History Without Letters

By WALTER ISAACSON

Pity the poor historian. The wonders of modern technology have combined with the dynamics of government scandals to make his task next to impossible.

First came the telephone, which replaced the letter as the preferred means of business and social discourse. Letter writing, like keeping faithful diaries, became a lost art. The advent of the tape recorder offered some hope, until Watergate made taping one's own phone for posterity seem both sordid and self-incriminating. Anointing a personal Boswell to hang around the house also turned out to be troublesome, as shown by the ill-conceived rumblings about summoning Edmund Morris, the President's designated biographer, to testify before the Iran-contra probers. Not even silicon chips offer much promise anymore. Those electronic messages that national-security staffers zapped to one another's computer screens, which were fortunately recorded in deep memory for future scribes, violated the cardinal rule of modern government: never leave footprints. Electronic memory shredders will, no doubt, be a feature of the next generation of DELETE keys.

As a result, historians may be left with nothing more than cabinets filled with butt-covering memos designed more to obscure than illuminate the origins of critical decisions. "It's a real problem," says Morris. "There is more paper now, but its value declines in inverse proportion to its bulk."

One of the great troves for students of 20th century American diplomacy was left by Henry Stimson, a tireless diarist and letter writer who served a number of stints as Secretary of War and State from 1911 until 1945. Stimson was the man who ordered the dismantling of a government code-breaking outfit, later explaining "Gentlemen do not read other people's mail." This mind-set led to some very frank and revealing letters and diary entries. Historians piecing together the momentous decisions of World War II have the luxury of comparing personal writings in which Stimson and Navy Secretary James Forrestal describe the same sets of events.

Of course, some letters are a bit dry and impersonal, like those of General George Marshall. But others impart an intimate texture to the tide of history. The candid correspondence between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, for example, casts vivid light on the minds of these two great men and the depth of the wartime alliance that they were able to forge. Likewise, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote letters every day. "They provide a diary of the movement of her psyche," says Joseph Lash. "Without them, Eleanor and Franklin and Eleanor: The Years Alone could not have been written."

In a satiric essay called "Igor Stravinsky: The Selected Phone Calls," the humorist Ian Frazier pretends to rummage through old telephone bills for clues to the composer's life. For serious historians, the situation seems less funny. "I know more about the Kennedy assassination than anyone," says William Manchester, author of The Death of a President, "but I know more about the Dardanelles in 1915 than I do about the assassination. In 1915, people put everything on paper. Now, it's all done over the telephone." Notes Historian Barbara Tuchman: "Phone bills won't tell you much, and as a result, contemporary history has less perspective."

The last President to leave a cache of candid correspondence was Harry Truman, who wrote more than 1,200 letters just to his wife. Not only do they reveal his delightful personal style, they provide convincing insights on matters ranging from his dealings with Stalin to his decision to drop the atom bomb. There is even a book filled with letters that Truman wrote in moments of pique, then wisely filed away unmailed. His diaries, though intermittent, are no less revealing. In June 1945, as General Douglas MacArthur was closing in on the islands near Japan, Truman's entries foreshadow the bitter personal battles that lay ahead. He describes the general as "Mr. Prima Donna, Brass Hat Five Star MacArthur" in one entry and adds, "He's worse than the Cabots and the Lodges -- they at least talked to one another before they told God what to do."

Robert Caro, now at work on the second volume of his definitive biography of Lyndon Johnson, says the historical record abruptly changes in the early 1940s, when people began to rely on the telephone more than the mail. "Through Johnson's detailed correspondence with his patron Alvin Wirtz and others, you could trace the most intricate deals and such matters as his stormy relationship with Sam Rayburn," says Caro. "Then, at a crucial moment, just when you want to know what someone is thinking, you'll run into a telegram or note saying 'Phone me tonight.' That's when you feel the impact of the telephone right in your gut." In researching L.B.J.'s role in the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Bill, Caro says he has been reduced to deciphering scrawls at the bottom of telephone-message slips.

Back when the telephone was a relatively new contraption, people often regarded it as too ephemeral for important communications. Averell Harriman and Robert Lovett, two great statesmen who had been Wall Street partners, talked on the phone regularly when they were apart and then would exchange letters the same afternoon, putting to paper what they had said. "As I told you over the telephone this morning . . . " they would typically begin. Back then, of course, the post was more efficient: the letter would usually arrive before the next morning's phone conversation.

Their successors, on the other hand, abandoned letters in favor of obfuscating memos when it came to discussing, say, the Viet Nam War. Some of the most candid records of that period come from times when a few of the old statesmen were called in for counsel and then, as was their wont, exchanged letters about what they had discussed.

Harriman was one of those who believed in having important telephone conversations transcribed for his files. His personal papers describe a classic exchange with Robert Kennedy, who phoned after announcing on television that he was challenging President Johnson for the Democratic nomination. Kennedy: "I'm running for President." Harriman: "Next time tell the children to smile. Ethel looked great. The kids looked bored." Kennedy: "They were." Harriman: "I don't expect to have a press conference soon, but if it does come around, I'm going to support the President."

Franklin Roosevelt was the first to set up a secret taping system in the Oval Office. A microphone was hidden in his desk lamp to record his press conferences, though some private talks got taped as well. In a conversation recorded in October 1940, Roosevelt had this reaction to a telegram written by a Japanese press official: "This country is ready to pull the trigger if the Japs do anything."

John Kennedy likewise used a rudimentary recording system. The tapes from such dramatic conversations as his telephone showdown with Governor Ross Barnett during the Ole Miss desegregation crisis provide historians with raw data that is even more gripping than most old letters. But Richard Nixon spoiled it all by going too far, both in what he said and how he recorded it.

As a result, taping phone conversations came to be regarded as terribly sleazy. At least a dozen states have laws against such secret self-taps, as U.S. Information Agency Director Charles Wick was reminded when he tried to resurrect the practice.

The national penchant for exposing as quickly as possible everything done by public officials, which is codified by the Freedom of Information Act, is, on balance, a good thing for democracy. But it is not the best thing for history. It has taught statesmen to be very careful about what they put on paper. "For all its advantages, the FOIA inhibits people from writing," says Robert Donovan, whose noted biographies of Truman depended heavily on letters and frank memos. "Officials shred it all now. A lot of serious history is vanishing."

Future historians will no doubt find different source material. Instead of rummaging through the Beinecke Library at Yale, they will spend their time in video archives watching old segments of Nightline and the MacNeil-Lehrer report. "So much is preserved in audio and visual these days," says Morris, "that it gives you much of a person's life and demeanor." Well, yes, the historians of the next century will be a lot more accurate in their portrayal of how people looked and spoke. But it is naive to believe that the way Caspar Weinberger answers a Ted Koppel question about America's stake in the Persian Gulf could provide the same candid insight that is available in Dean Acheson's letters to his daughter on the same subject during the Iranian crisis 41 years ago.

One solution would be to make it once again respectable -- perhaps even mandatory -- to tape important discussions and phone conversations for the historical record. The tapes would become the property of the National Archives and could be tightly sealed from all scrutiny for at least two decades, the way that sensitive diplomatic cables were generally treated before the Freedom of Information Act came along. But aside from the legal and practical questions involved, such an idea would face philosophic objections: it could be seen as both an unwarranted invasion of privacy and a dangerous attempt to preserve the privacy of important exchanges.

Then again, preserving such a record may not be worth the vast effort, expense or constraints involved. After all, only history is at stake. But if top officials knew in the back of their minds that future generations were listening in, it might have a salutary effect on the present. Had the judgment of history been hovering over their shoulders, the architects of the Iran- contra affair, for example, might have reflected a moment longer on the long- term implications of their actions. Indeed, the dulling of our historical sense could be one reason that the U.S. needs so many special prosecutors these days.