1. A 30% Personnel Cut Anticipated at Center of Military History
2. Agreement Announced on Access to Nixon Tapes
1. A 30% Personnel Cut Anticipated at Center of Military History
-- As a part of the agency downsizing, a reorganization team for
the Army is expected to make a recommendation on April 16 that
will call for a 30% cut in the staff of the Center of Military
History. The Center prepares the official history of the United
States Army, provides direct support to the Department of the
Army Staff and Secretariat, and supervises or assists all
historical programs within the Army at large. The Center also
supports the use of military history by the Army's service
schools in the teaching of strategy, operations, and tactics.
With a staff of less than fifty, the Center has several
divisions, which in addition to the headquarters office, include
a division that writes histories, one that provides research and
analysis, a museum division, and a field programs and historical
services component which includes declassification
responsibilities.
Besides the reduction is staff, the reorganization will probably
also include a repositioning of the Center within the Army
hierarchy. Instead of reporting directly to a general at the
Pentagon, it appears that the Center will be placed under the
command of the War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.
It is anticipated, however, that the Center will remain in the
greater Washington area.
Its seems that the Center of Military History may be targeted for
a disproportionately large personnel cut, for other offices
within the Army appear to be slated for staff reductions that are
closer to 10%.
2. Agreement Announced on Access to Nixon Tapes -- On April 12
the estate of former President Nixon, the advocacy group Public
Citizen, University of Wisconsin history professor Stanley I.
Kutler, and the National Archives filed a 19 page agreement in U.
S. District Court for the District of Columbia. This agreement
spells out the conditions and procedures for releasing the tape
recordings made during the Presidency of Richard Nixon. Of the
approximately 4,000 hours of tapes only 63 hours have thus far
been released. This agreement comes as a result of 14 months of
court ordered mediation in the case which began in March 1992
when historian Kutler sued the National Archives for repeatedly
ignoring his legitimate requests for access to the Nixon tapes.
In announcing the agreement, U.S. Archivist John Carlin said this
pleased him as much as anything that has occurred in his 10
months as head of the National Archives. Kutler also commended
the agreement. In his remarks, Kutler noted that the National
Archives had completed its review of the tapes in 1987 but had
"put themselves in Nixon's service, and not the nation's or the
scholarly community's as they were obliged to do." Thus he had
reluctantly decided to sue the National Archives for access to
"an important primary source" that Kutler stated will "give us a
history different from that driven by Nixon's and others'
self-serving memoirs."
Under the terms of the agreement, the first segment of tapes to
be released will be the 201 hours dealing with "the abuses of
government power." The National Archives will deliver these
tapes to an agent of the Nixon estate no later than April 15.
The Nixon estate has until October 1 to submit objections to
their release on the grounds that the National Archives has
inappropriately designated them as "abuse of government power."
Any objections will be referred to a panel of three Presidential
Library archivists: David Alsobrook, Frances Seeber, and Claudia
Anderson. The hope is that this segment will be available to the
public by mid-November, 1996. The next scheduled released will
be the 278 hours of Cabinet Room tapes, which are targeted for
release in late 1997 or early 1998. This will be followed by the
releases of five remaining segments. Since the processing will
involve tape review, preparing tapes for declassification review,
tape editing and production of finding aids, the agreement states
that it will take from 15 to 23 months to process each one of
these five segments.
The one point on which the parties were unable to reach an
agreement was the National Archives' retention and maintenance of
the original tape recordings in their entirety, including those
segments deemed to be private or personal to former President
Nixon. The government believes that it is complying with the
Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act by
retaining the original tapes and a preservation copy. The Nixon
estate contends that the law which gave the government the right
to take possession of the tapes prohibits the Archives from
retaining any personal and private materials on the tapes. Thus
the Nixon estate is calling for the portions of the original
tapes that contain personal and private materials, as well as the
preservation copy, be turned over to them. The parties have
agreed to litigate this issue on an expedited basis. Public
Citizen and Professor Kutler have agreed to file a brief
supporting the Nixon estate's position.
The agreement filed with the court sets goals but does not
include fixed deadlines. In commenting on the agreement, Alan
Morrison, the attorney for Public Citizen, said that there will
need to be a vigilant eye devoted to the monitoring of the
agreement to ensure that it is followed. He expressed optimism
but observed that the best intentions may go unrealized. He
stated that, if the agreement is not followed, that Public
Citizen will be prepared to go back to court to ensure public
access to these tapes. While this agreement does mark a major
breakthrough in the Nixon tape controversy, the implementation of
the agreement will take many years. Even following the process
outlined in the agreement, it may well be over 10 years before
there is public access to all the Nixon tapes.
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