used by officials to communicate with the press or leak illuminating information, this practice becomes a double-edged sword when it either undermines our national security interests or means taking every White House staffer at their word that they are not using these applications to conduct any official business—​knowing the contents of their messages will disappear automatically and there will be no “paper trail” of said communications ever taking place.

So now, perhaps more than ever, it is essential that the records they are creating are kept and made accessible as appropriate. Only then will the legislative and judicial branches of government have access to the records to be able to hold government executive branch officials accountable for any wrongdoing that has taken place or could in the future.

I know for a fact that my friends at NARA are scrambling to do everything they can to address the encryption issue. I fear the problem will be not having the resources to carry out their responsibility under the Federal Records Act. This is much more than a government problem, for it will be all too often citizens who are negatively impacted. I know for now this issue is a long way from the midwest and our current challenges, but destruction of records really needs to be something we take very seriously. If records are being destroyed in Washington D.C. today, how will anyone be held accountable and how will history be accurately written? ​

In 2000, during my tenure as Archivist of the United States, the National Archives and Records Administration was in the midst of slicing (literally) the Nixon Watergate tapes (recorded on cheap tape that is now disintegrating). In order to satisfy a Federal Court settlement between the government and the Nixon Estate, the records were to be separated into categories, including: federal records, presidential records, classified records, political records, and personal records. Further complicating things, several (or all) of these different record types with different ownership could routinely be found within the span of one conversation on the tapes—​as one could imagine during a conversation between President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, for example.

The procedures and regular deadlines were all under court supervision. In the summer of 2000, in the middle of the Presidential race between Governor George W. Bush of Texas and Vice President Al Gore, we were scheduled for an August public release of the next set of Watergate Tapes. Given the complexity of the task at hand, as August approached, it was clear that we were not going to meet the schedule, and after re-negotiation with the court, the scheduled release was pushed back to early October.

That’s when I got notice that the Bush campaign was not very happy with the schedule. The message was carried by Jim Cicconi who was a top executive with AT&T as well as a member of my Archives Foundation Board and a friend. From a political perspective, it was a logical request, knowing that some of the tapes would include White House visits by George Herbert Walker Bush, who was the Chairman of the Republican National Committee at that time. Not knowing for sure what had been said and not wanting to hand Gore ammunition at the end of the campaign, they pressured me to delay the release.

My refusal to give in and delay the opening was based on two points. First, the Archives was under court order to release the tapes as soon as realistically possible, and that was not a secret from the press or the interested public. Secondly, I argued that regardless of what was on the tapes, delaying would create an even larger problem for them with the press and allow the Gore campaign to speculate on what was being obviously covered up to avoid hurting the Bush effort.
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I stayed with my position, and the set of Nixon tapes came out on time in early October with no fuss. Aside from the usual foul language, there was nothing on the tapes that would impact the campaign. Although, as close as the race was, it’s hard to know exactly what would have happened if I had caved and delayed the opening.

It has been ten years since I left the National Archives and Records Administration, after spending ten years as Archivist of the United States. Twenty years ago this month, I arrived in Washington D.C. having been nominated by President Clinton, introduced to the Senate by Senator Bob Dole, and then confirmed less than one month from the day I was nominated. I was honored to serve as the Archivist of the United States. It was quite an experience and, as I have been reflecting on those years, I wanted to share (in no particular order) ten of the top experiences made possible by the many people I worked with at the time. 

• Meeting Julie Nixon Eisenhower my first week on the job, June 1995, which eventually led to settlement of decades-long legal fights on opening the Nixon records, including the Nixon Tapes.

• In September of my first year, making the decision that emails were records, something hard to believe today but, at that time, a matter of considerable controversy.

• Building a Foundation that became a huge partner in sharing the legacy of our nation’s records with the public as a resource and educational vehicle for our history and the importance of records as evidence of that history.

• Renovating the downtown main archives building, and with private money, building the National Archives Experience, the multifaceted public interactive education and exhibit space and the Charles Guggenheim Center for the Documentary Film, bringing the Archives experience in new ways to millions of visitors.

• Making huge progress at that time on the Electronic Records Archives and dealing with the onslaught of electronic records coming to the Archives.

• Working with two former Presidents (Bush 41 and Clinton) to help set up and build their Presidential Libraries as well as working with other Presidents and their families all the way back to Hoover.

• Building what is today called the National Archives Catalog, the Archives’ first online catalog of its holdings across the country with uploaded digital images of records, making our nation’s records for the first time available to anyone with access to the internet.

• Successfully holding off the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in its effort to move the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and the Bill of Rights - our nation’s founding records - to the Smithsonian. 

• Being an advocate at the national level, including with Congress and the White House, for the critical importance of our nation’s records and archives and their role in protecting the rights of our citizens, ensuring government accountability, and documenting our national experience. 

• Serving as not only a leader but a learner, working with many outstanding career public servants throughout the National Archives, its Presidential Libraries, and its nationwide network of archives and records centers as we built and implemented a 10-year agency wide strategic plan that, at the time, went a long way in modernizing the National Archives and Records Administration.