News Notes for Ford Library Researchers - 2009

December 4, 2009
The Library loaded another four months of the digitized President's Daily Diary to the web site, covering October 1975 to January 1976. View the online daily diaries.

November 24, 2009

The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation announced the list of recipients of Research Travel Grants from the fall meeting of the grants screening committee.

November 4, 2009
The Library has completed processing of the collection National Security Adviser. Presidential Subject File. The collection contains briefing papers, memoranda, correspondence, reports, and speeches concerning policy decisions, meetings, and other matters in which President Ford actively participated.  The materials cover a wide array of foreign policy and national security issues including SALT and other arms control topics, foreign aid, White House-Congressional relations, military exercises, energy, investigations of the intelligence community, and U.S.-Soviet trade. For more details on the collection, view its finding aid.

November 2, 2009
The Library loaded another three months of the President's Daily Diary to the web site, covering July through September 1975. View the online daily diaries.

October 21, 2009
Due to increased public interest in swine flu, the Library has digitized a number of documents on the 1976 National Influenza Immunization Program to combat an expected outbreak of swine flu.

October 16, 2009
The Library loaded another three months of the President's Daily Diary to the web site, covering April through June 1975. View the online daily diaries.

September 29, 2009
The Library has completed the digitization of another portion of the President's Daily Diary (a log of the President's activities). The website now includes all diaries from August 9, 1974 to March 31, 1975. View the online daily diaries.

September 28, 2009

The staff has completed an update to the Library's web exhibit on Ford administration Cabinet meetings. View Cabinet meeting minutes and notes along with background on the Ford Cabinet.

September 21, 2009
The Library has added two pages to our site for "Selected White House Photographs." The page covering photographs of President Ford at work with his Cabinet and staff replaces an older page on the same topic, while the one on the 1976 swine flu immunization program is new.

September 21, 2009
The staff is currently engaged in the digitization of the President's Daily Diary, a detailed log of President Ford's activities for each day of the administration. View the digitized diaries

July 21, 2009
The Library has processed and opened an additional seven boxes of the collection National Security Adviser. Presidential Subject File (covering the letters F-M). Among the larger files in this segment are those relating to jet engines (JT-10D license, law of the sea, military exercises, missing U.S. flyers downed over the Baltic Sea in 1950, Murphy Commission, and Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions (MBFR).

July 17, 2009
The staff is currently digitizing the declassified contents of every folder in the collection "National Security Adviser. Memoranda of Conversations" - the Library's most popular and most used textual collection. Each folder of the Memoranda of Conversations (or "Memcons") contains the White House's transcript-like records and handwritten source notes from over 1,000 presidential meetings on foreign relations and national security matters, January 1973 - January 1977. In addition to Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, participants include foreign heads of state and diplomats, U.S. intelligence and national security officials, U.S. diplomats, members of Congress, Cabinet members, visiting delegations, and others. Discussion topics are myriad. The contents of each folder is being scanned into a PDF file. View the digitized "memcons"
Update, September 2009: This digitization project was completed in August..

July 15, 2009
The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library is proud to announce that Candace Clare Sobers has been chosen as the 2009 winner of the
Gerald R. Ford Scholar Award in Honor of Robert M. Teeter.  Ms. Sobers is a doctoral student in History at the University of Toronto and is completing her doctoral dissertation: The Crisis of Decolonization, the Challenge of Intervention: Revolutionary Angola, 1968-1976.  She is examining how Portuguese decolonization and Angolan independence compromised U.S.-Soviet détente, and how revolutionary politics on the African continent challenged American foreign policy makers in the Ford Administration. See additional information about this award.

June 12, 2009
The Library has processed and opened the first six boxes (covering the letters A-F) of the collection National Security Adviser. Presidential Subject File. The collection contains folders on a wide variety of foreign affairs and national Security matters. Among the larger files opened so far are those relating to the Camp David Meeting of Foreign and Finance Ministers on Energy, Sept. 28-29, 1974; chemical and biological weapons; Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe; communications; congressional matters; energy policy; European Community; fisheries legislation (200-mile limit); food/food aid/World Food Conference; and foreign assistance/Military Assistance Service Fund. As is the case with most foreign affairs collections, some individual documents remain security-classified and not yet available for research.

June 8, 2009
The Library has processed and opened two small segments from the Melvin Laird Papers. Both relate to his work as Secretary of Defense from 1969 to 1972. The first concerns equal opportunity and race relations in the military. The primary focus is on African-Americans, although items on women, the handicapped, and other minorities also appear. The second segment concerns drug abuse among military personnel.

May 13, 2009
The Library announced the list of recipients of Gerald R. Ford Foundation Research Travel Grants from the spring meeting of the grants screening committee.

May 5, 2009
The Library has processed and opened two additional series from the National Security Adviser. NSC International Economic Affairs Staff: Files, (1973) 1975-1976. The chronological files in the collection ("Robert Hormats Chronological File" and "Timothy Deal Chronological File") are now available for research. They contain materials accumulated by NSC senior staff member Robert Hormats and his assistants and concern such topics as economic relations with specific countries, international economic summits, trade, foreign investment, energy, oil prices, OPEC, food aid, grain sales, Maritime affairs, and foreign aid. The two subject files in this collection were opened to research in 2007, so all of the series are now available. For more details on the collection, view its finding aid.

May 1, 2009
Deadline for the "Gerald R. Ford Scholar Award (Dissertation Award) in Honor of Robert Teeter." For more information about the Award Stacy Davis.

April 27, 2009
The Library has opened the Charles J. Orlebeke Papers concerning his work as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This collection focuses on the areas of housing, community development, and urban policy with much relating to the work of the President's Committee on Urban Development and Neighborhood Revitalization. Access to the materials requires advance consultation with an archivist before a visit to the Library in order to request that specific folders be added to the Library’s review-for-access queue. For more information about this collection, please consult the finding aid.

April 15, 2009
Recent openings from the Ford Library Project File of Documents Declassified Through the Remote Archive Capture (RAC) Program include documents from these sub-collections of the National Security Adviser's Files: President Agency File and the Trip Briefing Books and Cables of Henry Kissinger, Gerald Ford, and Brent Scowcroft (three separate collections). The Project File is intended as a convenience to researchers, affording expedited access to declassified information from unprocessed/closed collections.  It also allows returning researchers to more easily discover newly declassified information from previously processed/open collections. Although some documents are now available, major portions of several of these sub-collections are still unprocessed and not available for research.

March 15, 2009
Deadline for the Gerald R. Ford Foundation Research Travel Grants. For more information about the grants contact William McNitt.

March 4, 2009
The Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News blog has recently posted a link to a digital copy of the 243 page "Intelligence Community Decision Book for the President" transmitted by the Intelligence Coordinating Group to President Ford on December 22, 1975.
The decision book was declassified in 2000 and addresses basic questions of executive authority, congressional oversight of intelligence, covert actiopn, domestic surveillance, budget secrecy, and more. The original of this document is in Box 6 of the Richard B. Cheney Files. View a copy of this digital file, along with several other items concerning the intelligence investigations and reforms of 1975-76.

February 25, 2009
The Library has opened transcripts and audiotapes for ten oral history interviews from the collection
Gerald R. Ford Library Oral History Projects. This initial opening includes interviews by Library staff members with Cabinet members Roy Ash (Director, Office of Management and Budget), Earl Butz (Secretary of Agriculture), William T. Coleman (Secretary of Transportation), Thomas Kleppe (Secretary of the Interior), and Elliot Richardson (Secretary of Commerece). Other opened interviews are those with Counsellor to the President Anne Armstrong, Special Assistant to the President for Women Patricia Lindh, Col. Tom Sherman (involved in the planning of the Vietnam clemency program), journalist Hugh Sidey, and political strategist/public opinion pollster Robert Teeter. The Library holds additional interviews that will be opened to research as transcriptions are completed and deeds are signed by interviewees. For more information about this collection, please consult the finding aid.

February 3, 2009

Since our last report in November, the Library's declassification staff has opened to research several additional boxes of the Ford Library Project File of Documents Declassified Through the Remote Archive Capture (RAC) Program. The Project File is intended as a convenience to researchers, affording expedited access to declassified information from unprocessed/closed collections.  It also allows returning researchers to more easily discover newly declassified information from previously processed/open collections. The additional 4,400 pages opened in December and January are from the following National Security Adviser sub-collections: NSC Middle East and South Asian Affairs Staff Files, NSC East Asian and Pacific Affairs Staff Files, NSC International Economic Affairs Staff Files, Kissinger- Scowcroft West Wing Office Files, and the Presidential Agency File. Although some documents are now available, major portions of several of these sub-collections are still unprocessed and not available for research.

January 8, 2009
The Library has opened the series from the Roderick M. Hills Papers that concern his work in the Ford White House and as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The collection includes some correspondence from Hill's White House service, but most of Hills' work files went to his successor Edward Schmults. Hills' Securities and Exchange Commission work is reflected especially in files of his speeches and congressional testimony. The bulk of the collection concerns Hills' post-government work, but these files remain unprocessed/closed. For more information about this collection, please consult the finding aid.

See News Notes for Ford Library Researchers for the year 2008