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