(#3) POF: Series 9. Countries

Administrative Information
Historical Note
Collection Overview

List of Series
Series 1. General Correspondence
Series 2. Special Correspondence
Series 3. Speech Files
Series 4. Legislative Files
Series 5. Press Conferences
Series 6. Staff Memoranda
Series 7. Departments and Agencies
Series 8. Subjects
Series 9. Countries
Series 10. Personal Secretary's Files
Series 11. Special Events through the Years
Series 12. White House Signal Agency
Series 13. Presidential Recordings (White House Meetings and Telephone Recordings file)
ADDITIONS
Addition of June 2005

Collection Description

Series 9. Countries.
Boxes 111-128

Eighteen boxes [7.5 linear shelf feet] of the Countries series were opened to research in January 1974. At that time twenty-one and one-half boxes [9.0 linear shelf feet] were closed because of national security classification. In addition, eight and one-half boxes [3.5 linear shelf feet] of valuable original documents were withdrawn for preservation and were replaced in the files by electrostatic copies.

The Countries series contains many State Department cables, reports and memoranda, and similar documents from the White House staff and from other agencies concerning U.S. relations with foreign countries. There is a great deal of material on the more formal aspects of these relations, including letters of credence and recall of ambassadors, arrangements by the Office of Protocol for visits of state, and briefing materials for President Kennedy's visits with foreign dignitaries in Washington and abroad. The Countries series is not a complete record of U.S. foreign policy for the Kennedy Administration, nor is it even a complete record of the President's participation in the formulation and execution of that policy, although many of the documents in this series do record some of the highlights. Until the National Security Files can be declassified and made available it is probably the richest source of documents of the time relating to foreign policy available to scholars.

The Countries series is arranged alphabetically by the name of each country and within each country subseries the arrangement is usually chronological. In some cases an original distinction between "Security" folders (containing classified material) and the rest of the subseries has been maintained. In some cases the material has been further divided into topical sub-subseries such as material relating to the Vienna meeting between Kennedy and Khrushchev. At the end of the Countries series is a small subseries of briefing material prepared for President Kennedy in the spring of 1963, detailing the background and giving performance estimates of foreign ambassadors accredited to Washington. (A parallel book on U.S. representatives abroad is found in the State subseries of the Departments and Agencies series.) Some filing oddities such as "Antarctica," "Puerto Rico," and "Ismali Moslem Sect" have been retained to show the flavor of the original, although "Scotland" has been merged into the "United Kingdom" subseries. Researchers should also refer to the CO series of the White House Central Subject Files and, as they become declassified and opened, the National Security Files. Oral History interviews with U.S. ambassadors and with foreign dignitaries are another rich source available in the Kennedy Library.

48 Boxes. [20.0 Linear Shelf Feet]