First 6 Million Documents of Carter Days Released

The first 6 million of about 27 million documents from Jimmy Carter’s White House days were released today, including policy statements and letters from John Wayne and Andrei D. Sakharov--but no “bombshells,” his librarian said.

The bulk of Carter’s personal papers and material about the Iranian hostage crisis have not been processed to be released to the public, said librarian Don Schewe of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library.

“What we tried to do was start at the top of the pyramid and open those papers that deal mainly with the decision-making process at the White House,” Schewe said.

Human Rights and Detente

Among the papers was a memorandum to Carter from Press Secretary Jody Powell suggesting that the President call the Soviet Embassy and explain why he could not divorce human rights from detente.

“Surely the Soviets are sophisticated enough to understand the domestic policy flexibility we need to make progress in other areas is enhanced by your position on human rights,” Powell wrote.

“One of the reasons Ford-Kissinger failed in this effort and had to back away from detente was because the American people would not support a policy that seemed to abandon our position in support of basic human rights,” said the memo, dated Feb. 21, 1977.

Schewe said the papers range from the “most trivial to the most important.”

“Some of the stuff has never been seen outside of the White House. Some of it was classified before but is no longer,” he said. “If there are any bombshells, they slipped past us totally unnoticed. There’s no Watergate to look at, but I think there’s going to be quite a considerable interest in them.”

Foreign policy statements, internal memos and daily itineraries, including where the United States’ 39th President went jogging and with whom he ate breakfast, are found among the papers.

They also contain correspondence between Carter and actor Wayne, baseball star Hank Aaron and Sakharov, the Soviet dissident.

Note on Dissidents

The documents include a handwritten note from Carter to Cyrus Vance, his secretary of state, dated Feb. 17, 1977, inquiring about efforts to free Soviet dissidents:

“To Cy--Any Soviet action on the dissident list you gave (Soviet Ambassador Anatoly) Dobrynin? J.”

Schewe said the papers best cover domestic topics, such as mental health policy, the Three Mile Island incident and Love Canal.

Historians were delighted with the quick release of the presidential documents, saying they will facilitate scholarly works on Carter’s presidency from 1977 to 1981.