Sordid details and historical pearls. That's one way to describe a controversial cache of documents in the keeping of the Hoover Institution since early this year.
The collection contains vast sets of official records from Iraq's Baath Party government during the years of Saddam Hussein's rule. The material, which includes incendiary revelations about Iraqis involved in oppressive activities, is expected to provide scholars with invaluable insight into the day-to-day realities of Hussein's reign, particularly during the 1990s.
As of early fall, Hoover also was planning to receive digital copies of those documents and other records held by the Iraq Memory Foundation, the organization that assembled all the material. There are about 11 million digital images—each a copy of a physical page—and the archiving process must consider the need to remove names and information that could put people in danger from political enemies if publicly disclosed. The digital copies will be made available at Hoover in stages, and access to the first batch is expected before the end of the year.
For months, Hoover took a barrage of flak, as did the Memory Foundation, for rejecting the idea that the documents immediately should be returned to Iraq. But by the end of summer, Hoover's counterarguments about safekeeping were giving at least some critics pause. And in September, Stanford received e-mail supporting Hoover from an aide to the spokesman for Iraq's prime minister.
The dispute over control of the documents has tended to overshadow discussion of their historical value. Nevertheless, some experts on Iraq expect the material to be a magnet for researchers.
“Broadly speaking, the bureaucratic records of an authoritarian government are often very revealing,” says Harvard law professor Noah Feldman, who served as senior constitutional adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq and is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Feldman notes that much of the interest will be focused on Hussein. “The questions of what he did and how he did it are going to be especially controversial.”
The documents are “going to be a treasure trove of information about how the Baathists worked,” adds Larry Diamond, a Hoover senior fellow who was a senior adviser to the CPA in early 2004.
Diamond, '73, MA '78, PhD '80, says the Baath Party records will provide insights in general “about the dynamics of a dictatorship—how it maintains itself, how it recruits and how it sees itself.”
Hoover is widely recognized for its expertise on totalitarian states. The Memory Foundation is an organization with offices in Washington, D.C., Baghdad and London and was founded by Kanan Makiya, a native of Iraq and a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at Brandeis University. The foundation describes its core work as gathering and archiving people's stories about surviving or witnessing the “atrocities” of Baathist power. But the context often given to Makiya's activities is his reported influence with U.S. government officials in urging the overthrow of Hussein.
Makiya says he was directed to the Baathist records in the summer of 2003 by a U.S. lieutenant at what had been the regional party headquarters in Baghdad. When Makiya arrived there for another reason, he says the officer asked him if a large quantity of documents strewn about a basement had any importance. Makiya says he received permission from U.S. authorities to remove and preserve the material—a flashpoint with critics who say it was never a decision anyone from the United States was entitled to make.
Multiple sets of copies subsequently were made, and the original material that was deposited with Hoover is at an undisclosed location after arriving in three semi trailers escorted by private security guards. Hoover and the Memory Foundation say their oversight of the documents guarantees their safety, which they argue would be at risk in Iraq. They insist the papers eventually will be returned to Iraq, perhaps in less than five years if circumstances allow.
Richard Sousa, Hoover's senior associate director, contends “too much misinformation” has fueled the debate. “The biggest bit of misinformation being that Hoover was taking these away from the Iraqi people, which is not what we're doing,” he says. “We view this as protecting them for the Iraqi people.”
Some of the harshest criticism came in April as a joint statement from the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and the Association of Canadian Archivists (CAA). The statement compared the foundation's gathering of documents, plus their storage with Hoover, to “an act of pillage.”
In late August, a representative of the foundation, Hassan Mneimneh, and Sousa met with officials of the two archivist groups to cite a chain of evidence for the legality of temporarily placing the documents with Hoover. Much of the back-and-forth centers on whether various approving letters from Iraqi governmental figures are authoritative.
“We're giving it another look,” says SAA president Frank Boles, acknowledging that the documentation presented by the foundation and Hoover deserves serious review.
One key factor is sorting out conflicting assertions frm Iraq—perhaps most notably a statement in June by Akram M. Hadi, then the acting minister of culture, in which he declared “absolute rejection of (the) MF-Hoover deal.”
Using an e-mail address provided by the Memory Foundation, Stanford attempted to obtain clarification from Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh. The magazine received a reply from Ahmed Shames of the government spokesman's office. (Leila Fadel, Baghdad bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers, confirmed Shames's name and role as al-Dabbagh's assistant.) Shames's e-mail follows.
“1. The process of temporarily depositing the documents at the Hoover Institute is aimed at providing them with the highest possible levels of restoration, preservation, conservation, and maintenance, and to insure that they are in a safe and sound storage before returning them to Iraq again. The entire process was done in coordination with the Prime Minister Office and through official letters. There is currently no Iraqi institute concerned with storing these documents, and the Accountability and Justice Law in chapter 3, article 4-b states that a permanent archive is to be established to store these documents. Therefore, the Government has agreed to the above operation with the Hoover Institute. Mr. Akram Hadi was the acting Culture Minister, and there are ongoing communications with him to clarify the situation.
“2. Mr. Akram Hadi is now a Minister of State for National Dialogue. A new Minister of Culture has assumed his duties on a permanent basis.”
How much longer the controversy will seem muddled is uncertain. But the import of the documents guarantees continued attention. “If I were to look at the three or four most important collections we have at Hoover,” says Sousa, “I would say this is one of them.”
