INTERVIEW: The National Archives's plans for America at 250 and how to make "America's mysteries" accessible to all
THE LOWDOWN:
Senior Adviser to the Acting National Archivist, Jim Byron caught up with the Washington Reporter on the agency’s plans for America’s 250th birthday celebration and more.
Byron was charged by President Donald Trump with “manag[ing] the National Archives on a day-to-day basis” until an Archivist can be appointed. While Byron has only held the job for three months, he’s a veteran when it comes to dealing with the National Archives.
The former CEO of the Nixon Foundation, Byron is taking the spirit of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to the Archives.
Byron’s final America 250 goal is hosting “a big birthday party on or around July 4th of 2026 with extended hours, an opportunity for people to actually come in and take a look at the Declaration of Independence and read it for themselves.”
The National Archives is where many of “America’s mysteries” find their permanent home and Jim Byron, Senior Adviser to the Acting Archivist of the United States, has a front-row seat to many of them from his office just 100 steps away from the Declaration of Independence.
“You have to know your history in order to know what's going on today, and then that will inform how to deal with the future,” Byron told the Washington Reporter in an interview.
Byron was charged by President Donald Trump with “manag[ing] the National Archives on a day-to-day basis” until an Archivist can be appointed. While Byron has only held the job for three months, he’s a veteran when it comes to dealing with the National Archives, after spending years working at the Richard Nixon Foundation, including three-and-a-half years as its President and CEO.
“The biggest thing that surprised me,” he told the Reporter, “is how thinly spread the agency is.”
“NARA has been trying to do too much for too long,” Byron continued. “What I can help it do is get back to its core mission and function, which is preserving the history of the United States government and making that history available to the American people. It's that simple. And it will be a more effective agency.”
In that vein, Byron is taking the spirit of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to the Archives.
“What we're taking a look at now, as the whole government is, are ways to get back to core mission and function and statutory requirements that come from Congress,” Byron said.
One of Trump’s top priorities in his second term is maximizing transparency, which has kept the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) constantly in the news. NARA and its facilities across America are responsible for helping with the digitization and release of tens of thousands of documents — including documents on the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Byron spoke extensively with the Reporter last month about the first tranche of 10,000 new RFK files released. He said then that little within those initial 10,000 documents indicated anyone other than Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian terrorist, was the likely assassin of Kennedy.
However, the point of the release was to demonstrate transparency and allow readers to come to their own conclusions.
Last week, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard oversaw the release of 60,000 more files related to the assassination. Those files included “never-before-seen details about the FBI’s investigation into the assassination of RFK — including the discussion of potential leads by various FBI offices, internal FBI memos detailing progress on the case, and more,” Gabbard’s office said.
The ongoing release of long-awaited files has been a boon to both the agencies and to history buffs alike. Gabbard kicked off the release of the first tranche by joining Byron at an Archives facility in Maryland. One attendee told the Reporter that Archives staff were “overjoyed” by the trip and that the visit by Gabbard and Byron was “worth its weight in gold.”
The latest release includes “rumors circulating on foreign soil that Senator Kennedy had been assassinated one month prior to his true assassination date” and included audio recordings of both Sirhan himself and eyewitnesses to the assassination.
It also included a request from then-Attorney General Eric Holder requesting a new investigation into the assassination in 2012, an investigation by Scotland Yard into whether Sirhan was a member of Arab terrorist organizations, investigations from FBI field offices across America, and more.
But assassination files aren’t the only things that keep Byron busy; he is also preparing for America’s 250th birthday celebrations from his perch at NARA.
“We're going to do big things” to celebrate, he said. “Number one, we are going to take documents on the road.”
“Right now, we're identifying Founding-era documents that can be transported to different cities throughout the country,” Byron said. “We'll be able to announce much more about that in the future, but you're the first reporter that I've told that to. That's a real way for people outside of the nation's capital, outside the Beltway, to connect with American history.”
Another of Byron’s goals is a thorough examination and celebration of the Declaration of Independence. He told the Reporter that NARA is “in the process of creating a marquee temporary exhibition right here at the National Archives, all about the Declaration of Independence.”
For his part, Byron doesn’t think that Nicolas Cage could steal the Declaration a la National Treasure. But, he wants people to debate and discuss “how did it come about?;” “What was the thinking behind it?;” “Who were the Framers and what influenced them?;” and more.
“It's a document that sparked so much all around the globe, and started right here in this country,” Byron said. “So that temporary exhibition will open next spring and will run for a year.”
Byron’s final America 250 goal is hosting “a big birthday party on or around July 4th of 2026 with extended hours, an opportunity for people to actually come in and take a look at the Declaration of Independence and read it for themselves.”
Between now and next year, Byron is kicking off a series called Opening the Vault, which takes advantage of the “incredible number of historical treasures, documents, and items of historical value without precedent in the history of the United States” that are in the Archives.
“They're all sitting upstairs in these vaults, and nobody gets to see them, and that's got to change. I'm starting a new exhibition series called Opening the Vault, and it will start with documents from the Revolutionary War. I'm talking about George Washington's Oath of Allegiance to the United States, the early drafts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, original items in the hand of the Marquis de Lafayette, the Treaty of Paris signed by King George III. These are incredible treasures, and the public has a right to see them.”
Byron also wants to focus on parts of American history that are within living memory. He told the Reporter that he thinks “some of the other items that would be of interest to people are anything related to anti-Semitism and to the Holocaust.”
“At a time which anti-Semitism is, unfortunately, on the rise, anything to remind people about that time in world history is very important,” Byron said, noting 2025 is the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe (VE) Day as well as Victory in Japan (VJ) Day.
“Anything that has not come out in regard to both of those anniversaries, I'd like to see out,” Byron said. “These are real, tangible ways to connect Americans with our history, and it's the job of the National Archives to do that.”
Byron’s vision of America 250 was not in the cards before his arrival. He said that on his “first day here,” he said to his team, “‘show me what the America 250 plan is.’”
“And I got back this long list of things that, in my estimation, were of low impact,” he said.
That spirit fits squarely with what Byron thinks that President Richard Nixon would think about how Trump’s second term is going.
“I think that President Nixon would like the speed at which things are moving,” he said. “There's this palatable feeling in Washington today that things are moving quickly. President Nixon famously tried to reform the bureaucracy throughout his five and a half years.”
“I think he would be admiring of the speed at which things are happening today under President Trump,” Byron added.
Below is a transcript of our interview with Jim Byron the Senior Advisor to Acting Archivist, lightly edited for clarity.
Washington Reporter:
A few months ago, you were running the Nixon Foundation. Now, you're running the National Archives. Before we get to how that happened, tell me how did you get into presidential history?
Jim Byron:
I've always been interested in American history, particularly presidential history. I think presidential history is a really great gateway to broader American history. A lot of people associate the American presidency with the country more generally. For me, my grandfather was a really significant influence on my life. It's always been something I was interested in. I applied for an internship with the Nixon Foundation , and for 17 years off and on, I had an affiliation with the Nixon Foundation, and that broadened my scope of study and interest in 20th century American political history and presidential history. There's so much that we can learn from history. You have to know your history in order to know what's going on today, and then that will inform how to deal with the future.
Washington Reporter:
So what did you think when you got the call to head up NARA? You were at the Nixon Foundation, which is in California, then you moved across the country.
Jim Byron:
I am honored that President Trump asked me to do this, to work with Secretary Rubio to manage NARA. It's an important responsibility. It's an important agency. If we don't preserve our history, we can't learn from it. And I think that's, more than anything, something that I can bring to the job. I've been around the National Archives for the better part of my career. I was on the private side, but we worked closely with the National Archives at the presidential library, so I've seen what works and I've seen what doesn't work, and now I'm in a position to be able to get in and really make some substantive changes to set this place up, hopefully for the foreseeable future.
Washington Reporter:
Can you talk about what your vision is with those changes that you're working on, how things have already been going, and what you want to do? What are you looking at that is presumably informed by your dealings with this agency for the Nixon Foundation?
Jim Byron:
The biggest thing that surprised me is how thinly spread the agency is. NARA has been trying to do too much for too long. What I can help it do is get back to its core mission and function, which is preserving the history of the United States government and making that history available to the American people. It's that simple. And it will be a more effective agency. What we're taking a look at now, as the whole government is, are ways to get back to core mission and function and statutory requirements that come from Congress.
Washington Reporter:
Richard Nixon, if I'm not mistaken, had an integral role and interaction with NARA and with the Presidential Records Act; can you just tell us what that was?
Jim Byron:
A big takeaway from my time running the Nixon Foundation is that so much about contemporary American history and politics and government today has something to do with President Nixon. It was as a result of Watergate that the Presidential Records Act came to be. There are 13 physical presidential libraries affiliated with the National Archives, but there are 16 actual collections that constitute a literal presidential library, because there are also collections for Obama, Trump, and Biden.
Washington Reporter:
Biden’s are all in his garage, I’d imagine.
Jim Byron:
All of those records, from Ronald Reagan forward, are covered by the Presidential Records Act. Nixon is covered by his own law called the Presidential Materials and Recordings Preservation Act, which Congress passed and President Ford signed as a way to try and keep the documents and the tapes and all the items related to President Nixon in Washington, D.C. for possible use in Watergate investigations. That was a radical change of ownership, because they were previously seen as the personal property of the president. That all changed as a result of the Watergate, and that was a bumpy ride, because President Nixon’s argument was ‘you’re treating me differently than you treated all my predecessors.’ And so that was litigated well after President Nixon's passing, and the United States government actually ended up settling with the Nixon estate, while the government kept the documents. So it is now established law that presidential records are transferred to the National Archives. We have shuttles going back and forth with materials coming from the White House to the National Archives building, every executive order that the president signs immediately comes here to the National Archives and is published in the Federal Register. These materials will find themselves in the Donald Trump Presidential Library. So the legacy of the Nixon era continues to influence how we do business today.
Washington Reporter:
You had an interesting and historic trip to Maryland with the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. Can you talk about what you saw and how that came about?
Jim Byron:
It was a big deal that the Director of National Intelligence paid a visit to the National Archives to announce the release of these 10,000 pages, the first tranche of files related to the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. We at NARA had been working with Director Gabbard's team, and she established a group called the Director’s Initiative Group, and she actually dispatched individuals who work at the ODNI to come to the National Archives to help prepare these documents for release. She also helped facilitate a great working relationship government-wide with other agencies to review this material, which really helps speed up the process and we at the National Archives are now excited because we have learned a lot from this process, and we can now take this process and make this standard operating procedure, from eight to five every day to be making these documents available to the American people. And that process is really interesting. I'd like to talk about for a minute, because it's not well understood. It can take quite a bit of time, because first of all, these files have to be located. A substantial number of files reside at the National Archives, but a lot of these files actually still reside with the originating agencies. For example, it was well publicized that prior to the release of the JFK files, the FBI discovered 20,000 new documents, so those had to be brought over to the National Archives and be part of the JFK collection. So what happens when a document or a record series gets ready for release? First of all, everything needs to be identified. Then they need to be hand sorted. We're talking about original paper records here. So they can be of different sources of material. They can be a regular piece of paper, it could be an onion skin, a copy from a typewriter 60 years ago that might be not in the best shape. They could have staples or brackets, that all needs to be removed. So that actually takes the majority of the time. So when they are prepared for digitization, they need to get bar coded, they need to be identified in such a way so that when they are scanned and they're put up online, they can be indexed. Metadata is put into those documents. They can be keyword searchable, and NARA has the tools to do that. So then they go through the digitization. They go through these rapid digitization scanners that can scan up to 250 pages per minute, and then they are posted online. So again, depending upon the scope and how many pages we're talking about, this could take years. There are 13 and a half billion pages of documents at the National Archives, and we're doing three high density scanners. That's it.
Washington Reporter:
How much of this changed when you started? It sounds like this has been a top priority for you that wasn’t necessarily here before.
Jim Byron:
Absolutely. It starts with President Trump and his executive order issuing the release of the JFK, RFK, and MLK files. And then we went right into action. And I made this a priority from the very first days, we took a look at everything in the existing process. I said in my welcome message we were going to take a look at everything. We took a look at the processes about how we digitize these documents to get them out, and we said, we gotta speed this up.
Washington Reporter:
Can you explain how with ODNI this process of declassification works visa a vs NARA? Would you have been able to look at these documents yourself prior to this declassification executive order?
Jim Byron:
So generally, what has happened in the past is that NARA doesn't review and release an entire record series together. It has not been priority in the past to say, ‘we better get the RFK documents out.’ It was instead was viewed as if you, as a researcher, said, ‘I want to see the RFK documents,’ you could file a Freedom of Information Act request; that could take years and you may never actually get any access. So instead, we kind of flipped that process on its head and said we're going to start releasing large records collections together. And this is really the first time in a long time, maybe ever, that we've done it in this way. So if you’re a member of the public and you wanted to come and see the RFK files, you wouldn't have been able to do that.
Washington Reporter:
Why did you have the RFK files in NARA? He was never president.
Jim Byron:
That’s a good question. Most of these had to do with federal investigations, like the FBI files. Those end up at the National Archives. The best way to really describe the National Archives at a 30,000 foot level is that it is the final repository for all documents of the United States government. Everything ultimately ends up here.
Washington Reporter:
You had mentioned how Tulsi Gabbard herself was prioritizing this; from a staffing standpoint, how has NARA staff worked with the ODNI’s team? You mentioned that they had dispatched people to work with you. How has that working relationship been since you've started?
Jm Byron:
We're very grateful to Director Gabbard for her personal attention on this, and she's really seized the reins give given to her by President Trump, and used this as a way to demonstrate maximum transparency to the American people. I think that more of these types of records releases, no matter what's in the documents, but just very fact that we are declassifying, stripping them of redactions and releasing them, is a great demonstration of transparency. As Director Gabbard said, ‘the American people paid for this building. They deserve to know what's in it.’
Washington Reporter:
So let's delve into these documents. You mentioned 10,000 were released. What does that mean? 10,000 pieces of paper? What is a document here?
Jim Byron:
This is where the vernacular sometimes gets easier. So you've got a record series. We would call the RFK collection a record series.
Washington Reporter:
And what is the RFK collection?
Jim Byron:
It’s the files related to his assassonation. We've only released these 10,000 because these are the 10,000 we identified. Director Gabbard announced last Thursday that we had just discovered another 50,000 documents.
Washington Reporter:
Who is ‘we’?
Jim Byron:
The partnership between the National Archives and her Director’s Initiative Group. So the FBI said, ‘hey, we have another 50,000 records we just came across.’ So we transfer these. The FBI has transferred those to the National Archives. Now they need to go through that same process.
Washington Reporter:
So what are these 10,000 documents? Could that be a post-it note or a document, or an entire memo that is counted as one document?
Jim Byron:
Yes, and then they would be grouped into collections. So you got a whole series, and within the series, you have a collection. Within the collection, you have individual records, and then within a record, you have a document, and we tend to just use all those different words interchangeably. So yes, what we're talking about is 10,000 pages.
Washington Reporter:
So these 10,000 pages were not the most important, not the least important. These were the 10,000 that were most readily accessible to you and the ODNI. So what was your working assumption on the theory of this assassination as a historian?
Jim Byron:
I hadn't really delved much into the assassination, per se. I looked more at RFK as a political force and a cultural phenomenon. I think one of the things out there that a lot of people still wonder is if RFK had not been assassinated, do you think he would have given former Vice President Richard Nixon a run for his money in 1968? There are different theories on that. I think the answer is no, because if you actually look at the math, by the time he was assassinated in June, Hubert Humphrey had already secured pledges of about 70 percent of the Democratic delegates. There were 1,312 delegates available, and Humphrey had secured in some form or another, about 1,200 of them. So it was virtually impossible for RFK to become the nominee. That said, look at the cultural significance of his having run. And he might have really been able to shape Humphrey's thinking on this, that or the other, in some way. So I always have kind of looked at RFK within that perspective.
Washington Reporter:
The conventional wisdom is that RFK was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian, because he was frustrated that RFK was supportive of Israel. There was a newspaper clipping found in Sirhan’s pocket about how RFK was supporting Israel. What do these 10,000 documents show? How does conventional wisdom stand after this latest document release in your estimation?
Jim Byron:
It's a great question, which everybody's asking. I will say this: within these 10,000 documents, and we know that there are going to be more documents, let's leave it up to the American people to conclude whatever they want, but know that more files are coming out. As I said, 50,000 more were just discovered than now, after you digitized and reviewed. I will say that within these 10,000 then, which everybody can see at archives.gov/rfk, these are files related to the FBI’s investigation into Sirhan Sirhan; the entire FBI San Diego field office file is available as part of these documents. And as you may know, Sirhan incarcerated in San Diego right now. There are interviews with witnesses, interviews with people that were there. I just learned the other day that LA Rams player, Rosey Grier, who was on scene at the assassination.
Washington Reporter:
How much of these 10,000 files had never been seen before by the public?
Jim Byron:
We aren't aware that any of these had been seen before. So this is brand new stuff. 10,000 actually is not a huge release in the documents world. It's big, but it's not huge. It is, however, the biggest release of RFK assassination related files ever released at once.
Washington Reporter:
What else is in this release?
Jim Byron:
The diary of Sirhan Sirhan, foreign cables. There are some State Department documents detailing foreign reaction from countries like Jordan, Sirhan Sirhan was a Jordanian-Palestinian. The Jordanian Government offered to help with the investigation, should the FBI want to go over and dig into Sirhan Sirhan’s background. That was stuff was really interesting. And the theory, there are alternative theories, there's this so-called woman in the polka dot dress that may or may not have been there. Multiple witnesses, including some in these documents, say that they saw a woman in a polka dot dress who was seen leaving and was sort of happy saying ‘we shot Kennedy.’ That hasn't been substantiated. And the FBI was not able to able to corroborate that. But that's in there. People can dive into these for themselves, and they're a piece of a larger puzzle. I don't think that 100 percent of the people who are skeptical are ever going to be happy, but what we can be certain of is that we, the National Archives, release 100 percent of what we know to be out there, so that people can make up their minds, and so we can say ‘everything is out make up your own minds,’ and we're working on that right now.
Washington Reporter:
What has the involvement of RFK Jr been in the release of these documents?
Jim Byron:
Director Gabbard said publicly that he told her, ‘put everything out. The public has a right to know,’ and it is our understanding that President Trump asked Director Gabbard to show the documents to RFK Junior, which the director told us she had offered to do, and RFK Junior told her ‘just put everything out.’
Washington Reporter:
So he supportive of the whole of the effort that you guys are doing.
Jim Byron:
Very supportive:
Washington Reporter:
One of his theories of the assassination of his father is that it was a security guard who shot his father; what evidence of or not related to that is in this tranche of 10,000 documents?
Jim Byron:
These documents don't get into much of that. These are mostly FBI.
Washington Reporter:
What did the eyewitnesses testify in these 10,000 documents to having witnessed?
Jim Byron:
The path that the senator took following his remarks in the hotel changed. So he ended up changing his route and going through the kitchen. So people are unsure about why that route changed. These documents help prove why presidential candidate security is so important and why that was changed after Senator Kennedy's assassination. There was another interesting nugget within the documents, they would get tips and call-ins at the FBI. Somebody called in, this was actually investigated, and this is in the documents, somebody called in saying Senator Kennedy did not die in the kitchen. He was alive until 1969 when he died in Chappaquiddick.
Washington Reporter:
The Kennedys do have a violent history at Chappaquiddick.
Jim Byron:
That had to be investigated, and there’s a whole FBI report on that.
Washington Reporter:
What was the FBI fixated on in its investigation?
Jim Byron:
I’m not sure how the FBI divvied it up, but it’s interesting that the FBI San Diego field office handled much of it. He’s incarcerated in San Diego, so maybe that has something to do with it.
Washington Reporter:
To put a proverbial gun to your head here, who did it?
Jim Byron:
Based on these 10,000 documents, and what has been released, there’s not a lot of evidence in these documents that it was anyone other than Sirhan Sirhan.
Washington Reporter:
And is there evidence affirmatively in the investigation that Sirhan did do it? What does his diary show?
Jim Byron:
His diary certainly indicated prior intent for sure. The FBI’s conclusion was he was the guy.
Washington Reporter:
Maybe the other 50,000 will change this, but you don’t look at this and say that this changes everything?
Jim Byron:
In these 10,000 documents, there’s no smoking gun.
Washington Reporter:
These documents would corroborate Sirhan Sirhan as a lone gunman?
Jim Byron:
It appears that way.
Washington Reporter:
Did Richard Nixon ever speculate on the assassination of RFK?
Jim Byron:
Speculate? I’m not so sure, but I know what Nixon said: Nixon in 1983 recalled when he first learned about Kennedy’s death and he said that Pat Nixon let him know early in the morning the following day, he said she was crying, and Nixon called Sirhan Sirhan a nut, and said that when he went to the funeral, Ted Kennedy delivered an excellent eulogy, and he said that that’s when he realized that Ted Kennedy was going to be a major political force in the ensuing days.
Washington Reporter:
Some of our readers are amateur archivists themselves. If there had been a smoking gun in these files, what would have set off your archivist’s spidey sense?
Jim Byron:
You have to look at context. This is what I meant earlier, when I said that it has not generally been NARA’s methodology to start at the beginning of a collection to review it all to the end. So o really, to try and find something like that, you have to look at context. In my view, the objective should be just to read everything, read through it, understand what is in context that will inform the American people and set that narrative better than when you have a preconceived notion or something, and you're digging through documents to try to meet that preconceived notion.
Washington Reporter:
President Trump’s executive order also dealt with declassifying the JFK and MLK assassinations. If you were to find a smoking gun as you're declassifying these documents, what happens?
Jim Byron:
Nothing happens.
Washington Reporter:
So you put it out, but then someone else takes credit for your work?
Jim Byron:
Well, it's not our work, we're just making it accessible. There’s a really intrepid and dedicated group of people who follow the JFK assassination files, and they've been following this since the Warren Commission. There was something like 12 million visits to archives.gov within the 24 hours following the JFK assassination files release on March 18th. It was one of the biggest projects in the history of the National Archives.
Washington Reporter:
Is there a reason other than the effort that it takes that any of these, whether it's JFK, MLK, RFK documents that they had not been released prior to Trump's executive order?
Jim Byron:
I'll go back to the fact that it has never been known as our operational policy to review these types of collections all at once; only a few times in the past has that ever been done. So I think, absent a lot of interest, it would not have been done. President Trump on day three ordered that this be done. And so we got it done, and we're working still on more RFK, and then we're working on MLK, and continued digitization of JFK.
Washington Reporter:
Of these three, JFK was the only one who was a president. How does NARA interact with the JFK presidential suite of organizations?
Jim Byron:
In 1992, President Bush signed a law creating the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection, and an independent board was appointed under the terms of that law to get together and determine the scope of that collection. What President Trump did was he said, put everything out. So that's what we did. There's over 6 million pieces of film, documents, artifacts, newspaper clippings within the JFK collection, including the records of the Warren Commission. A number of those, the vast majority of those, have already been out in some form, but a lot of those have been out in redacted form, and so President Trump said,under the terms of this law, within the scope of this records collection, everything should go out to the maximum extent that it can. And that's why you see a lot of documents that had once been almost entirely blacked out and redacted that will now have no redactions on them, and redactions lead to theories. The whole point there was to show the American people what was in these collections, whether or not it leads to any differences in the way that we understand history or not. But the people have a right to know what's in it. And that goes for many, many other collections as well.
Washington Reporter:
And you can interpret this philosophically or not. But does the truth lie within these documents? Once all of these are 100 percent out with all three of these high profile cases, do you feel like the dust will settle and people will agree on a consensus?
Jim Byron:
What I would say is this: we are charged with putting out everything that we can, and at that point we let the chips fall where they may.
Washington Reporter:
If you had your druthers, and you and I talked about the Glomar Explorer, for example, what would you like to see either declassified or digitized to a greater way for people to access?
Jim Byron:
One of the things that I quickly expressed when I came here is that the National Archives has an incredible number of historical treasures, documents, and items of historical value without precedent in the history of the United States, and they're all sitting upstairs in these vaults, and nobody gets to see them, and that's got to change. We're going to be putting a lot of that on display very soon; I'm starting a new exhibition series called Opening the Vault, and it will start with documents from the Revolutionary War. I'm talking about George Washington's Oath of Allegiance to the United States, the early drafts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, original items in the hand of the Marquis de Lafayette, the Treaty of Paris signed by King George III. These are incredible treasures, and the public has a right to see them. And so we're going to put these on display, starting with the Revolutionary War-era documents. And then we can move on to the Civil War-era and then to others. Fast forwarding 200 and some odd years, I think some of the other items that would be of interest to people are anything related to anti-Semitism and to the Holocaust. At a time which anti-Semitism is, unfortunately, on the rise, anything to remind people about that time in world history is very important. This year is the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day and Victory in Japan Day. Anything that has not come out in regard to both of those anniversaries, I'd like to see out. These are real, tangible ways to connect Americans with our history, and it's the job of the National Archives to do that.
Washington Reporter:
This is year is a landmark anniversary of the end of World War Two, but also of the end of the Vietnam War.
Jim Byron:
The fall of Saigon is another one that happens to be of personal interest to me. I think that in the case of the Vietnam War it has taken 50, 60 years for us to begin to come to terms with what happened. It's going to take more, but this is another way that we can shed some light on what actually happened. Another one is Watergate. I'd love to see the full scope of what the federal government has on the Watergate investigations. I realize that a lot of what has yet to come out are items that are under court seal, but I think there is a great public interest in what grand jurors were told. And what was on the recordings that Alfred Baldwin had while in the Howard Johnson's hotel across from the Watergate Complex? These are American mysteries that would be of great interest.
Washington Reporter:
In the Opening the Vault series that you were talking about, is everything that you just said — the Revolutionary War, the fall of Saigon, the Holocaust, Victory over Europe, Victory over Japan, Watergate — within the Opening the Vault umbrella?
Jim Byron:
That is really going to be more artifacts. Because of the great successes of how quickly we got out the JFK files, how efficiently we got out the RFK files, we're now taking a look at the existing processes within the National Archives, and we're changing the plan and the operating procedures, to be able to say from 8am to 5pm every day, we need to be doing what we've been doing for JFK and for RFK, for other projects.
Washington Reporter:
So let's go to America 250. What are you doing for that? You obviously have the Declaration of Independence in this building. What does it mean for the National Archives? How do you envision this rolling out?
Jim Byron:
On my first day here, I said to the team, ‘show me what the America 250 plan is.’ And I got back this long list of things that, in my estimation, were of low impact.
Washington Reporter:
Low impact in what way?
Jim Byron:
What's the objective of America 250? The objective of America 250 is to celebrate our country after 250 years, celebrate what our Founders codified in the Declaration of Independence, which lives 100 steps away. And therefore I think the National Archives should play a leading role in this celebration. So we're going to do big things. Number one, we are going to take documents on the road. Right now, we're identifying Founding-era documents that can be transported to different cities throughout the country. We’ll be able to announce much more about that in the future, but you're the first reporter that I've told that to. That's a real way for people outside of the nation's capital, outside the Beltway, to connect with American history. And I think that is squarely within the mission of the National Archives. Second thing is, we are in the process of creating a marquee temporary exhibition right here at the National Archives, all about the Declaration of Independence. How did it come about? What was the thinking behind it? Who were the Framers and what influenced them? What is its contemporary impact? What is its international impact? It's a document that sparked so much all around the globe, and started right here in this country. So that temporary exhibition will open next spring and will run for a year. The third thing that we're going to do is throw a big birthday party on or around July 4th of 2026 with extended hours, an opportunity for people to actually come in and take a look at the Declaration of Independence and read it for themselves.
Washington Reporter:
The obvious question to end with is about National Treasure. We're 100 feet from the Declaration of Independence. How realistic is that movie in terms of how they stole it?
Jim Byron:
I think we have great security. I don't think that's ever going to happen, but that movie was such a great way for people to connect with the National Archives.
Washington Reporter:
Free tip, have Nicolas Cage be part of the 250th birthday, and Jon Voight. My final final question is, with your Richard Nixon hat on here, what do you think he would think of Trump's second term? They famously knew each other on some level. What would his analysis of the Trump Trump 2.0 be?
Jim Byron:
Two things. I always get asked this question, and the answer is, I don’t know. Look, President Trump accomplished the greatest comeback in American political history. The only person, I think, who rivals that was Richard Nixon. Nixon would admire, probably, the way in which President Trump came back, politically, over those four years. Second thing is, I think that President Nixon would like the speed at which things are moving. There's this palatable feeling in Washington today that things are moving quickly. President Nixon famously tried to reform the bureaucracy throughout his five and a half years. I think he would be admiring of the speed at which things are happening today under President Trump.
Washington Reporter:
Jim, thanks so much for chatting today.
