Ed. Note. We reprint here testimony given last September on behalf of historians by Research Division Committee member Dr. Anna Nelson to the House of Representatives subcommittee responsible for that chamber’s archives. It affords an example of the continuing effort we, through the NCC, devote to improving access to government records. The House did not act in the last session, but we are assured that the matter will come up again in the 100th Congress.
I am Anna K. Nelson, a member of the history department, the American University, a former member of the staff of the Public Documents Commission, and former project director of the Committee on the· Records of Government. Today I am representing the National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History, a consortium of forty-four historical and archival organizations with a combined membership of over 200,000 members. In particular, my appearance today is on behalf of the members of the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association, the two key NCC organizations composed of professional research historians.
Members of these organizations strongly endorse House Resolution 114 as a necessary step toward assuring the proper preservation of those records of the House of Representatives that reach the National Archives. More important, we welcome the opportunity to urge this subcommittee to move one step further, so that scholars can examine those records in the same way that they examine the records of federal agencies, the White House, and the United States Senate.
Recently, a professor from a large midwestern university was in Washington to complete research for a forthcoming article. An experienced researcher and author of more than half a dozen books, he was eager to see the records of the congressional committees concerned with the topic of his research. Although the records were in the National Archives, the professor had to contact the Clerk of the House before he could examine the committee records from the House. Those records were not recent, or twenty-five years old, or even fifty years old. They were records from the 1880s. Records of the House of Representatives from the nineteenth century are undoubtedly the only century-old records in the entire country that still require special permission before they can be examined.
True, before 1953, these committee records would have remained unavailable. Encouraged by the American Historical Association, the eighty-third Congress adopted a resolution on June 16, 1953 that authorized the Clerk of the House to make available to the public those records over fifty years old that had been transferred to the National Archives. Fifty years was chosen because the Federal Records Act of 1950 set the fifty-year rule for executive records. In 1978, this Act was amended so that unless an agency head deems otherwise, executive agency records in the National Archives can be opened after thirty years. Two years later the Senate established provisions allowing access to its routine records in the Archives twenty years after the date of their creation. Thus in 1986, the fifty-year rule of the House stands alone.
Indeed, even the fifty-year rule does not adequately describe the difficulties of research in records of the House. Provisions of H. Res. 288 are subject to a July 22, 1971, memorandum of understanding between the Clerk and the Archivist of the United States. According to information supplied to the Public Document Commission (National Study Commission of Records and Documents of Federal Officials), this memorandum reaffirmed the decision to require each individual to apply to the Clerk for access to House records. Clerk W. Pat Jennings informed the Commission that he must ensure that even the release of records over fifty years old is not “detrimental to the public interest,” and thus some records, including minutes of executive sessions, are automatically excluded when they are requested. In other words, many House records older than fifty years are still deemed too sensitive to release.
For better or for worse, historians tend to write history from the available documents. The failure of the House to provide for a system of access to records in the National Archives has led researchers to neglect the contributions of the House and its committees to American government.
I believe the House has allowed this neglect of its records for two reasons. First, there is the assumption that since Congress places more of its business in the public record than either of the other two branches of government, access to archived records is unnecessary. Each congressional session produces a vast amount of printed material. Members of Congress and staff often point to the fact that the entire legislative process is clearly placed before the public through the Congressional Record, committee prints, and published records of committee hearings. Therefore, they do not see a need for the historian or researcher to look any further than the public record.
Second, there is the perception shared by Members and staffs alike that the process behind the hearings, speeches, votes, etc. relies almost exclusively upon oral communication-hurried telephone conversations and brief encounters in hallways and elevators. Thus there is a pervasive assumption that in spite of file cabinets full of paper and computers full of data, the committees of the House do not accumulate records of enduring value.
It must be said that for many years, historians tended to agree with this perception. After all, the only records avail able were those from a pre-New Deal and pre-World War II Congress. However, the ability to examine Senate committee records has changed this perception for many of us, and should encourage the Members of the House also to change their view of the value of the historical record.
The modern Congress as an institution bears as much relation to its nineteenth- or early twentieth-century counterpart as does the modern presidency or judiciary to the administration of Calvin Coolidge or the Supreme Court of Oliver Wendell Holmes. The New Deal brought to all branches of government new responsibilities for the public welfare, while World War II created unprecedented global responsibilities. The records of Congress like those of the White House and executive agencies certainly reflect the increased congressional involvement in the business of government. What little we know of the records of the modern Congress of the last fifty years disputes both the view that all important legislative history is public and that all important communication is oral.
For example, the published records of Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee illustrate the prevalence of the executive session in post-World War II congressional history, and its importance in the legislative process. Yet, historians writing about the Taft-Hartley Labor Act, for example, still cannot examine executive session transcripts on the House side. The opening of the Senate committee records after twenty years also illustrates that the growth of congressional staffs led to the growth of written communication; the memo came to be a necessary component of staff work. Not all important congressional business has been public or conducted by telephone. In addition, the opening of twenty- or thirty-year-old records under the guidelines for access set by the National Archives clearly indicates that a cushion of time defuses even the most sensitive of documents. For example, a September 29, 1982, Washington Post reported that secret testimony before a House committee in 1947 described the penetration of key Nazi organizations by US intelligence during World War II. The decision of the House Government Operations Committee to release this secret transcript clearly illustrates that even some intelligence information can be released after thirty-five years.
A brief example from my own historical research may serve to illustrate the neglect of the history of the House as a result of present policy. Contentious relations between the executive branch and Congress throughout the last decade sent me back thirty years to the Eisenhower Administration, a time of apparent presidential success in gaining bipartisan support for foreign policy. It seemed worthwhile to examine this success to see what could be learned. Although it is clear that the demands of the Cold War imposed new responsibilities on the Foreign Affairs and Appropriations committees of the House, my research in nonprinted sources has been limited to presidential papers, private manuscript collections and the records of the Senate. In spite of the speeches in the Record, and the open hearings, I have learned very little about the House committees, although interviews suggest that their members acted responsibly and carefully as unforeseen burdens were dropped in their laps. There are records from those committees in the National Archives. Nothing in these records could embarrass or jeopardize the position of any current member of the House, although information might be found that would enhance the reputation of the House and its committees. Unfortunately, my final manuscript like those of other historians will necessarily concentrate on the Senate and neglect the House and its committees.
It is time to end the historical neglect of the House and fully recognize its contributions to the legislative process. A little over a hundred years ago, a young Woodrow Wilson wrote, “It’s not far from the truth to say that Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, while Congress in its committee rooms is Congress at work.” The history of the House of Representatives lies in the records of its committees. There could be no greater commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the House than the opening of the historical records in the National Archives.
Anna K. Nelson is professor of history at American University and a member of the AHA Research Division.
