Nothing to Read at Reagan Library : No White House Documents Will Be Available to the Public When It Opens in November

When the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library opens near Simi Valley in November, not one sheet of its 54 million pages of White House documents will be available for public scrutiny.

By law, archivists have until 1994 before they must consider requests to see any of the library’s storehouse of presidential records--the largest collection of White House documents ever assembled.

In addition, Reagan has placed a 12-year legal restriction on several categories of White House records, including those detailing confidential advice he received during his presidency. Documents about foreign affairs or national security, including undisclosed details about the Iran-Contra affair, may remain shielded from public view for a generation or more under an executive order signed by Reagan when he was in office.

Restrictions are not new to presidential records. Shortly before the opening of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda last July, the library’s director created a stir by suggesting that researchers and scholars would be screened on the basis of the content and slant of their work. He later backed down.

Reagan’s presidential papers, however, are the first to be made public property under a 1978 law that evolved out of a bitter clash between Nixon and Congress over control of his White House records. The rules allow so many restrictions on the release of documents that some historians criticize the law as more concerned about presidential privacy than public interest.

“The hope is that it (the papers) will take so long to come out, that nobody would care anymore,” said Warren I. Cohen, a history professor at Michigan State University and a leading critic of restrictions on official records. “The really important papers are not going to be available for quite a long time.”

While Reagan’s papers will be restricted in the initial years, library visitors will have access to exhibits in a museum being installed in the building at the direction of Reagan and a close circle of friends and advisers.

“The exhibit will be a visual biography of President Reagan’s life,” said Bill Garber, Reagan’s spokesman. “It will include all of the important events of his life and presidency.”

But historians often dismiss presidential museums as a glorification of their namesakes with little research value. They suggest that the Reagan Library will not blossom into a center for historical research until well-guarded papers begin to emerge sometime after the turn of the century.

“Being realistic, this isn’t going to be a boon to historians until the late 1990s or beyond,” said Roger Dingman, a history professor at USC who has done extensive research at presidential libraries.

Situated in the hills above Simi Valley, the Reagan Library will be the largest--153,000 square feet--and the most expensive--$60 million--of the nation’s 11 presidential libraries. All initial costs will be covered by private donations, including the $2 million collected at Reagan’s 80th birthday dinner last week.

As with most presidential libraries, Reagan plans to hand over control of his to the National Archives and Records Administration, which will manage both the library and museum.

Until the Watergate era, departing presidents claimed ownership of their White House records. The gentlemanly tradition allowed former presidents to protect their secrets and avoid embarrassment.

As a result, it took many years for some papers to fall into historians’ hands. Abraham Lincoln’s papers, for example, were not opened to public research until 1949, four score and four years after his assassination. Others have yet to surface. The family of John Adams and John Quincy Adams still restricts some documents produced by those presidents.

All that changed during Nixon’s efforts to suppress evidence of the Watergate cover-up. In 1974, Congress passed a law that seized Nixon’s documents and tape recordings and barred their destruction.

In 1978, Congress made this rule permanent with the Presidential Records Act, a law that made all presidential papers public property and placed them under the control of the National Archives. Since the statute did not apply to former President Jimmy Carter, who was then in office, Reagan was the first to come under the new guidelines.

Now, the National Archives staff is sifting through the bulk of the Reagan papers held in a West Los Angeles warehouse. Next month, 40 truckloads of records will be moved to the Reagan Library and deposited in the basement.

Documents classified as secret will be placed in the walk-in National Security Vault. The most sensitive documents will be placed in one of the vault’s six combination-lock safes, which are bolted to the concrete floor.

“We are 30 feet down in solid rock and concrete,” said Charles H. Jelloian, a Reagan aide, on a recent tour of the vault. “As documents become declassified, they will move out of the vault to the main stacks. Nothing is getting out of here unless it is supposed to.”

Government offices, including the White House and State Department, classify many foreign policy and national defense documents as secret. Under an order Reagan signed in 1982, a classified document is withheld from the public until the agency that created it considers it no longer a threat to national security and declassifies it.

Although Reagan’s order does not specify a date, classified documents are often kept secret for 30 years or more.

It is not clear what documents will be placed in the Reagan vault. National Archives employees will not comment on the question. But Reagan scholars say the vault will hold nearly everything classified as secret.

One main focus of attention will be documents related to the Iran-Contra affair, which involved the sale of U.S. weapons to Iran and the purchase of arms for Nicaraguan rebels, in violation of a congressional ban.

Thousands of Iran-Contra documents that were used in the nationally televised congressional hearings in 1987 and ongoing prosecution by independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh also will be scrutinized by the archivists.

Reagan scholars suspect that these documents will remain restricted for at least 12 years and possibly for 30 years or more.

One set of Iran-Contra documents of keen interest to journalists and scholars is the so-called “heads of state” file. Senate Intelligence Committee investigators say they believe the file contains Reagan’s approval of a secret deal to reward Honduras for its continued support of the Contras and the president’s communications with a variety of foreign leaders.

“There are always nuggets in presidential documents,” said Scott Armstrong, an American University journalism professor and founder of the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C., a private repository of declassified documents.

Under the Presidential Records Act, the National Archives has until Jan. 20, 1994, five years after Reagan’s departure from office, to review documents before opening any files to the public.

“We do not intend to open our research room in November,” said John Fawcett, assistant archivist for presidential libraries. “Our preference would be to use the full five years.”

Responding to requests from researchers would slow the review process down, he said. The longer his staff can process Reagan’s papers undisturbed, the more will be available when the research doors first swing open, he said.

And, although Reagan’s papers are public property, Fawcett said Reagan and an incumbent President can object to any or all disclosures proposed by the National Archives. But, once made available, the records would be accessible to anyone, scholar or not.

Meanwhile, many historians are growing frustrated by the expansion of restrictions on public documents.

But Garber, the Reagan spokesman, defended the process.

“President Reagan intends to make documents available as quickly and completely as possible,” he said. “Undoubtedly, there are documents accumulated during President Reagan’s Administration that remain under the restrictions of security classification.”

As allowed by law, Reagan has restricted several categories of papers from disclosure for up to 12 years. The categories include information about appointments to federal offices, trade secrets or financial information, personnel files, national defense and foreign policy and any confidential advice.

Congress agreed to protect confidential advice out of concern that it would have a chilling effect on future presidents’ ability to solicit frank views from advisers.

While some historians fear the “confidential advice” provision could restrict nearly every document that involves a key presidential decision, others believe that keeping documents under wraps for many years may be the only way to preserve them for history.

“As a historian, I am not interested in making everything available all at once because it would lead future presidents to run all their papers through the shredder,” said Frank Freidel, professor emeritus at Harvard University, who once advised government officials on how to release records.