Perspective: Presidents used to own their personal papers — but there were real security reasons for changing that.
In February 1955, Truman and three aides — an academic, his literary agent and a trusted adviser — sat down with his former secretary of state, Dean Acheson, for interviews that would help guide the former president as he wrote his memoirs. Truman and his team went on to interview most of the major figures from his administration.Their first question threw Acheson for a loop.
Acheson laid this situation out for Truman and his team. Some issues were clearer than others. If Truman wanted to divulge top-secret information — for example, the size of the U.S. nuclear stockpile in 1950 — he would have to ask for permission from his successor, the Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. Whether Truman could declassify material himself, well, that was an easy one: “I think it is clear that Mr. Truman cannot do that,” Acheson answered. “He no longer has any authority of any sort.
Despite this precedent, Acheson himself had left all of his official papers behind. The Eisenhower administration, amid accusations of communist infiltration against Acheson’s State Department, was looking for any excuse to bring charges against former officials. While Acheson accused Eisenhower’s team of having “very little decency about it,” he understood that, “I am a fellow they would love to prosecute, and I didn’t want to be in a position of having one [expletive] thing.
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