The collection is growing by about 100 new interviews each year. T he interviews are mainly conducted by retired Foreign Service officers after training by the director of the oral history program. T here are many insights into the influence of personalities on policy matters and on relations between the different bureaus of the Department of State, and between the State Department and the National Security Council, the Defense Department, and Congress, none of which appear in the official records. They include frank assessments of American and foreign leaders as seen by those who dealt with them from the ranks of the U.S. foreign affairs establishment. T he approach of using retired FSOs to interview other retired FSOs, and of having career interviews which cover family background, academic and military experiences as well as each posting, whether in Washington or abroad, has proved most fruitful.
Interviews are unclassified, but few punches are pulled.
Often the most interesting and revealing parts of the interviews concern officers' early careers. Junior officers frequently get about a country more than their more senior, desk bound, colleagues. Junior officers are often the note-takers and the flies on the wall at policy meetings, and they remember these occasions well. By using one professional to interview another, there is considerable emphasis on how things were done and how they were perceived at the time. The transcripts give a researcher an excellent feel for the times, something not easily extracted from the official records.