Kissinger Telephone Conversations Added to ProQuest's Digital National Security Archive
ProQuest is adding The Kissinger Telephone Conversations to its growing Digital National Security Archive (DNSA). Upon completion, DNSA's newest collection will comprise 50 audio recordings and more than 15,000 transcripts of U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's telephone conversations with top officials in the Nixon and Ford administrations. The Kissinger Telephone Conversations is the 30th collection in the DNSA's research arsenal, which provides online access to documents, many formerly secret or top secret, underlying 60 years of U.S. foreign policy, from the Cold War conflict over Berlin to the War on Terrorism. Documents and transcripts have been selected and identified by leading scholars in each of the subject areas covered and have been indexed to permit item and page-level keyword searching across more than 20 fields.
"This is a unique look - and listen - into the inner-workings of the White House through one of its most powerful players," said Mary Sauer-Games, vice president of publishing for ProQuest. "Crisis, scandal, foreign intrigue… the Nixon and Ford administrations were eventful and they're widely studied as a result. Having digital access to Dr. Kissinger's first-person dialogue gives nuance to research that has simply not been available before."
"The Kissinger Telephone Conversations integrate two separate collections of Kissinger telephone conversation transcripts," said National Security Archive (NSA) project director William Burr, "one from the Nixon Presidential Library; and the other, declassified in response to NSA Freedom of Information Act requests, from the Department of State -- into a unique, comprehensively indexed record of Henry Kissinger's role as top policy adviser to presidents Nixon and Ford. Along with the collection of Kissinger memoranda of conversation already available in the Digital National Security Archive, these new telephone conversation transcripts provide researchers with yet another unique window into the making of U.S. foreign and military policy during a critical era in the Cold War."
The Kissinger Telephone Conversations include conversations with President Richard Nixon, Defense Secretaries Melvin Laird, Elliot Richardson, and James Schlesinger, Secretary of State William P. Rogers, Ambassador to the U.N. George H.W. Bush, and White House Counselor Donald Rumsfeld, along with noted journalists, ambassadors, and business leaders with close White House ties. Wide-ranging topics discussed include détente with Moscow, military actions during the Vietnam War and the negotiations that led to its end, Middle East peace talks, the 1970 Jordan crisis, U.S. relations with Europe and with Japan, rapprochement with China, the Cyprus crisis, and the unfolding Watergate scandal. When combined with the Archive's previous electronic publication of The Kissinger Transcripts: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977, which captures notes from conversations, DNSA users will have access to a comprehensive compilation of Kissinger's declassified discussions with world leaders.
DNSA is the most comprehensive resource available of primary documents central to U.S. foreign and military policy since 1945. More than 69,000 of the most important declassified documents - totaling more than 488,000 pages - are included in the database. Many are published for the first time.
DNSA spans 30 key topical areas that contain a diverse range of policy and intelligence documents including presidential directives, summit meeting transcripts, memoranda of conversation, diplomatic dispatches, interagency meeting notes, national intelligence estimates, briefing papers, internal White House communications, email, confidential letters and other formerly secret material. Additionally, detailed contextual and reference supplements are provided for each subject area, including general introductory material, an essay, a bibliography, a chronology, and glossaries.
DNSA is the most powerful primary research and teaching tool available in the areas of U.S. foreign policy, intelligence and security affairs during a pivotal period of twentieth-century history.
For further information on The Kissinger Telephone Conversations, Kissinger Transcripts: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977, and the Digital National Security Archive, please visit www.proquest.com
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