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Hunter interview on records management



Greg Hunter's interview on cbs.marketwatch.com made some interesting points about records management in corporate America.  Professor Hunter noted that corporations often have a poor understanding of recordkeeping and records management; that better training is necessary to prepare for crisis situations where a person may order destructions of records to avoid questions about past corporate actions; clearer guidelines and more advice from lawyers are needed; and finally, that you cannot legislate good judgment.   

Let me add a few other points.  Having once worked as a NARA employee charged with screening Watergate "governmental abuse of power" information, I know it is relatively easy to preserve, manage and provide access to routine records but extraordinarily difficult to work with ones that document controversial activities.   With the advent of investigative journalism in the post-Watergate era, some of the records that historians or investigators need are the ones most likely to be destroyed (or never created in the first place).  In the private and public sector, people have a natural tendency to want to leave a paper trail that makes them look good.  Even when there is no wrongdoing, running an organization or a corporation can be a messy business.

Colin Powell described why Joe Laitin, one of his Nixon administration mentors, opposed exposing young White House Fellows to the machinations of high level governance:  "Democracy is give and take. People have to trade, change, deal, retreat, bend, compromise, as they move from the ideal to the possible.  To the uninitiated, the process can be messy, disappointing, even shocking. Compromise can make the participants look manipulative, unprincipled, two-faced. . .  ."   Such an attitude can work against preservation of what the National Archives calls "the essential evidence of governmental action."

Professor Hunter points out that lawyers need to play a bigger role in records management.  The key question is how well lawyers balance the need to protect the organization with the principle of accountability. Some observers have noted that to protect companies from litigation, corporate lawyers often urge that as few records be kept, for as short a time, as possible.  Indeed, when the Wall Street Journal published an article on the value of corporate history in 1987, it quoted a Harvard business history professor who warned, "Lawyers are the enemies of history." ("In Wake of Cost Cuts, Many Firms Sweep Their History Out the Door," Wall Street Journal, December 21, 1987.")   Other observers, such as former White House counsel Lloyd Cutler, have noted a chilling effect on records creation in Washington.  (Cutler op ed, "Washington Writer's Block," Washington Post, May 16, 1997.)

Finally, I would like to point out that lawyers should keep in mind their need to protect subordinate employees as well as top managers.  They should ensure that there are buffers to protect low ranking employees from being placed in positions where they are asked to illegally destroy records by bosses whom they cannot disobey without jeopardizing their jobs.  

Maarja Krusten
Former NARA Nixon tapes archivist
(Maarja@aol.com)