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NewsMine coldwar-imperialism iran-contra north-emails Viewing Item | AREADME MORE WHITE HOUSE E-MAIL!
Scanned ASCII text files on DOS-formatted disk.
Editor: Tom Blanton Producer: Ian Stevenson Technical Consultant: John Martinez
A National Security Archive Documents Disk
The New Press, New York
(C) 1995 The National Security Archive
HOW TO USE THE DISK OF "MORE WHITE HOUSE E-MAIL!"
Note: The AREADME file on the disk contains the following information:
The ASCII text files on this disk are the product of an editorial selection process by Tom Blanton, endless hours of scanning and correcting by Ian Stevenson, and technical consulting by John Martinez. Some 260 substantive White House e-mail messages which could not fit in the book for space reasons are presented here in a form most closely resembling their origins on the White House computer systems -- binary digital code -- without annotation or alteration.
The White House refused to provide any of the e-mail in electronic form. Rather, White House and other government staff printed out the specific e-mail messages targetted by the National Security Archive's Freedom of Information Act requests, then reviewed the printouts for classified information and privacy issues before releasing them in hard copy form.
Ian Stevenson then employed a Hewlett Packard ScanJet IIc/ADF scanner, together with CAERE optical character recognition software, to digitize the large stack of White House printouts selected for this disk. The typographical errors, run-on sentences, bad grammar, colloquial language and other questionable matters found here are all exactly as they appear in the originals -- nothing was corrected or bowdlerized for this disk. The layouts are as close to the originals as humanly possible, including the classification markings.
The disk is arranged along the same lines as the book; that is, the e-mail messages here are grouped under the same chapter headings found in the printed book. Each file here contains all the additional e-mail messages for one chapter. In this way, the chapter introductions and other information given in the book can provide helpful context for these messages as well. Additionally, on the disk, the messages follow chronological order for ease of use. In terms of length, the smallest file (labeled CHAP03.TXT) contains nine additional e-mail messages, while the largest (CHAP09.TXT) includes more than 50.
Also included on the disk for additional guidance which may be helpful to readers is a short chronology of the key developments in the e-mail lawsuit (see the CHRON.TXT file), as well as abbreviated biographies of the National Security Council staff who wrote and received the e-mail contained in the book and on the disk (see the WHOSWHO.TXT file).
ASCII text in a DOS format is not necessarily the ideal way to present this information. But it is the most practical in terms of reaching the vast majority of computer users. For any word processing program on DOS or Windows computers, a user should simply upload these files using the normal "open file" commands; and similarly, most MacIntosh computers nowadays have the built-in capacity to convert from DOS, and then upload into a word processor. The best view of these files -- producing the closest facsimile of the originals -- uses the CourierNew font at 10 characters per inch, with one inch margins.
Contents of the disk:
AREADME.TXT How to use the disk CHAPO1.TXT More "Dancing with Dictators" CHAP02.TXT More "White House Mess" CHAP03.TXT More "Presidential Schedules" CHAP04.TXT More "Real War Room" CHAP05.TXT More "Guns 'N' Bombs" CHAP06.TXT More "Spin Doctors" CHAP07.TXT More "Working Capitol Hill" CHAPO8.TXT More "Hot Line" CHAPO9.TXT More "Turf Wars & Bureaucratic Ops" CHAP10.TXT More "Spooks" CHAP11.TXT More "Censors and Secrets" CHRON.TXT A chronology of the e-mail lawsuit WHOSWHO.TXT Short biographies of White House e-mail authors and recipients
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