LAGUNA NIGUEL : Federal Building Tenants Open Up

Maybe it wasn’t a total open house, but on Wednesday, the public got a better idea of what goes on inside that strange-looking federal building known as the Ziggurat.

About 1,000 visitors had access to two floors of the six-level Chet Holifield Federal Building, where they strolled past displays sponsored by agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration.

“I thought the outside of this place always looked kind of weird,” said Tom Rice of Anaheim, “but inside it’s really like any other office building, just a bunch of workers who help run the government.”

The Immigration and Naturalization Service had the greatest show of force, turning out equestrian and canine units, along with specialized equipment such as long-range telescopes that help patrol the U.S.-Mexico border.

The only agency that allowed a behind-closed-doors look at its operations was the Federal Archives, which ran tours of the cavernous rooms where 745,000 cubic feet of federal records are kept.

“I was impressed by what an overwhelming job it must be to maintain all this,” said Harry Debereaux of Carlsbad. “I had no idea [the archives] was this extensive.”

Visitors got a look at the “Nixon Cage”--a wire cage section that holds documents from Richard Nixon’s eight years as vice president under Dwight Eisenhower.

Although the archives’ main function is housing U.S. census records from 1790, making it a mecca for genealogists, there are other documents and photographs that provide an unusual snapshot of America, including:

* A declassified report from Chuck Yeager describing a top-secret test flight of the country’s first supersonic jet in 1947.

* Hit records such as “Surfing Safari” and “You Send Me” that were evidence in federal court cases involving the Beach Boys and Sam Cooke.

* Naturalization papers for Hollywood stars such as Alfred Hitchcock, Errol Flynn and Greta Garbo, who still managed to look exotic and mysterious in a black-and-white mug shot.

“It’s incredible the amount of interesting material we find,” assistant archivist Suzanne Dewberry said. “And we keep finding new material every year.”