WEBVTT 00:00:01.080 --> 00:00:02.230 >> Office of the Historian. 00:00:02.230 --> 00:00:06.800 It was created by Abraham Lincoln in 1862 in the middle of the Civil War. 00:00:06.800 --> 00:00:09.320 President Lincoln wanted to prevent the South 00:00:09.320 --> 00:00:14.670 from fomenting their own foreign-policy, history to England and France. 00:00:14.670 --> 00:00:18.500 And so President Lincoln wanted an official history of the United States 00:00:18.500 --> 00:00:21.090 and that has been the job that our office has been charged with. 00:00:21.090 --> 00:00:25.620 All the way back to 1862, we've been publishing, it's called the Foreign Relations 00:00:25.620 --> 00:00:29.470 of the United States series continuously since that period. 00:00:29.470 --> 00:00:33.830 We celebrated our sesquicentennial in 2011. 00:00:33.830 --> 00:00:36.910 And it's a real honor to be a part of that series. 00:00:36.910 --> 00:00:43.400 The series focuses either on presidential administrations or regions or topics. 00:00:43.400 --> 00:00:48.250 And basically, what historians in this office do, we all have security clearances 00:00:48.250 --> 00:00:53.860 and every foreign-policy document, going back 25, 30, 35 years, except in the event 00:00:53.860 --> 00:00:57.810 of an Edward Snowden or a leak of some nature like that, 00:00:57.810 --> 00:01:01.240 all of those foreign-policy documents are classified. 00:01:01.240 --> 00:01:07.510 So our job is to go into federal archives, the CIA, presidential libraries, the Pentagon, 00:01:07.510 --> 00:01:12.400 National Security Council, basically any government agency that's in possession 00:01:12.400 --> 00:01:18.040 of classified material germane to our topic, find the best material on that topic, 00:01:18.040 --> 00:01:22.420 write books about it, help declassify them, and basically allow historians, 00:01:22.420 --> 00:01:26.560 citizens of this country, and citizens all over the world to have a better understanding 00:01:26.560 --> 00:01:28.910 of the foreign-policy of the United States. 00:01:28.910 --> 00:01:31.260 So I have two projects going. 00:01:31.260 --> 00:01:35.710 The first project is a trilogy on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. 00:01:35.710 --> 00:01:40.880 If you remember, back in 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. 00:01:40.880 --> 00:01:44.640 And during the Cold War, of course, the Soviets were the bad guys. 00:01:44.640 --> 00:01:49.330 And our good guys, at that point, who would become the bad guys after September 11, 00:01:49.330 --> 00:01:51.750 were the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. 00:01:51.750 --> 00:01:59.490 So my three-part series focuses first on President Carter's decision to help Afghanistan 00:01:59.490 --> 00:02:04.880 against the Soviets and then President Reagan's decision to expand those efforts all the way 00:02:04.880 --> 00:02:08.720 until the collapse of the Soviet regime. 00:02:08.720 --> 00:02:11.510 So the way the project works is first as a proposal. 00:02:11.510 --> 00:02:15.050 Then there is a research period where we go and we find all the documents. 00:02:15.050 --> 00:02:18.560 Then there is a selection period where we sort of take the very best documents, 00:02:18.560 --> 00:02:23.800 the documents that we think will really advance the historical understanding of a given topic. 00:02:23.800 --> 00:02:29.170 Then once we have all of those documents selected, we kind of take the best once, 00:02:29.170 --> 00:02:33.760 compile them into a volume, and then it goes through an editing 00:02:33.760 --> 00:02:39.290 and proofing process all the way through declassification and into publication. 00:02:39.290 --> 00:02:42.470 So with the three-part series on Afghanistan, 00:02:42.470 --> 00:02:45.660 I have one volume completely researched and edited. 00:02:45.660 --> 00:02:48.990 I have two volumes completely researched and while those are sort 00:02:48.990 --> 00:02:54.480 of in the review stage right now, my current project, another not simple project, 00:02:54.480 --> 00:02:58.300 is on the Iran-Contra affair in the mid-1980s. 00:02:58.300 --> 00:03:03.190 This is a volume that documents the Arms for Hostage scandal that was conducted 00:03:03.190 --> 00:03:07.670 by the National Security Council of the Reagan Administration. 00:03:07.670 --> 00:03:10.850 So a lot of interest and attention is going to be paid to that volume for sure.