Life takes us in many strange directions and wonderful discoveries. It never turns out the way we thought it would.
Thursday, February 29, 2024
The 4-Day Work Week Is "Catching On" In Britain!
Less Is More
UNITED KINGDOM
A majority of the companies in the United Kingdom that participated in the world’s largest four-day working week trial have retained the policy, according to a study published this month, highlighting the model’s long-term benefits, the Guardian reported.
Sixty-one companies took part in the pilot from June to December 2022. One year after the trial program ended, nearly 90 percent still operate on a four-day weekly schedule, while half have already decided to make it permanent.
The study – conducted by the think tank Autonomy with researchers from the universities of Cambridge, Salford, and Boston College – also analyzed the effects of a four-day week on companies and their staff, with mostly positive results, according to 55 percent of executives.
With 82 percent reporting improvements in staff well-being, nearly half said it resulted in increased productivity. The researchers added that “burnout and life satisfaction improvements held steady” with better work-life balance.
The pilot aimed at having the same level of work output with 20 percent less working time. On average, participating companies had a rhythm of 31.6 hours per week. They could choose to either grant employees a universal day off or stagger it among staff.
The report showed that the most successful way to introduce this extra day off was to make it “clear, confident, and well-communicated,” as well as involve both staff and managers in the decision-making process to create the new schedule.
Nonetheless, enacting a four-day working week posed some challenges. It made it more difficult to work with partners still operating on a regular schedule.
Matthew Percival from the Confederation of British Industries said reduced working time was not a “one size fits all answer” and required certain budgetary measures. He argued that other options, such as increasing pay or parental leave, had their merits too.
As Scotland this month started a similar trial in the public sector, Autonomy has demanded that the central government in London allow a generalization of the policy.
The government responded saying it had no plans to introduce such measures. However, a spokesperson announced “changes to our flexible working legislation in April, including the right to request flexible working from day 1 of a new job.”
Tuesday, February 27, 2024
Monday, February 26, 2024
Sunday, February 25, 2024
Mexico City Is Running Out Of Water
CNN
One of the world’s biggest cities may be just months away from running out of water
Laura Paddison, Jack Guy and Fidel Gutiérrez, CNN
Sun, February 25, 2024 at 2:30 AM PST·9 min read
49
Alejandro Gomez has been without proper running water for more than three months. Sometimes it comes on for an hour or two, but only a small trickle, barely enough to fill a couple of buckets. Then nothing for many days.
Gomez, who lives in Mexico City’s Tlalpan district, doesn’t have a big storage tank so can’t get water truck deliveries — there’s simply nowhere to store it. Instead, he and his family eke out what they can buy and store.
When they wash themselves, they capture the runoff to flush the toilet. It’s hard, he told CNN. “We need water, it’s essential for everything.”
Water shortages are not uncommon in this neighborhood, but this time feels different, Gomez said. “Right now, we are getting this hot weather. It’s even worse, things are more complicated.”
Mexico City, a sprawling metropolis of nearly 22 million people and one of the world’s biggest cities, is facing a severe water crisis as a tangle of problems — including geography, chaotic urban development and leaky infrastructure — are compounded by the impacts of climate change.
Years of abnormally low rainfall, longer dry periods and high temperatures have added stress to a water system already straining to cope with increased demand. Authorities have been forced to introduce significant restrictions on the water pumped from reservoirs.
“Several neighborhoods have suffered from a lack of water for weeks, and there are still four months left for the rains to start,” said Christian Domínguez Sarmiento, an atmospheric scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
Politicians are downplaying any sense of crisis, but some experts say the situation has now reached such critical levels that Mexico City could be barreling towards “day zero” in a matter of months — where the taps run dry for huge swaths of the city.
Historic lows
Densely populated Mexico City stretches out across a high-altitude lake bed, around 7,300 feet above sea level. It was built on clay-rich soil — into which it is now sinking — and is prone to earthquakes and highly vulnerable to climate change. It’s perhaps one of the last places anyone would choose to build a megacity today.
The Aztecs chose this spot to build their city of Tenochtitlan in 1325, when it was a series of lakes. They built on an island, expanding the city outwards, constructing networks of canals and bridges to work with the water.
But when the Spanish arrived in the early 16th century, they tore down much of the city, drained the lakebed, filled in canals and ripped out forests. They saw “water as an enemy to overcome for the city to thrive,” said Jose Alfredo Ramirez, an architect and co-director of Groundlab, a design and policy research organization.
An aerial view of Mexico City, one of the biggest megacities in the world. - Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg/Getty Images
An aerial view of Mexico City, one of the biggest megacities in the world. - Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Their decision paved the way for many of Mexico City’s modern problems. Wetlands and rivers have been replaced with concrete and asphalt. In the rainy season, it floods. In the dry season, it’s parched.
Around 60% of Mexico City’s water comes from its underground aquifer, but this has been so over-extracted that the city is sinking at a frightening rate — around 20 inches a year, according to recent research. And the aquifer is not being replenished anywhere near fast enough. The rainwater rolls off the city’s hard, impermeable surfaces, rather than sinking into the ground.
The rest of the city’s water is pumped vast distances uphill from sources outside the city, in an incredibly inefficient process, during which around 40% of the water is lost through leaks.
The Cutzamala water system, a network of reservoirs, pumping stations, canals and tunnels, supplies about 25% of the water used by the Valley of Mexico, which includes Mexico City. But severe drought has taken its toll. Currently, at around 39% of capacity, it’s been languishing at a historic low.
“It’s almost half of the amount of water that we should have,” said Fabiola Sosa-Rodríguez, head of economic growth and environment at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City.
In October, Conagua, the country’s national water commission, announced it would restrict water from Cutzamala by 8% “to ensure the supply of drinking water to the population given the severe drought.”
Just a few weeks later, officials significantly tightened restrictions, reducing the water supplied by the system by nearly 25%, blaming extreme weather conditions.
“Measures will have to be taken to be able to distribute the water that Cutzamala has over time, to ensure that it does not run out,” Germán Arturo Martínez Santoyo, the director general of Conagua, said in a statement at the time.
The exposed banks of the Villa Victoria Dam, part of the Cutzamala System, in Villa Victoria, Mexico on January 26, 2024. - Raquel Cunha/Reuters
The exposed banks of the Villa Victoria Dam, part of the Cutzamala System, in Villa Victoria, Mexico on January 26, 2024. - Raquel Cunha/Reuters
Around 60% of Mexico is experiencing moderate to exceptional drought, according to a February report. Nearly 90% of Mexico City is in severe drought — and it’s set to get worse with the start of the rainy season still months away.
“We are around the middle of the dry season with sustained temperature increases expected until April or May,” said June Garcia-Becerra, an assistant professor in engineering at the University of Northern British Columbia.
Natural climate variability heavily affects this part of Mexico. Three years of La Niña brought drought to the region, and then the arrival of El Niño last year helped deliver a painfully short rainy season that failed to replenish the reservoirs.
But the long-term trend of human-caused global warming hums in the background, fueling longer droughts and fiercer heat waves, as well as heavier rains when they do arrive.
“Climate change has made droughts increasingly severe due to the lack of water,” said UNAM’s Sarmiento. Added to this, high temperatures “have caused the water that is available in the Cutzamala system to evaporate,” she said.
Last summer saw brutal heat waves roil large parts of the country, which claimed at least 200 lives. These heat waves would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change, according to an analysis by scientists.
The climate impacts have collided with the growing pains of a fast-expanding city. As the population booms, experts say the centralized water system has not kept pace.
‘Day zero?’
The crisis has set up a fierce debate about whether the city will reach a “day zero,” where the Cutzamala system falls to such low levels that it will be unable to provide any water to the city’s residents.
Local media widely reported in early February that an official from a branch of Conagua said that without significant rain, “day zero” could arrive as early as June 26.
But authorities have since sought to assure residents there will be no day zero. In a press conference on February 14, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that work was underway to address the water problems. Mexico City’s mayor, Martí Batres Guadarrama, said in a recent press conference that reports of day zero were “fake news” spread by political opponents.
Conagua declined CNN’s interview requests and did not answer specific questions on the prospect of a day zero.
But many experts warn of a spiraling crisis. Mexico City could run out of water before the rainy season arrives if it carries on using it in the same way, Sosa-Rodríguez said. “It’s probable that we will face a day zero,” she added.
A woman washes the dishes in her home after receiving a free distribution of water in the Iztapalapa neighborhood on January 31, 2024. - Henry Romero/Reuters
A woman washes the dishes in her home after receiving a free distribution of water in the Iztapalapa neighborhood on January 31, 2024. - Henry Romero/Reuters
This doesn’t mean a complete collapse of the water system, she said, because the city isn’t dependent on just one source. It won’t be the same as when Cape Town in South Africa came perilously close to running totally dry in 2018 following a severe multi-year drought. “Some groups will still have water,” she said, “but most of the people won’t.”
Raúl Rodríguez Márquez, president of the non-profit Water Advisory Council, said he doesn’t believe the city will reach a day zero this year — but, he warned, it will if changes are not made.
“We are in a critical situation, and we could reach an extreme situation in the next few months,” he told CNN.
‘I don’t think anyone is prepared’
For nearly a decade, Sosa-Rodríguez said she has been warning officials of the danger of a day zero for Mexico City.
She said the solutions are clear: Better wastewater treatment would both increase water availability and decrease pollution, while rainwater harvesting systems could capture and treat the rain, and allow residents to reduce their reliance on the water network or water trucks by 30%.
Fixing leaks would make the system much more efficient and reduce the volume of water that has to be extracted from the aquifer. And nature-based solutions, such as restoring rivers and wetlands, would help provide and purify water, she said, with the added advantage of greening and cooling the city.
In a statement on its website, Conagua said it is undertaking a 3-year project to install, develop and improve water infrastructure to help the city cope with decreases in the Cutzamala system, including adding new wells and commissioning water treatment plants.
But in the meantime, tensions are rising as some residents are forced to cope with shortages, while others — often in the wealthier enclaves — remain mostly unaffected.
“There is a clear unequal access to water in the city and this is related to people’s income,” Sosa-Rodríguez said. While day zero might not be here yet for the whole of Mexico City, some neighborhoods have been grappling with it for years, she added.
Amanda Martínez, another resident of the city’s Tlalpan district, said for people here, water shortages are nothing new. She and her family often have to pay more than $100 for a tank of water from one of the city’s water trucks. But it’s getting worse. Sometimes more than two weeks can go by without water and she fears what may be coming, she told CNN.
“I don’t think anyone is prepared.”
CNN’s Laura Paddison and Jack Guy reported from London, and Fidel Gutiérrez reported from Mexico City.
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Saturday, February 24, 2024
The Economist Magazine Cover For 02/24/2024: Is Europe Ready For Putin?
The Economist
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FEBRUARY 24TH 2024
Cover Story newsletter from The Economist
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Cover Story
How we chose this week’s image
The Economist
Zanny Minton Beddoes
Editor-in-chief
Here is an alarming thought. When you combine the relentless hostility of Vladimir Putin towards the West with growing doubts about whether America should come to Europe’s defence—at least among Donald Trump and his followers—you soon reach the conclusion that Europe’s eastern borders now rival Taiwan as the most likely theatre for the first ever war between enemies armed with nuclear weapons.
That gloomy prospect was at the back of our minds this week as we took on the challenges facing European defence. Wreathed in acronyms like SACEUR, SHAPE and NATO, it is a theme that all too easily seems institutional and remote. What’s more, Europeans take pax Americana so much for granted that they overlook how immense a task it will be to rebuild the structures that have kept them safe since the second world war.
The job for our cover designers was to shake everyone out of their post-Soviet complacency.
One way to bring home the grim reality of a European war was to use a photograph. We have a Ukrainian soldier hauling an artillery shell near the front line in Kupiansk, in the east of the country. We have also plonked a squaddie thigh-deep in a Europe-shaped puddle.
This week marks the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and we have lots of coverage on the war. These ideas point to how NATO’s predicament has been aggravated by the fighting next door. Rapid Russian and Ukrainian advances in drone warfare, tested daily on the battlefield, risk leaving NATO behind the times.
However we worried that these covers would mislead readers into thinking that the war was our main focus.
Perhaps these ideas could signal the breadth of our coverage. Having relied for so many decades on America, many Europeans have never known anything but peace. Their guns are stuffed with daisies. Troops dressed for combat are armed with water pistols.
The message of these covers is that Europeans are ducking the hard choices Russian aggression demands. To make their continent safe means restoring its neglected military traditions, raising defence spending to a level not seen in decades, restructuring its arms industries and preparing for a possible war. The work has barely begun.
Another angle was to set out the context. Mr Putin has Europe in his sights. Having put the economy on a war footing, Russia’s president is spending 7.1% of GDP on defence. Within three to five years, he could be ready to take on NATO, as part of a grand scheme to wreck the alliance’s pledge that if one country is attacked, the others will be ready to come to its aid.
We tried introducing Mr Trump with his back turned. He is not alone. The Republican Party and parts of the security establishment are also becoming less committed to Europe. American defence is increasingly focused on the Pacific. Even if Joe Biden is re-elected, he may be America’s last instinctively Atlanticist president.
We have worked up the soldier. Europe depends utterly on NATO’s dominant military force. One American general recently complained that many of its armies would struggle to deploy even one full-strength brigade of a few thousand troops. In 2015-23 Britain lost five of its combat battalions. Many countries lack capabilities, such as transport aircraft, command and control, and satellites.
All that makes sense. However, we had our doubts. The water-pistol has the Ukrainian colours. Even if we fixed that, a lone European soldier risked seeming marginal to our readers in Asia and America.
This was much stronger. Mr Putin has options. He doesn’t have to launch a full-scale invasion to discredit NATO. Hybrid operations against one of the Baltic states may be enough to winkle out the differences in the alliance that undermine the idea that it would stick together.
An invasion, even on a small scale, rapidly leads down some very dangerous paths. Mr Putin has successfully used the threat of nuclear escalation to deter the West from giving Ukraine advanced conventional weapons. Eastern Europe would be vulnerable to the same tactics. If Mr Trump was unclear about America’s deterrent, could nuclear-armed Britain and France offer guarantees instead? Would they? If they did, would Mr Putin believe them?
This cover was the most direct. We have ditched the MAGA hat, which played a starring role in last week’s issue on the global conservative movement. In doing so we discovered that it is alarmingly easy to distinguish Mr Trump by his hair alone. From the back. In black and white.
Russia is much poorer and less populous than Europe. Mr Putin’s depredations make it a declining power. But the bear can still spread destruction and misery. The best place to stop Mr Putin is in Ukraine. Yet even if that succeeds, Europe will have to think very differently about defence. It needs to start now.
Cover image
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View large image (“Is Europe ready?”)
Backing stories
Caught between Putin and Trump (Leader)
Can Europe defend itself without America? (Briefing)
Europe faces a painful adjustment to higher defence spending (Finance and economics)
Does the American army’s future lie in Europe or Asia? (United States)
Also from The Economist
Friday, February 23, 2024
Thursday, February 22, 2024
Wednesday, February 21, 2024
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Monday, February 19, 2024
Sunday, February 18, 2024
Saturday, February 17, 2024
The Economist Magazine Cover For 02-17-2024
The Economist
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FEBRUARY 17TH 2024
Cover Story newsletter from The Economist
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Cover Story
How we chose this week’s image
The Economist
Zanny Minton Beddoes
Editor-in-chief
This week we had a worldwide cover about what is becoming a worldwide movement.
National conservatives are not to be confused with the conservatives of old: Reaganites, Thatcherites, country-club conservatives, knights of the shire, pro-business round-table types, traditionalists, neocons, national-security hawks and any of the other Tory tribes.
By contrast with all these, national conservatives are revolutionaries. They sense that they own conservatism now, and they may be right.
National conservatives do not see the West as a shining city on the hill, but as Rome before the fall—decadent, depraved and about to collapse amid a barbarian invasion. Rather than being sceptical of big government, they think ordinary people are beset by impersonal global forces and that the sovereign state is their saviour. Not content with resisting progress, they also want to destroy the remaining values of classical liberalism.
These fierce nationalists are increasingly part of a global movement with its own networks of thinkers and leaders bound by a common ideology. We have assembled some of their stars—Donald Trump and Viktor Orban, Giorgia Meloni and Marine Le Pen, and, hidden away, Binyamin Netanyahu and Geert Wilders. They share a contempt for multilateral organisations, migration and pluralism, especially the multicultural sort. All that anger in one place led us to consider a garland of barbed wire.
National conservatives are obsessed with dismantling institutions they think are tainted by wokeness and globalism. Here they are marching off, having seized slabs of the globe and turned them into flags. White on a powder-blue background calls to mind the UN, which is apt but has bland, righteous, globalist overtones that rather affirm the national conservatives’ arguments. We also tried a busier and more colourful world, but that was just confusing.
We were not done with flags. Some people expect national conservatism to blow over, but we think that is unforgivably complacent.
The figure perched on the nationalist summit points to their electoral strengths. Mr Trump is leading the polls in America. The far right is expected to do well in European parliamentary elections in June. In Germany in December the hard-right Alternative for Germany hit a record high of 23% in polls. In 2027 Ms Le Pen could well become France’s president.
The boot made of flags suggests something more sinister. When national conservatives win elections they set out to capture state institutions, including courts, universities and the independent press. In this way Mr Orban’s Fidesz party has cemented its grip on power in Hungary. In America Mr Trump has proclaimed his autocratic designs. Once institutions have been weakened, it can be hard to restore them.
The boot is a violent image. The barbed-wire world is more subtle. By subverting a one-world symbol of unity, it also gets at the paradox of a Global Anti-Globalists Alliance. This GAGA is not the national conservatives’ only contradiction. Italy’s prime minister supports Ukraine; Hungary’s has a soft spot for Russia; the Polish Law and Justice party is anti-gay; France’s far right is permissive. What binds them together is their hostility towards common enemies, including migrants (especially Muslims), globalists and all their supposed abettors.
We were taken by this chain-linked flag. It says that national conservatism is all about barriers—against immigrants and globalists, obviously, but also against progress itself. National conservatives are against things more than they are for them, so it is fitting that our flag of galvanised iron is made mostly of air.
This worked even better. We had to switch around the list of countries to keep up with the news—in Brazil Jair Bolsonaro is banned from politics. The MAGA hat signals precisely the sort of conservatism we are talking about. And stretching it captures the weirdness of a gang of international nationalists. One of the accusations national conservatives level at liberals and globalists is that they sneer at them. But a movement that cannot laugh at itself is asking to be made fun of.
Cover image
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View large image (“The right goes gaga”)
Backing stories
The growing peril of national conservatism (Leader)
“National conservatives” are forging a global front against liberalism (Briefing)
Also from The Economist
Friday, February 16, 2024
Thursday, February 15, 2024
Wednesday, February 14, 2024
Tuesday, February 13, 2024
Henry Kissinger's Personal Papers
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The Kissinger Telcons: The Story Behind the Story
kissinger and telcons collage
Advised that Telcons Were “Personal Papers,” Kissinger Expected to Keep Them When He Left Office
Likelihood of Bad Publicity and Lawsuits Changed His Mind
State Department Lawyer: “These records are not subject to the FOIA”
Published: Feb 13, 2024
Briefing Book #
852
Edited by William Burr
For more information, contact:
202-994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu
Subjects
Political Crimes and Abuse of Power
Secrecy and FOIA
Project
Henry Kissinger
Henry A. Kissinger
Henry A. Kissinger, national security adviser, 1969-1975, and Secretary of State, 1973-1977, believed that the transcripts of his telephone conversations were his personal property until the U.S. Government, facing a possible lawsuit from the National Security Archive, pressured him to return copies to the National Archives and the State Department in 2001. (Source: National Archives, Still Picture Branch, RG 59-S0)
Lawrence Eagleburger
Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Deputy Under Secretary of State for Management, circa May 1975. As keeper of the Kissinger telcons, he played a central role in carrying out Secretary of State Kissinger’s decisions concerning them. (Source: National Archives, Identifier: 175739317).
William Safire
William Safire, a speechwriter for President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew, shown at his White House desk, 30 January 1969. Safire became one of the subjects of FBI wiretaps aimed at “leakers.” In 1976, to learn more about White House decisions on eavesdropping, he sent what may have been the first FOIA request for Kissinger telcons. (Photo courtesy of Richard Nixon Presidential Library, WHPO-0143-22)
Washington, D.C., February 13, 2024 - State Department lawyers advised Henry Kissinger that transcriptions of his telephone conversations made when he served as national security adviser and Secretary of State were his personal papers and not “subject to disclosure under the FOIA,” according to recently declassified records from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). When Freedom of Information Act requests, the possibility of lawsuits, and bad publicity complicated Kissinger’s ability to maintain control over these records, the lawyers suggested that he could stash the so-called “telcons” away in the Library of Congress. Kissinger’s subsequent decision to do precisely that put them out of reach of the FOIA for decades, until the National Security Archive forced NARA and the State Department to begin to recover more than 15,000 pages of telcons in 2001.
The newly declassified documents, which come mainly from the files of the State Department Legal Adviser, shed new light on decisions taken during the early stages of Kissinger’s effort to shield the telcons from public scrutiny.
When Henry Kissinger joined the Nixon administration as national security adviser in January 1969, he routinely had his telephone conversations transcribed for his office files. That continued when he became Secretary of State in September 1973.[1] For the most part, only a few White House and State Department insiders knew of this practice or that Kissinger had taken the collection of White House transcripts with him to State, under the watchful eye of Deputy Under Secretary Lawrence Eagleburger.
New York Times columnist William Safire broke the news about the telcons in a 14 January 1976 column and also sent a FOIA request to the State Department for telephone transcripts from 1969-1971 relating to White House-directed wiretapping operations aimed at suspected leakers. Safire, a former Nixon White House staffer, had been one of the targets of the secret bugging operation and wanted to know more about Kissinger’s decisions.
Safire’s FOIA request, soon denied by the State Department, was the first challenge to Kissinger’s exclusive control of the telcon transcripts, which he saw as his personal property, in part based on the counsel of the State Department Legal Adviser. Nevertheless, the collection included records of his conversations with many government officials, diplomats, and journalists relating to his work as a senior Nixon administration official. Recognizing the sensitivity of recording conversations without the consent of the other party, Kissinger tried to keep the transcripts secret as long as he could. By the end of 1976, journalists had learned more about the telcons. Media outcry and a threatened lawsuit by historians prompted Kissinger to quick action: he donated the documents to the Library of Congress where they would be out of reach of FOIA requests.
Most of the documents posted today come from the records of State Department Legal Adviser Monroe Leigh, who held that position during 1975-1977. To get access to the 17 cartons of Leigh’s records, the National Security Archive made an Indexing on Demand request to NARA’s National Declassification Center, which completed their final processing and opened them in November 2023.
Even as many important collections remain unavailable—Eagleburger’s official files are still held at State, while Kissinger’s papers remain closed—these new documents from the Leigh collection provide fascinating insights on Kissinger’s initial efforts to keep the telcons secret.
Background
The detailed records that Kissinger made of his thousands of telephone conversations with U.S. presidents, senior government officials, diplomats, and foreign leaders, not to mention with journalists and academics, are critically important for understanding U.S. national security policymaking during two Republican administrations. While Kissinger found the telcons useful for keeping track of day-to-day official interactions, when a reporter learned about the telcons in 1971, Kissinger denied that he had any plans to use them for an eventual memoir (although he would do exactly that).[2]
The documents published today demonstrate how Leigh advised Kissinger to claim that the telcon transcripts were not government records but rather his personal property. While NARA challenged that claim in early 1977, it was not until 2001 that the U.S. government took action to recover the telcons as federal records.
Under threat of legal action by the National Security Archive in 2001, NARA and the State Department asked Kissinger to provide copies of the missing telcons. Unwilling to challenge a decision made by the Republican administration of President George W. Bush and hoping to avoid negative publicity, Kissinger complied. Soon NARA and the State Department initiated declassification reviews, in part prompted by National Security Archive FOIA requests for the State Department transcripts. (Telcons held at the Nixon Library could only be requested through mandatory declassification reviews.) By 2004, thousands of the telcons had been declassified. During the decades that followed, thousands more became available, with more declassified after the Archive filed a lawsuit with the State Department for hundreds of telcons that had been denied.
Safire knew about the telcons when he was at the Nixon White House, and by the time he filed his FOIA request he could back it up with indisputable evidence that the State Department had them. Information about the existence of the records had become public through a lawsuit filed against Kissinger and Nixon filed by another wiretap target, Morton Halperin, who had been an aide to Kissinger in 1969. In response to an early interrogatory in that legal action, Kissinger declared in 1973 that as a “routine government practice” he had his secretaries monitor his phone conversations so they could prepare transcripts. He further acknowledged that the records were kept at the State Department. Safire’s FOIA was followed by a few others in 1976—from The Washington Star, The Washington Post and other papers—but at the time none of the journalists disclosed the requests or the State Department’s denials, perhaps for competitive journalistic reasons.
1976 was also an election year, and Kissinger began giving some thought to what he should do with his White House and State Department papers, in part because he wanted to access them later to write his memoirs. In detailed reports prepared during the spring of that year, Monroe Leigh reviewed Kissinger’s options, ranging from leaving the records at the Department of State to making a donation to the National Archives. There were pros and cons to each of these options, but whatever course Kissinger took, Leigh supported Kissinger’s view that the telcons were his personal papers [See Documents 11 and 14]. He understood there were downsides to that position, such as the possibility of litigation, but did not consider the possibility that the National Archives would want to weigh in on the matter or acknowledge that it had the authority to do so.
The complications raised by either keeping the records at State or transferring copies to NARA may have made Kissinger interested in alternatives when he met for lunch with Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin in August 1976. Boorstin proposed that Kissinger donate his records to the Library’s Manuscript Division, which was a repository for the records of many former U.S. Secretaries of State [See Document 17]. That offer became the focus of Kissinger’s attention once the election results were in. As the donation was being considered, Monroe Leigh’s deputy, Michael Sandler, stipulated that, because they were either personal papers or copies of agency records, “there should not be any basis for access under the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts.” In any event, as a Congressional institution, the Library is immune from FOIA requests.
Even before the election, Kissinger took a significant step around 29 October 1976 by having the telcons secretly shipped back to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller’s estate in Tarrytown, New York. He had moved them there before, in 1973, with some later returned to the State Department. Consistent with this, when Kissinger donated his personal papers and copies of official papers to the Library, he excluded the telcons. That became publicly known on 21 December 1976, when The Washington Post’s Don Oberdorfer broke the story.[3] The revelation produced awkward questions at the State Department’s press briefing the following day, with reporters asking about the telcons, how they were prepared and used, and why Kissinger considered transcripts of his conversations with reporters or the Soviet ambassador to be his personal records.
Those circumstances and other problems persuaded Kissinger to change course. On 23 December 1976, Monroe Leigh warned Kissinger that the American Historical Association, represented by an Arnold & Porter attorney, would make Kissinger’s personal control of the telcons the subject of a lawsuit. [See Document 25] Litigation and ensuing court orders could have “very immediate consequences for your use of the telcons,” he advised, and a lawsuit would create more press attention. Leigh suggested that depositing the telcons at the Library of Congress could bring press speculation to an end and head off any litigation. The next day, Kissinger added the telcons to his deed of gift to the Library.
Leigh was overoptimistic about how the press would respond to the announcement of the second deed of gift on 28 December 1976, which noted that Kissinger wanted to prevent “misinterpretation,” prompting reporters to ask what, exactly, might be misinterpreted. Soon, Don Oberdorfer reported in The Washington Post on the secret storage of the telcons at the Rockefeller estate.[4]
The National Archives had an uneven record in persuading agencies to turn over records, but Archivist James Rhoads must have seen Kissinger’s well-publicized actions as a serious challenge. He tried to get access to the telcons so that archivists could determine whether they were government records, Nixon materials, or Kissinger’s personal papers. But it was too late. With the telcons now housed at the Library of Congress, Kissinger had effective control and declined the Archivist’s request. Kissinger’s denial was backed by a new legal opinion, also from Leigh, which found that the Archives should not have access to the telcons, in part because NARA was an “‘advocate’ of a restricted officials’ right to personal papers.” [See Document 32]
In February 1977, Rhoads renewed his request to Kissinger, now a private citizen, deploying strong legal arguments about the National Archives’ authority to inspect the telcons and determine their status. This time Kissinger relented a bit to the point of allowing the Archives to participate with the State Department in an inspection. Yet there was no meeting of the minds on which telcons were records and which of them were non-records [See Document 34]. The Archives asked Secretary of State Edmund Muskie to restart the inspection process and make its own appraisal. But when the State Department worked out a plan with the Justice Department to review the telcons, it excluded any role for the Archives. The National Archives, then a unit under the control of the General Services Administration, had no say in the matter.[5]
In the meantime, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, working with other organizations, filed FOIA requests to the State Department for the telcons and, after losing appeals, initiated litigation. The lawsuit was partly successful at the lower court levels, which ruled that the telcons from Kissinger’s tenure at the White House were immune from the FOIA but that the Library of Congress should return to the State Department the records from Kissinger’s time as Secretary of State. In 1980, the Supreme Court overturned those decisions, ruling that only agency heads, not private parties, had the authority to compel Kissinger to return the telcons. There the matter lay until the National Security Archive reopened the question in early 2001, promising litigation unless the National Archives and the State Department took action to compel Kissinger to return copies of the telcons from his years in office.[6]
Note: Thanks to Jonathan Garcia, George Washington University, for research assistance, and to David Langbart, U.S. National Archives, for his generous assistance with locating some of the documents used in this posting.
THE DOCUMENTS
I. Early Perspectives on the Telcons
01
Document 1
Untitled and unattributed memorandum, 14 March 1975, no classification markings
Mar 14, 1975
Source
National Archives, Department of State Records, Record Group 59 (RG 59), Records of Monroe Leigh, box 2, Chronological File 1975 (January-April 1975)
This early look at the legal problems associated with producing and keeping records of telephone conversations never mentioned Henry Kissinger by name (it is presented as a “hypothetical case”), but whoever wrote the memorandum may have had some inside knowledge of the Secretary’s record keeping practices. The author found that transcripts of conversations produced using government resources and prepared in order to keep track of government business could not be claimed as personal property or be destroyed by the official who created them. According to the author, “Only if the transcripts were made and used exclusively by the government official himself would there be any chance of claiming they are personal property and even then success is uncertain.” If the documents were the subject of a FOIA request, the government could deny them under various exemptions, including (b)(1), relating to national security matters, and (b)(5), which shields records that are part of deliberative processes.
02
Document 2
Memorandum, State Department Legal Adviser Monroe Leigh (L) to Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance Carlyle Maw (T), “Legal Protection of Sensitive Foreign Policy Materials,” with Memorandum of Law from Michael Sandler, Special Assistant to the Legal Adviser, Attached, 17 July 1975, Confidential
Jul 15, 1975
Source
Records of Monroe Leigh, box 11, Secretary’s Papers and Records File 1
A “memorandum of law” prepared a few months later looked more closely at the problem of protecting sensitive diplomatic information in the telephone conversation transcripts and the Nixon tapes. While Michael Sandler’s memorandum did not state as fact that Kissinger had a collection of telcons, it was the assumption. Considering that at least one senator, Lowell Weicker (R-CT), had asked about the telcons, one of the issues considered was, in a case where Congress sought access to the telcons, whether the State Department could invoke executive privilege to protect sensitive diplomatic information. Such a claim could be justified legally, although Sandler suggested there might be “practical reasons” for not doing so.
As for the vulnerability of the telcons to FOIA requests, there were “ticklish problems.” The telcons could be deemed agency records if they were generated and kept on the Department’s premises, but there also was the argument that they were “personal” papers. If the telcons included foreign policy information, if “persons other than the Secretary were permitted to read the records, or if the records helped the Secretary or others to make departmental policies or decisions, the records could well be viewed as those of an ‘agency.’” If, however, the Secretary “intended to keep the records for his personal use, if he limited access to himself, and if he segregated them into files marked ‘personal,’ than the materials should perhaps be viewed as ‘personal’ rather than ‘agency’ records,” according to Sandler.
If FOIA requests were ever made for the records, exemptions could be invoked to prevent disclosure, but that assumed that the telcons had “been properly classified.” Sandler suggested the possibility of a review and the imposition of classification categories when appropriate.
II. The Safire FOIA Request
03
Document 3
Memorandum of Conversation, “Minutes of Dr. Kissinger’s Telephone Conversations While at the White House,” 14 January 1976, Unclassified
Jan 14, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 15, Freedom of Information Act – Safire Request of January 14, 1976
Before William Safire’s FOIA request arrived, a reporter, possibly Safire, had raised questions about the telcons. Carlyle Maw, Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance, told Leigh that the reporter had asked by what authority Kissinger’s telcon records for the Nixon period could be removed from the White House. During the discussion between Leigh and Maw, the possibility was raised that they were the Secretary’s personal papers. But even if they were government records, Kissinger had legitimate interests in keeping them at the State Department to consult them for current work and for their future “literary interest.” In Leigh’s view, the telcons probably did not fall under the scope of the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act, but he acknowledged that the General Services Administration/National Archives could disagree and create complications. Concerning Kissinger’s refusal, in his deposition for the Morton Halperin lawsuit, to disclose information on conversations with third parties, Leigh saw the government’s support for Kissinger’s rejection as legitimate but also saw another reason: the “governmental interest in assuring the confidentiality of advice proffered to senior officials and others.”
04
Document 4
“Memoranda of Telephone Conversations Monitored by Dr. Kissinger’s Staff as Assistant to the President,” Unattributed, 14 January 1976
Jan 14, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 15, Freedom of Information Act – Safire Request of January 14, 1976
According to this memorandum, common law and constitutional law required confidential status for Kissinger’s telcons. The documents were not subject to the Presidential Records and Materials Preservation Act because they were not controlled by White House record keeping procedures. Thus, they could be withheld under FOIA exemptions. Moreover, “confidentiality may be legally justified in the absence of a statute” because it is “implied by common law courts where the need for confidentiality overcomes the asserted interest in disclosure.”
05
Document 5
Memorandum of Conversation, “Safire Request Under Freedom of Information Act,” 15 January 1976, Confidential, with memorandum attached
Jan 15, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 15, Freedom of Information Act – Safire Request of January 14, 1976
William Safire’s FOIA request for Kissinger telcons created a flurry of internal deliberations and memorandum writing, beginning with a meeting of White House and State Department officials. The discussion touched on several issues, such as whether the telcons were under the scope of the Nixon Materials Act, whether they were Kissinger’s personal papers, which FOIA exemptions could preclude release of the telcons, and whether they could be considered “drafts.” All of those issues required further consideration. White House Counsel Philip Buchen requested that Lawrence Eagleburger prepare a memorandum describing the volume and the scope of the telcons.
As far as can be told, Safire did not publicize his FOIA request or its eventual denial, but on 15 January 1976, he published a New York Times column, “The Dead-Key Scrolls,” where he raised questions about the removal of the telcons from the National Security Council (NSC), the “authority” for that action, and the ownership of the telcons. Safire concluded his column by writing that Kissinger’s transfer of the telcons to the State Department exposed them to FOIA requests. “Citizens rush in where solons fear to tread.”[7]
06
Document 6
Memorandum, Special Assistant to the Legal Adviser Michael Sandler to Monroe Leigh, “HAK Interrogatories in Halperin Lawsuit, and the Safire Request,” 15 January 1976
Jan 15, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 15, Freedom of Information Act – Safire Request of January 14, 1976
Sandler provided a recap of the telcon references in the Kissinger interrogatories. He noted that, contrary to Safire’s column, there were no characterizations that any of the telcons were “verbatim” records.
07
Document 7
Memorandum to the Secretary from State Department Legal Adviser Monroe Leigh and Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance Carlyle Maw, “Telephone Monitorings – Safire Request,” n.d., circa 15 January 1976, Confidential
Jan 15, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 15, Freedom of Information Act – Safire Request of January 14, 1976
This preliminary report on the issues raised by Safire’s request covered a range of issues, including the legality of taping telephone calls, possible legal restrictions on Kissinger’s transfer of the telcons to the State Department, and alternative responses to the FOIA request. Among the possibilities, all of which were discussed in some detail, were to claim that the telcons were Kissinger’s personal records, that they were non-agency records (and thus not subject to the FOIA), that FOIA exemptions could be used to deny access, and that telecons produced prior to 8 August 1974 could be treated as Nixon records. The problems raised by each alternative needed to be explored further. To do so, Maw and Leigh requested Kissinger to approve a ten-day extension for the reply to Safire.
08
Document 8
Memorandum from Legal Adviser Monroe Leigh to Special Assistant to the Legal Adviser Michael Sandler, 21 January 1976, Nodis
Jan 21, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 15, Freedom of Information Act – Safire Request of January 14, 1976
Leigh relayed Eagleburger’s request that copies of all White House and State Department papers that Kissinger had either signed, approved, or issued be placed in a “secure and convenient” government repository. Leigh observed that the new emphasis on copies suggested that this was a “fallback from the assertion that the papers are personal papers.”
09
Document 9
Deputy Under Secretary of State for Management Lawrence Eagleburger to Mr. Buchen, White House, 27 January 1976
Jan 27, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 15, Freedom of Information Act – Safire Request of January 14, 1976
Responding to Philip Buchen’s request for details on the telcons, Eagleburger reported that there were about 20 file drawers of the material covering a variety of topics, including social engagements along with discussions with foreign diplomats, U.S. government officials, Presidents Nixon and Ford, journalists and editors, and academic associates. According to Eagleburger, a thorough assessment of the telcons “would require enormous labor on my part … more the job of a librarian.
10
Document 10
Memorandum of Law – FOI Requests for Memoranda of Telephone Conversations, 9 February 1976
Feb 9, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 15, Freedom of Information Act – Safire Request of January 14, 1976
This long legal memorandum covered the issues raised by FOIA requests for Kissinger’s telcons, including ownership of the transcripts, their status as “agency records,” possible exemptions to their release under presidential papers laws, statutory exemptions, national security exemptions, exemptions for “inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums,” and privacy issues. On the agency records issues, as far as the White House telcons were concerned, “there is a strong basis for maintaining that these transcripts are not ‘agency records’” because Kissinger was then a member of the President’s immediate staff, and his records would not have agency status.
11
Document 11
Memorandum, State Department Legal Adviser Monroe Leigh to the Secretary, “Telephone Memoranda,” 16 February 1976, Limited Official Use/Nodis
Feb 16, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 3, Chronological File, February 1976
Here Leigh reviewed recent developments surrounding the State Department’s denial of Safire’s FOIA request on the grounds that the telcons requested were not agency records because they were from the period when Kissinger was on Nixon’s staff. Another FOIA request had come in from a Washington Star reporter that was likely to be denied on the same grounds. For Leigh, the problem raised by the FOIAs were not legal, but “political,” because of the certainty that Safire and others will “sensationalize” the telcons and initiate legal proceedings challenging the denials, “which will further mobilize public attention.”
To “defuse unfounded suspicion” but also to protect “sensitive” foreign policy information and to safeguard Kissinger’s “right to access” and “privacy rights,” Leigh proposed steps to donate the telcons and possibly other records. If Kissinger kept the records as personal property, the public reaction could be “explosive” and action in court at “personal expense” might be necessary to protect such a claim.
Leigh suggested several possibilities, including the immediate donation of records to the National Archives (except for the most recent material) and donation of Kissinger’s records to the National Archives (or to “some repository under government control”) upon his retirement. Leigh reviewed the various complications and requirements involved in donating records to the Archives. While the Archives have a “first rate” reputation for maintaining the security of records, Leigh saw an “outside possibility” that a staffer “may not adhere to customary standards of confidentiality.”
Once Kissinger returned from his South America trip, Leigh proposed a meeting with Eagleburger to discuss the possibilities.
12
Document 12
Letter, John Reinhardt, Council on Declassification Policy, to William Safire, 29 March 1976, with attached memorandum from Leigh to Reinhardt, “Safire FOI Requests of January 14 and February 24,” 29 March 1976, Limited Official Use/Exdis
Mar 29, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 11, Unlabeled file
The State Department’s Council on Declassification Policy informed William Safire that the Department had upheld the denial of his FOIA appeal. Maintaining that the telcons were not agency records in the first place, which precluded an appeal, the Department informed Safire that “we have employed the same procedures to your request as would be applicable to an appeal.” Even if the telcons were agency records, they would be denied under exemption (b)(5) because the “documents reveal the detailed mental processes of government officials, as well as portray some discussions of policy and decision alternatives.” The attached memorandum by Leigh detailed the legal grounds for denying Safire’s appeal.
13
Document 13
Memorandum, Special Assistant to the Legal Adviser Michael Sandler to State Department Legal Adviser Monroe Leigh, “Press Briefing Concerning Pocantico Hills,” with briefing transcript and guidance memo attached, 14 April 1976
Apr 16, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 15, Secretary’s Papers and Records File 2
With the publication of Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s The Final Days in March 1976, more important facts about the telcons reached the public: for example, that at various points Kissinger had them removed from the White House and shipped to the Nelson Rockefeller estate at Pocantico Hills, New York. In a column on 12 April 1976, Safire raised that issue but added new morsels, such as the fact that Kissinger’s White House office had an “inner file” of sensitive records including not only the telcons but also memoranda of conversations with the President and diplomats such as Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, for which were no other copies existed.
The matter came up in the State Department’s briefing on 13 April and Michael Sandler brought two “striking” matters to Leigh’s attention: 1) that the Department acknowledged that transcripts had been produced from tape recordings, and 2) the lack of precision as to which of Kissinger’s “private papers” went to the Rockefeller estate (for example, whether they included the telcons). Sandler predicted that this matter could come up again.
III. What to Do with Kissinger’s Papers
14
Document 14
Memorandum, Legal Adviser Monroe Leigh to the Secretary, “Disposition of Your Papers and Telephone Memoranda,” 11 May 1976, Limited Official Use/Nodis
May 11, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 11, Unlabeled file
This is an expanded version of the memorandum that Leigh sent to Kissinger on 16 February that includes copious supporting material. Perhaps Leigh prepared it because Kissinger wanted a more exhaustive and comprehensive review of the alternatives concerning the telcons and his other government papers. Kissinger may have also wanted to know more about what predecessors, like Dean Rusk, had done with their telcon records. Leigh believed that it was legally arguable that the telcons were personal papers and “not subject to disclosure under the FOIA,” but that if Kissinger made such a claim he would face the risk of litigation at his own expense. Otherwise, the telcons could be treated as partly personal and partly official, which would raise administrative complications (e.g., in preparing summaries of the official material for inclusion in Kissinger’s State Department files).
Leigh reviewed the possibility of including the telcons in Kissinger’s records at State, as Dean Rusk had done, or donating the telcons to the National Archives and pointed out the pros and cons of each option. For example, with a donation to the Archives there was the possibility that some of them would be determined to be subject to the Presidential Materials Act or the risk of a future decision that the telcons were government records. For Kissinger’s files held by the Executive Secretariat, Leigh reviewed two basic options: 1) transfer of the files to an approved storage facility, but of copies only, not originals, or 2) leaving the files at the Department, while making arrangements for copies to be made for transfer to an approved facility upon the time of Kissinger’s retirement.
15
Document 15
Memorandum, John M. Thomas, Bureau of Administration, to Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Under Secretary of State for Management, “Disposition of Secretary Kissinger’s Records,” 19 May 1976
May 19, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 15, Secretary’s Papers and Records File 2
How Kissinger reacted to Leigh’s recommendations is unclear, but State Department officials continued to look into procedures for inventorying and storing records and for granting access to former officials. This paper provided considerable detail on those matters.
16
Document 16
Memorandum, John S. Pruden (State Department Foreign Affairs Document and Reference Center) to John M. Thomas, Assistant Secretary of State for Administration, “Kissinger Files,” 12 July 1976
Jul 21, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 15, Secretary’s Papers and Records File 2
Following up on his memorandum from 11 May, Monroe Leigh drafted a paper for Kissinger on “Disposition of Your Papers and Records.” The draft discussed the various records involved, including official State Department “working files” and the telcon records, with proposals for screening out the “working files” to remove any personal materials and arrangements for preserving them, not only to ensure Kissinger’s future access but also for their eventual transfer to the National Archives.
The chief Records Manager, John S. Pruden, commented on the draft, noting ambiguities on the record status of the telcons and the problems involved in describing Kissinger’s records as “working files,” with the implication that the files would have non-records status and would not be subject to the FOIA. Not entirely comfortable with that implication, Pruden suggested that any such arrangements for such a “controversial collection” could be “tested in court with the possible result of some form of access.” Whether Leigh worked up this memorandum further is unclear, but soon Kissinger had in mind the possibility of an arrangement with the Library of Congress, which Librarian Daniel J. Boorstin proposed in August 1976 [See Document 14].
IV. Final Decisions and Developments
17
Document 17
Memorandum, Special Assistant to the Legal Adviser Michael D. Sandler to Under Secretary for Management Lawrence Eagleburger, “Library of Congress Questions,” 9 November 1976, with attachments, including letters from Librarian of Congress Boorstin to Kissinger
Nov 9, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 9, HAK Papers
Before Gerald Ford’s electoral defeat on 4 November 1976, Kissinger spirited away the telcons from the State Department. Believing that they were his personal property, regardless of the litigation risk that Leigh had mentioned, on 29 October he sent them back again secretly to Nelson Rockefeller’s estate, possibly without consulting State Department records managers, much less the National Archives.[8]
Ford’s defeat subsequently prompted Kissinger to make final decisions on arrangements for his papers. The uncertainties that Leigh had mentioned may have excluded from serious consideration storing records or copies at the National Archives or the State Department. A donation of personal and official papers to the Library of Congress, where Kissinger could have easy access, quickly became the focus of attention. There were uncertainties, however, and this report by one of Leigh’s aides looked closely at the legal and other questions involved in a donation, such as gift authority, possible claims of access by Congress or the Justice Department, the need for State and NSC approval, conditions of access, amenities for Kissinger (workspace, research assistance), the need for private counsel, because this was a private transaction between Kissinger and the Library, and the tenure of the Librarian of Congress.
Each of those topics raised questions that needed answers. For example, a key issue was access. Sandler asked whether it was reasonable to require that outside access be barred for 25 years or until Kissinger died (whichever was later), whether the Library’s employees would have access to the papers, and how the Library handle FOIA requests. Before he raised the latter question, Sandler had written that, “There should not be any basis for access under the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts.” That was so, he opined, because the proposed donation did not consist of “agency records,” either because they were personal papers or copies of government records. Apparently, Sandler had not yet realized that Congress and its institutions were immune from FOIA requests.
18
Document 18
Memorandum, John C. Broderick, Chief, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress to Michael Sandler, 11 November 1976
Nov 11, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, Box 11, HAK Papers
Some of Sandler’s questions about the Library of Congress may have been answered during a telephone conversation with John Broderick, the Manuscript Division’s chief. Broderick could not give Kissinger’s papers ironclad protection from Congressional requests, but, as he suggested, it had been decades since a subpoena had been served (for Robert Lansing’s papers from World War I). Whatever else Broderick and others with the Library had said, the answers must have been good enough, because the next day, on 12 November, Kissinger signed a donation agreement with the Library of Congress.
19
Document 19
Memorandum to the Secretary, “Legal Status of Transcribed Notes of Your Telephone Conversations,” 11 November 1976, Limited Official Use
Nov 11, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 15, Secretary’s Papers and Records File 2
Apparently not knowing of Kissinger’s preemptive action on the telcons, Monroe Leigh provided him with a recap of the view that he had taken since the Department responded to Safire’s FOIA: that the telcon transcripts were not agency records but were personal papers. Leigh argued that they were personal because they were “retained solely at your discretion as work aids to help you recall prior conversations and events.” Leigh noted that he had reviewed some of the telcons and did not believe that their contents included “any government decisions or policy actions.” But if other telcons did include such information, he cautioned, Kissinger should review them and arrange to have an extract or summary prepared for preservation by records officials.
According to Leigh, “The fact that the papers were retained for personal use, that they were not required to be prepared, that they have been consistently treated as personal, and that they contained personal and private matter, support the view that they are personal in nature.” Leigh further observed that the fact that the telcon transcripts were prepared by government secretaries using government resources was not “controlling” because it was “accepted practice that officials who must devote extraordinary amounts of time to government duties may make use of government resources to prepare private correspondence and other personal materials.” He did not consider the possibility that the GSA/National Archives might not agree.
The State Department shared this memorandum with the media on 22 December 1976 when journalists learned that the telcons were not covered in Kissinger’s donation to the Library of Congress [see Document 25].
20
Document 20
U.S. Department of State, “Transcript of Press, Radio, and Television News Briefing, Monday, November 15, 1976, 12:48 P.M.”
Nov 15, 1976
Source
National Archives, Research Services Staff Reference Files
With Gerald Ford losing the election to Jimmy Carter, the press had questions for briefer Robert Funseth about the status of pending negotiations, including the SALT talks, but also about transition arrangements at the Department of State. One journalist asked about arrangements for Kissinger’s records, “whether the monitored telephone conversations, for instance, belong to him or belong to the people.” He further stated that “we’re entitled to be told what papers will remain Government property and which will be sold or used in his personal pursuits.” When one of the journalists observed that keeping records of the telephone conversations was a “rather new procedure,” Funseth observed that keeping such records was a “rather customary practice, both in Government and in private life.” He informed the press, not quite correctly, that in January 1976, the Legal Adviser “ruled ... that secretarial notes of the Secretary’s telephone conversation are personal papers.” On this point, there were no follow-up questions except about the name of the Legal Adviser.
Other questions followed about the records of Kissinger’s meeting with Chinese and other foreign officials, with Funseth noting that even if there was not a U.S. interpreter present, there was a U.S. notetaker and records of the meeting had been preserved. In accordance with 1967 State Department regulations, Funseth explained, Kissinger would have copies of his official records, but they “will be kept in a Government facility so that the classified documents are properly secured.” He may not have known about the Library of Congress arrangement that had just been negotiated.
21
Document 21
Memorandum, State Department Legal Adviser Monroe Leigh to the Secretary, “Your Papers,” 2 December 1976, Limited Official Use/Nodis
Dec 2, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 3, Chronological File, December 1976
Leigh prepared talking points for Kissinger to use when meeting with President Ford to discuss his plans for donating copies of NSC and State Department documents to the Library of Congress. Leigh included a copy of a recent Philip Buchen memorandum on “Presidential Papers” that stipulated that “personal files do not include any copies, drafts, or working papers that relate to official business.” Leigh observed that a “question may arise as to whether this statement may be extended to some of your telephone memoranda.” He also saw a “problem” with a paragraph prohibiting the retention of copies of documents that include advice to the President, a requirement that “might cast a cloud” on the copies of White House papers that Kissinger was sending to the Library of Congress.
22
Document 22
Memorandum, State Department Legal Adviser Monroe Leigh to John A. Thomas, Bureau of Administration, “GSA Bulletin - FPMR B-65,” 9 December 1976, with GSA/National Archives bulletin attached
Dec 9, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 3, Chronological File, December 1976
On 15 November 1976, U.S. Archivist James B. Rhoads issued a bulletin through the General Services Administration to heads of federal agencies concerning the “disposition of personal papers and official records.” A noteworthy point with direct relevance to the Kissinger telcons was the discussion of personal papers, which were defined as “papers of a private or nonofficial character which pertain only to an individual’s personal affairs that are kept in the office of a Federal official.” Such records, he said, should “be clearly designated by him as nonofficial and will at all times be filed separately from the official records of his office.”
In his cover memorandum, Leigh disagreed with the Archivist’s definition of personal records, seeing it as too restrictive. Existing law and federal regulations, he argued, “recognize that personal papers can include discussion of government activities.” He also saw a contradiction between the Archivist’s definition of personal papers and a requirement that “extracts be made of certain matters pertaining to official business that appear in ‘private-personal correspondence.’” Leigh did not mention the Kissinger telcons but he probably had them in mind.
23
Document 23
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Memorandum for the Record, 13 December 1976
Dec 13, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 11, HAK Papers
Kissinger met with President Ford and discussed with him his wish to donate his “public papers” to the Library of Congress. The donation would include copies of his NSC and State Department records. “The President agreed with this procedure,” according to this record of their meeting.
24
Document 24
National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft to Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin, 15 December 1976, with State Department agreement attached
Dec 15, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 11, HAK Papers
Writing to Boorstin, Scowcroft sent him a transfer agreement for copies of papers from Kissinger’s NSC files. He enclosed a copy of the agreement with the Library for copies of Kissinger’s State Department files.
25
Document 25
L – Monroe Leigh to the Secretary, “Telecons,” 23 December 1976, with Press Briefing Attached, Limited Official Use
Dec 23, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 15, Secretary’s Papers and Records File 2
If Kissinger thought that sequestering the telcons at Rockefeller’s estate would end the matter, he found out otherwise. His Library of Congress donation became a news story on 21 December 1976 with the Washington Post’s Don Oberdorfer reporting that the donation would not include the telcon transcripts because they were “personal” records. According to the Post, when asked about the whereabouts of the telcons, Lawrence Eagleburger declared that “we haven’t faced the question of where” they would be kept, keeping secret Kissinger’s earlier action.
The telcons were also the subject of awkward questions at the Department’s press briefing on 22 December, with reporters asking about the telcons, how they were prepared and used, and why Kissinger considered transcripts of his conversations with journalists or the Soviet ambassador to be his personal records.[9] When asked whether the telcons would go to an archive or remain at the State Department, the answer was no, that “they belong to the Secretary.” When asked whether Secretaries Rusk or Rogers had such transcripts prepared and what had happened with them, the briefer said that “you will have to ask” the former secretaries. The briefer agreed to provide copies of Leigh’s 11 November legal opinion.
Leigh brought the press coverage to Kissinger’s attention the next day, further noting that the American Historical Association, represented by an Arnold & Porter attorney, would make Kissinger’ personal control of the telcons the subject of a lawsuit. Leigh noted that a lawsuit and ensuing court orders could have “very immediate consequences for your use of the telcons” and that a lawsuit would create more press attention. By contrast, depositing the telcons at the Library of Congress could help end press speculation and stop any AHA litigation.
Leigh proposed alternatives, with pros and cons, that he and Eagleburger could discuss with Kissinger: 1) a separate donation to the Library of Congress with the 25 year/Kissinger’s death restriction with privacy conditions for future disclosure of telcons, 2) a separate donation with a 35-year restriction, 3) include the telcons in the original deed of gift to the Library, 4) maintain the “current position” (personal records).
26
Document 26
Henry Kissinger, “Second Deed of Gift and Agreement,” 24 December 1976
Dec 24, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 11, HAK Papers
Apparently accepting Leigh’s advice and not wanting to leave the State Department under a cloud, Kissinger quickly arranged for a second deed of gift to donate the telcons to the Library of Congress.
27
Document 27
“Transcript of Daily New Briefing, Monday, December 27, 1976, 12:42 P.M.”
Dec 27, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 15, HAK Library of Congress Press Guidance and Clippings
At this State Department press briefing reporters continued to ask about the telcons, for example, about the GSA/National Archives Bulletin defining personal papers. A reporter asked how the State Department squared the Archive’s definition with “with the idea that Secretary Kissinger can treat as his personal property” transcripts that cover official matters. The spokesperson John H. Trattner had no answer and, when pressed, said he would look into it. The reporter persisted by asking about a departmental regulation that required the preparation of extracts or summaries from private papers that discuss official business, asking whether that was being done with the telephone call transcripts. The spokesperson said that would also be looked into.
28
Document 28
“Transcript of Daily New Briefing, Thursday, December 28, 1976, 12:40 P.M.”
Dec 28, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 11, unlabeled file
At the beginning of the State Department’s news briefing on 28 December, spokesperson John H. Trattner announced that Kissinger had donated the telcon records to the Library of Congress. According to the Department’s statement, the telcons were prepared as “memory aids,” were not “action documents,” and were never circulated. Kissinger was adding them to the donation of his papers because he wanted to “avoid any misinterpretation.”
The reporters raised more questions, asking whether the recent memorandum from the Archivist influenced the decision, how many telcons there were, and why Kissinger had change his mind in view of the legal opinion that the telcons were “private papers,” and what, exactly, was the “misinterpretation” that the former secretary wanted to avoid. There were other “unanswered questions.” Trattner claimed that Kissinger had time to consider the privacy issue and that it had influenced his donation, including the stipulation about the consent of the “first party” in the telcon records.
29
Document 29
“Statement by S/PRS [Department of State/Office of Press Relations], December 28, 1976,
Dec 28, 1976
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 11, unlabeled file
This is the official statement on Kissinger’s second deed of gift, along with a copy of the deed, which was distributed at the December 28 press briefing. On the preparation of telcon extracts, they would be created only for matters that were not documented “in existing government records.” The State Department disagreed with the GSA/Bulletin on the grounds that it was “inconsistent with Department regulations that have been in effect since 1967.”
30
Document 30
Department of State telegram 311722 to U.S. Delegation, “Press Guidance,” 28 December 1976, Limited Official Use
Dec 28, 1976
Source
RG 59, Access to Archival Databases Collection of State Department telegrams, 1976
The Department sent Kissinger guidance on the various issues that had come up, such as the Archivist’s bulletin and the matter of preparing extracts, among other issues. The answers would be provided only if asked.
31
Document 31
Nathan R. Einhorn, Chief Exchange and Gift Division, Library of Congress, to Henry Kissinger, 7 January 1977
Jan 7, 1977
Source
RG 59, Records of Monroe Leigh, box 15, Secretary’s Papers and Records File 2
Einhorn confirmed the receipt of Kissinger’s papers, including the telcons, on 14, 28, and 29 December 1976.
V. The National Archive’s Unsuccessful Intervention
32
Document 32
Archivist of the United States Donald Rhoads to Secretary Kissinger, 4 January 1977, with Kissinger reply and supporting documents, 18 January 1977 attached
Jan 4, 1977
Source
RG 59, Department of State P-Reel Printouts 1977, box 11
With the telcons and related matters in the news, the Archivist intervened. He informed Kissinger that, as Archivist of the U.S., he had responsibility for “ascertaining that Federal agencies create, maintain, and dispose of their records in an efficient and lawful manner, and that they preserve records of permanent historical value for eventual deposit in the national archival system.” Rhoads also stated that the Nixon materials preservation act made him “responsible for assuming custody and control of the Presidential historical records of the Nixon administration.” Consistent with that, he asked that professional archivists be allowed to inspect the telcons and related materials at the Library of Congress and determine whether “such material [is] indeed, personal property or whether some portions of them maybe Federal records or Nixon historical materials.”
For all intents and purposes, Kissinger denied Rhoads’ request by sending him a copy of a new Leigh memorandum that insisted that archivists had no useful role to play when the Department had decided that the telcons were personal papers. Leigh argued that the GSA was a “proponent for a definition of official records that is inconsistent with Department of State regulations.” Treating the Archives as an “advocate,” Leigh observed that “it would not seem appropriate for GSA archivists to preempt the Department of State by reviewing the notes in question.” Leigh also saw the Archivists’ request as prejudicial to the Department’s interests: the “respect for privacy expectations implicit in the Department’s regulations has enabled numerous Department officials to originate candid diaries and notes which have proved to be invaluable historical resources.”
33
Document 33
Archivist of the United States James Rhoads to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, with letter to Henry Kissinger and GSA legal opinion attached
Feb 11, 1976
Source
RG 59, Department of State P-Reel Printouts 1977, box 24
When Rhoads replied to Kissinger he put new Secretary of State Cyrus Vance in the loop by forwarding the letter along with the GSA’s legal opinion. Restating his request for professional archivists to determine the status of the telcons, Rhoads advised Kissinger that he had made the request because he had “authority and responsibility to make an independent determination of the character … of the telephone transcripts and related documents.” Reviewing the issues in detail, including statutory authorities and the protection of personal and private information, Donald Young’s legal opinion found a “glaring oversight” in Leigh’s memorandum: it “totally ignores any examination of the statutory and regulatory authorities and responsibilities” of the GSA as “delegated to the Archivist of the United States, which flow from the FRA and Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act.”
Contrary to Leigh’s view about agency freedom of action in determining the definition and preservation of federal records, Young maintained that the U.S. Code made “it quite clear that every agency head shall operate the agency’s records management program in full cooperation with and under regulations prescribed by the GSA.” He found Leigh’s rejection of a GSA role in the matter, because of a supposedly “disqualifying advocate’s interest in the ultimate resolution of the controversy,” as “patently absurd” because the Archivist based his request on “statutory authorities and responsibilities.” As for the status of Kissinger’s telcons, Young observed that the existence of “gray areas” between federal records and personal papers presented a strong argument “for the input of professional archivists in the decision-making process” concerning the status of the telcon transcripts.
34
Document 34
“Inspection of Kissinger Transcripts: Tally Summaries,” n.d. [circa 1978]
1978
Source
National Archives, Research Services Staff Reference Files
Perhaps the force of NARA’s legal arguments persuaded private citizen Kissinger to backtrack a bit, at least to the extent of agreeing to a NARA role, but it did not convince him to agree to the independent inspection that Rhoads sought. Instead, Kissinger accepted a plan for a joint inspection of selected telcons by NARA and the State Department officials.
NARA archivist Richard Jacobs, and State Department records manager John Pruden inspected over 500 telcons but were far from a meeting of minds on which were government records and which were not. As this tally summary indicates, Jacobs found that 88 percent of them were records, while Pruden believed that 51 percent were records. The joint review ground to a halt, and within months the State Department and the Justice Department developed a plan to exclude the Archives from a further role. As Milton Gustafson explained in his review of the story (see Appendix), the government would take no action to recover the Kissinger telcons to either the State Department or the National Archives.
Appendix
35
Milton O. Gustafson, “The Records of Henry Kissinger and Other Secretaries of State: Some Archival and Legal Anomalies,” Presentation at Session 78, The American Historical Association, Ninety Sixth Annual Meeting, Los Angeles CA, 28-30 December 1981
Dec 28, 1981
Source
National Archives, Research Services Staff Reference Files
When the National Archives had a Diplomatic Branch with a large staff, the late Milton O. Gustafson was one of its chiefs, and he was a font of knowledge. With this paper from 1981, Gustafson provided a detailed review of the role of the Library of Congress in housing the papers of Secretaries of State and of the early controversies surrounding the Kissinger telcons, including Kissinger’s donation to the Library in 1976, the National Archives’ early attempt to get access to the telcon collection, and the lawsuit by the Lawyers Committee for Freedom of the Press. As he noted, the Supreme Court ruling in the Lawyers Committee lawsuit “implicitly invited agency action to recover the documents,” but it would take two more decades before that became possible.
NOTES
[1] Kissinger served concurrently as national security adviser and Secretary of State from 22 September 1973 until 3 November 1975, after which he continued as Secretary of State until the end of the Ford administration (20 January 1977).
[2] Dorothy McCardle, “Kissinger: No Book,” Washington Post, 22 February 1971. See Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1992) at pages 230-232, for some of the early history of the telcons.
[3] Don Oberdorfer, “Kissinger Giving Papers to Library of Congress,” Washington Post, 21 December 1976.
[4] Don Oberdorfer, “Kissinger Telephone Notes Were Kept at Rockefeller Estate,” Washington Post, 30 December 1976.
[5] For the story in detail, see Document 35, Milton Gustafson, “The Records of Henry Kissinger and Other Secretaries of State: Some Archival and Legal Anomalies,” Presentation at Session 78, The American Historical Association, Ninety Sixth Annual Meeting, Los Angeles CA, 28-30 December 1981.
[6] For details, see Gustafson, “The Records of Henry Kissinger,”
[7] William Safire, “The Dead-Key Scrolls,” The New York Times, 15 January 1976.
[8] Gustafson, “Records of Henry Kissinger.”
[9] Ibid., 4.
Monday, February 12, 2024
Sunday, February 11, 2024
Saturday, February 10, 2024
The Economist Magazine Cover For 08/10/2024
The Economist
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FEBRUARY 10TH 2024
Cover Story newsletter from The Economist
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Cover Story
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Zanny Minton Beddoes
Editor-in-chief
One of our covers this week features the lethal drones changing the nature of war as they swarm over the killing fields in Ukraine. The other is on how Xi Jinping, China’s president, has lost the trust of investors—and how he will struggle to win it back.
They were the last covers by Matt Withers, one of our inestimable duo of designers. Matt is leaving for new pastures—and this edition of Cover Story is dedicated to him in appreciation of his consistently fine work.
Our cover package in Europe, Africa and the Middle East describes how first-person view (FPV) drones are proliferating along the Russian and Ukrainian lines. The descendants of racing quadcopters, built from off-the-shelf components, these drones can slip into tank turrets or dugouts. They can loiter before going for the kill. In one week last autumn Ukrainian drones helped destroy 75 Russian tanks, 101 big guns and much else besides.
This is the first time in the history of warfare that precision weapons have been so cheap and abundant. America’s GPS-guided artillery shells cost $100,000 a time. Drones can cost as little as several hundred dollars. In 2024 Ukraine is on track to build 1m-2m of them. Astonishingly, that will match Ukraine’s consumption of shells.
From the start, we collected photographs of drones to show an unfamiliar weapon at work, even as we thought up designs to convey their menace. Here is a picture of a Ukrainian soldier launching his drone through the bare branches of a tree. Beside it, you can see how the X-shaped arms of a quadcopter could become part of a skull and crossbones.
The drone is not a wonder weapon—no such thing exists. But the sinister threat conveyed by this image is more than justified. As drones multiply and incorporate artificial intelligence, self-co-ordinating swarms will become possible. Humans will struggle to monitor and understand their engagements, let alone authorise them.
In Ukraine this evolution is already under way. The use of FPV drones there is limited by the supply of skilled pilots and by the effects of jamming, which can sever the connection between a drone and its operator. To overcome these problems, Russia and Ukraine are experimenting with autonomous navigation and target recognition. Never before have cheap microchips and software put intelligence inside millions of low-end munitions saturating the battlefield.
This bodged-together contraption hardly looks like the future of warfare. But that is the point. Drones’ revolutionary secret is that they owe their existence to widely available consumer technology. They will improve not with the bureaucratic deliberation of the military-industrial complex, but at the urgent, break-things pace of consumer electronics, which adds new capabilities with each product cycle.
This is on view not only in Ukraine but also in Myanmar, where rebels have routed government forces in recent days and volunteers in small workshops use 3D printers to make components and assemble airframes. Unfortunately, criminal groups and terrorists are unlikely to be far behind.
We thought we could get across this new threat with an allusion in our title to the ubiquitous Kalashnikov, weapon of choice for guerrillas and grunts alike. Unfortunately, our drone-aware younger colleagues didn’t know what a Kalashnikov was. That’s progress for you.
On the covers of our American and Asian editions we looked at China’s markets. The value of China’s and Hong Kong’s equities is down by nearly $7trn since its peak in 2021—a fall of around 35%, even as that of America’s stocks has risen by 14%, and India’s by 60%.
It is a striking contrast with earlier years, when foreign investors were clamouring to be a part of the most exciting economic story in history. At the time, investors abroad and at home believed that the skilful and determined management of China’s government put frivolous Western policymakers to shame. Today, this trust has drained away, with severe consequences for China’s economic growth.
As our cover date, February 10th, marks the beginning of the Year of the Dragon, our thoughts drifted towards flying lizards crashing to Earth. We thought of a dragon-spiral, as bad policy undermined confidence, which provoked worse policy from a government that has lost its touch. We also thought of a dragon abstracted into the stockmarket’s downward trajectory, with Mr Xi clinging on for dear life. And yet, far from being carried along, Mr Xi is driving investors away—by, for example, cracking down on criticism of the economy and putting data beyond foreigners’ reach.
The loss of trust is the culmination of something, rather than the beginning. Mr Xi’s skittish policymaking was on display as early as 2020, when he clamped down on consumer tech. That led us to think about a cover that alluded to our earlier reporting on China. Here is a flatlining dragon from a cover last summer, and a crashing dragon for today.
We thought we could look further back than that. This forlorn president supporting the market dates all the way to 2015. We have him wrapped up in the falling price, which has crashed through the floor. That was a bit much. As is the way, the markets were rallying by the time we published our leader—though such small gains make little dent in the losses over the years. We also thought that Mr Xi with his arms by his side was passive. That would have been misleading. The real reason investors have fallen out of love with China is Mr Xi’s iron belief that he and the Communist Party must be in total control.
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Backing stories
Killer drones pioneered in Ukraine are the weapons of the future (Leader)
Friday, February 9, 2024
The Chinese Economy Is In Trouble
Why everyone in Shanghai is miserable
Don Weinland
China business and finance editor
Something feels off in Shanghai. I have lived through a number of market downturns, including the famous boom-and-bust years of 2007-08 and 2015, and the smaller routs of 2011 and 2018. During these wobbles I often felt like the downer in the room, with those around me slightly more upbeat. This year I keep discovering that everyone around me is even more pessimistic than I am. It is a strange feeling.
As our leader explains, investors abroad and at home have lost faith in China’s policymakers, as the dismal performance of the stockmarket demonstrates. It tumbled throughout January. The Shanghai Composite, an important index, hit a five-year low on February 5th, which seems to have finally alerted China’s leaders to the problem. State investors have started buying up shares in order to stop the drop. These state funds might help stabilise China’s stockmarket. They cannot solve the deep problems that are draining peoples’ spirits.
At the heart of things is the downturn in the property sector. The industry is important to everyone in China. Local governments depend on it because they rely on selling land to property developers for most of their income. Average people care about it because 80% of household wealth is stored in real estate. Prices and sales have been falling across the country for more than a year now. Land sales are down significantly since 2021. No wonder people are in a bad mood.
But it goes deeper still. The people that became successful during China’s boom years feel especially bad right now. They are watching their hard-earned wealth evaporate. Most will have invested in property and stocks. They will also have put money into trusts and wealth-management products. During the good years property prices only went up. Returns from financial products soared. Now prices are falling and financial products are blowing up, meaning that it is an unnerving time to be affluent in China.
The government has not yet stepped in with a viable remedy for any of these problems. Indeed, its inaction is one of the factors driving down sentiment. Officials may eventually bail out the stockmarket. Yet its performance reflects severe economic imbalances that have worsened over decades, such as the concentration of household wealth in the property sector. There is no quick fix for these problems.
Send us your thoughts at moneytalksnewsletter@economist.com.
We calculate that people with personal wealth of between 1m and 10m yuan, a group that accounts for 8% of China’s population, own half of the country’s housing-related wealth.
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