Importance of archiving military records

mdoneil says:

Archiving is important
To put politics aside regarding any specific records that were destroyed, I must agree that archiving of records is important.

It seems that microforms have been the way to go for many years, although they too are prone to degradation. However it does solve the problem of storing volumnious records. In one case however, it is noted that records were destroyed during (or perhaps after) the process of archiving was undertaken.

As we move to digital storage we must take into account the permanance of electronic storage media. We now know that CDRom is not as permanant as we once though, and we shall discover I’m certain that we will find that other technologies, perhaps as yet undeveloped, are too not as indestructable as we had hoped.

Since storage space suitable for storing paper based records safely is not inexhaustable, it is obvious that a solution must be found. At this point it seems that electronic archiving with periodic updating to more stable formats- from paper to microform to digitized images – to who knows what will be next- is our best bet.

N.B. I did not read the article for several reasons:
1) I avoid compulsory registration sites
2) My Heywood Jablomie log in to the NYT no longer works
3) As a op-ed piece it would most assuredly take the slant of the paper and I am attempting to be apolitical. From what was posted however it is apparent that records destroyed in an archiving project during the Clinton administration are being attributed to some fault of President Bush.

mdoneil says:

Re:Oh wait, we had them after all…
How very interesting. Thank you for providing that link. I found it informative.

From a completely historical perspective (not to be construed as a political perspective in any way) I recall a similar case of records disappearing and reappearing in a government office. Now the case about which I am thinking was a bit different as the records were in the custody of a private party who was under court order to produce them. Another difference is that the Rose Law Firm records were not created by the government and the government had no duty to safeguard them. Similarities include the fact that the records were tangentially related to the President and that the records were stored in a government building (which is remarkably odd since they were being stored by a former employee of the Rose Law Firm rather than the firm itself.)

So just to be clear that I am indeed making a distinction between the records held by the DOD and records covered by a subpoena but not produced by someone. In fact for clarity I had best refer to them as JWB and HRC records respectively.

The JWB records are from the 1970’s -more than 30 years before they were requested.
The JWB records were the responsibility of the government and in their care, custody and control.
The JWB records were payroll records and there was no need for President Bush to retain his copies beyond the 3 year IRS look back period.
The JWB records were not required to be produced by court order.
The JWB records were not and are not being sought in the course of a criminal investigation.

In contrast the HRC records were ordered to be produced in 1994. The records were created in 1985 and 1986, eight years before they were subpoenaed and ten years before their serendipitous discovery in the Clinton White House.
The HRC records were not in the custody of the originator of the records, the Rose Law Firm, but were in the custody of HRC a one time employee of the firm. The firm apparently did not have a copy or they could have provided it in response to the subpoena. Oddly the only copy of the records was in the care, custody and control of HRC when she was no longer an employee of the firm.
The HRC records were legal billing records. Their retention is governed by state law and generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) that require that those records be retained far beyond the prudent retention period used for personal tax records. In most cases the records are kept indefinitely.
The HRC records were required to be produced by court order.
The HRC records were sought for their probative value in a criminal investigation.

I wanted to make that quite clear as I am only concerned with the odd coincidence that records seem to disappear and reappear in Washington quite frequently. Perhaps the custodians should hire librarians and archivists to make sure this sort of thing stops.

On a related note I recall from one of my very wise professors at Trinity noting that “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” He liked to remark that just because there is no elephent dung in your living room does not mean there are not elephants on your divan.

mdoneil says:

online is not the only way
They do have the NYT at my library. I always prefer to read things on paper. No registration required there.