Sources

Sources for the Foreign Relations Series

The 1991 Foreign Relations statute requires that the published record in the Foreign Relations series include all records needed to provide comprehensive documentation on major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. It further requires that government agencies, departments, and other entities of the U.S. Government engaged in foreign policy formulation, execution, or support cooperate with the Department of State Historian by providing full and complete access to records pertinent to foreign policy decisions and actions and by providing copies of selected records. Most of the sources consulted in the preparation of this volume have been declassified and are available for review at the National Archives and Records Administration.

The editors of the Foreign Relations series have complete access to all the retired records and papers of the Department of State: the central files of the Department; the special decentralized files (“lot files”) of the Department at the bureau, office, and division levels; the files of the Department’s Executive Secretariat, which contain the records of international conferences and high-level official visits, correspondence with foreign leaders by the President and Secretary of State, and memoranda of conversations between the President and Secretary of State and foreign officials; and the files of overseas diplomatic posts. The Department’s central file for 1973–1976 is available in electronic or microfilm format at the National Archives and Records Administration facility in College Park, Maryland (Archives II), and may be accessed using the Access to Archival Databases (AAD) tool. Almost all of the Department’s decentralized office files covering this period, which the National Archives deems worthy of permanent retention, have been transferred to or are in the process of being transferred from the Department’s custody to Archives II.

The editors of the Foreign Relations series also have full access to the papers of Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter as well as other White House foreign policy records. Presidential papers maintained and preserved at the Presidential libraries include some of the most significant foreign affairs-related documentation from the Department of State and other Federal agencies including the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Henry Kissinger and Harold Brown have approved access to their papers at the Library of Congress. Department of State historians also have full access to records of the Department of Defense, [Page XIV] particularly the records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense as well as their major assistants. The Central Intelligence Agency has provided full access to its files.

Research for this volume was completed through special access to restricted documents at the Nixon Presidential Library, the Ford Presidential Library, the Carter Presidential Library, the Library of Congress, and other agencies. While all of the material printed in this volume has been declassified, some of it is extracted from still classified documents. The staffs of the Nixon, Ford, and Carter presidential libraries are processing and declassifying many of the documents used in this volume, but they may not be available in their entirety at the time of publication.

Some of the research for this volume was done in Carter Library record collections scanned for the Remote Archive Capture (RAC) project. This project, which is administered by the National Archives and Records Administration’s Office of Presidential Libraries, was designed to coordinate the declassification of still-classified records held in various Presidential libraries. As a result of the way in which records were scanned for the RAC, the editors of the Foreign Relations series were not always able to determine whether attachments to a given document were in fact attached to the paper copy of the document in the Carter Library file. In such cases, the editors of the Foreign Relations series have indicated this ambiguity by stating that the attachments were “Not found attached.”

Sources for Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, Volume XXXIII, SALT II, 1972–1980

The records of the Department of State are essential to understanding how each administration’s SALT policy was conceived. Most important are the records contained in the lot files of the Office of the Counselor (Helmut Sonnenfeldt), Marshall Shulman, and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. The first contains important material pertaining to the Nixon and Ford administrations’ position on SALT, while the latter two contain valuable memoranda of the high-level negotiations on SALT that occurred between Vance and Soviet Premier Andrei Gromyko. Relevant telegrams, papers, and memoranda are also located in the Department’s central file.

The records of the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency, and the papers of Henry Kissinger and Harold Brown at the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress, are useful to greater and lesser degrees, but it should be noted that the latter two are presently closed to the public. The staff at the Office of the Historian have found that the Kissinger papers are useful for obtaining occasional material not found—or not easily found—at the Nixon and Ford [Page XV] Libraries or in Record Group 59 at the National Archives. Similarly, while the Brown papers contain some unique documents, including memoranda of conversation, studies, and other documentation generated within the Department of Defense, most of the documentation in this collection is duplicated in the relevant files at the Carter Library. The CIA records, which are in Agency custody, contain various studies and research related to SALT but, as with the DoD material, the highest-level documents are in the Ford and Carter National Security Adviser files.

For the Ford period, research should begin at the Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The editor found the files of the National Security Adviser to be an essential starting point. Within these files, the Kissinger Reports on USSR, China, and Middle East Discussion collection is especially valuable. The National Security Council Institutional Files (H-Files), in particular the National Security Decision Memoranda, the National Security Council Meetings, and the Verification Panel Meetings Files, also contain crucial documentation on the SALT issue.

For the Carter period, research should begin at the Carter Library in Atlanta, Georgia. As with the Ford Administration, the editor found the records of National Security Adviser—in this case Zbigniew Brzezinski—the best place to start; within the Brzezinski Material, the Subject File was particularly fruitful. Also valuable were the NSC Institutional Files for this period.

Unpublished Sources

  • Department of State
    • Central Foreign Policy Files. See National Archives and Records Administration below.
    • Lot Files. For other lot files already transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, Maryland, Record Group 59, see National Archives and Records Administration below.
    • INR/IL Historical Files.
      • Files of the Office of Intelligence Coordination, containing records from the 1940s through the 1980s, maintained by the Office of Intelligence Liaison, Bureau of Intelligence and Research
      • Lot 82D241, Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance Files
      • Lot 81D109, Marshall Shulman Files
  • National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland
    • Record Group 59, Files of the Department of State [Page XVI]
      • Central Foreign Policy File
      • Lot Files
        • Lot 77D112, S/P Files, Policy Planning Staff, Director’s File (Winston Lord)
        • Lot 81D286, S/S Files, Records of Counselor of the Department (Helmut Sonnenfeldt)
        • Lot 91D414, Records of Henry Kissinger, 1973–77
    • Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
      • Diary of Thomas H. Moorer
  • Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library, Yorba Linda, California
    • National Security Council Files
      • Backchannel Messages
      • Exchange of Notes Between Kissinger and Dobrynin
      • Presidential-HAK Memcons
      • President’s Trip File, Dobrynin/Kissinger
      • SALT TWO
    • Kissinger Office Files
      • Country Files, Europe—USSR
      • Dobrynin/Kissinger
      • HAK Trip Files
    • National Security Council Institutional Files (H-Files)
      • National Security Council Meetings
      • National Security Council Minutes
      • National Security Decision Memoranda Files
      • Policy Papers
      • Verification Panel Meetings
      • Verification Panel Minutes
    • White House Central Files
      • Staff Members and Office Files: President’s Daily Diary
    • White House Tapes
  • Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan
    • National Security Adviser
      • Backchannel Messages
      • Kissinger Reports on USSR, Middle East, and China
      • Memoranda of Conversation
      • NSC Program Analysis Staff Files
        • Jan Lodal Convenience Files
      • Outside the System
        • Chronological File
      • Presidential Subject File
      • Staff Assistant, Peter Rodman Files
      • Trip Briefing Books and Cables for Henry Kissinger
      • Kissinger-Scowcroft West Wing Office Files
    • National Security Council Institutional Files (H-Files)
      • National Security Decision Memoranda Files
      • National Security Council Meetings
      • SALT
      • Verification Panel Meetings
    • President’s Daily Diary
  • Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, Georgia
    • Cabinet Meeting Minutes
    • Brzezinski Donated Material
    • National Security Affairs
      • Brzezinski Material
        • Agency File
        • Brzezinski Office File
        • Country File
        • President’s Correspondence with Foreign Leaders File
        • Subject File
        • Trip File
      • Staff Material
      • Office File
      • Outside the System
      • Special Projects File
    • National Security Council
      • NSC Institutional Files
    • Office of Congressional Liaison, Beckel
    • Plains Files
    • White House Central File
      • Subject File
  • Central Intelligence Agency
    • Files of the Office of the Director of Intelligence
    • Executive Registry Files
      • Job 80–M01048A
  • Library of Congress, Washington, DC
    • Manuscript Division
      • Papers of Henry A. Kissinger
        • Geopolitical File
      • Papers of Harold Brown
  • National Security Council, Washington, DC
    • Subject Files
  • Washington National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland
    • FRC 330, Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense
      • 81–00202

Published Sources

  • Carter, Jimmy. Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1982.
  • The New York Times
  • United States. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Documents on Disarmament: 1979. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979.
  • United States. Department of State. Department of State Bulletin, 1974–1980. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972–1977.
  • United States. National Archives and Records Administration. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Gerald Ford, 1974, 1975, 1976–1977. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975, 1977, 1979.
  • United States. National Archives and Records Administration. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Jimmy Carter, 1977, 1979. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977, 1979.
  • The Washington Post