Transcript of National Archives History Office Oral History Interview
Interviewer(s): Stephanie Reynolds
Interviewee(s): John Constance

Stephanie Reynolds: Okay. Welcome back. This is part four of an oral history with John Constance. Today is Friday, October 6th, 2023. And I just wanted to give a short recap from our last session. We talked about, or you talked about, the combining of Public Affairs with Congressional Affairs into one office. You mentioned fielding questions from Capitol Hill and the press, the public affairs website, financing the construction of AII, and getting agency appropriations, in general, for—you named several drivers for our appropriations that are probably still very current today: ERA funding, the preservation of records, and the construction and maintenance of buildings. And then you also talked about bringing some of those appropriations committee staff and some members of Congress around to National Archives facilities around the country and giving them a show-and-tell and "this is why we need the money and this is why it's important to you and you should care," and then also working alongside the Kennedy family—and especially Ted Kennedy—and then being in the room when they took out some of the assassination artifacts for analysis and, you know, what an experience that was for you to be in that room. So that's kind of a recap of some of the topics that we talked about last time. Do you have anything in mind that you want to go over again or something else that you want to talk about in regards to those?

John Constance: No. I mean, I've thought about this. I'm doing some fundraising right now for a nonprofit, and I'm starting to feel a little bit of the pressure again of coming up and meeting funding goals that I had kind of put aside after retirement. And I'm starting to feel some of that again. And I would only say that I felt a very, very personal responsibility in Congressional Affairs to figure out a way for us to get the money that we needed. I mean, I think everything that we did, whether it was the tours and the visits and the, you know, the information that we would provide, everything was focused on getting the money. And I felt fortunate. I think some of my colleagues in the world of congressional affairs in larger agencies were not a part of the full run-up, shall I say, or the development of the budget. And therefore, they were kind of handed something to go and advocate for. I always felt fortunate at the National Archives that the Archivists that I worked for always ensured the fact that I was part of the discussions regarding budgeting from the very beginning. So I had heard all the background. I had heard all the debate internally as to what the priorities were going to be. And while I didn't set those priorities by a long shot, I was in the room when those priorities were set. And so I had a very, very good underpinning, shall we say, of information for the advocacy that I then got to do for the budget, and other people fought for the budget to the administration, to the President's people and the administration at OMB and whatever. That was kind of on a separate track. But the way it works in the real world is that no matter what the President recommends in his budget, we were somewhat independent players to go to the Hill and advocate, in many cases, for more money than was even in the President's budget. So you had to be careful about the way you handled it. But we were talking to people on the Hill that were really advocates of the Archives program, which I think we worked on, ensuring that over the years. And so we were generally in friendly territory on our committees, which was good. But anyway, I always felt a personal responsibility and a personal goal of seeing that we got as much money as we possibly could for the programs, for the agency. And that was kind of the orientation of the job no matter what function we were performing. That was really the ultimate goal. So . . .

Stephanie Reynolds: Mhm. So even though you weren't setting the priorities, I mean, you were still able to advocate for and help us get more appropriations for the agency. And you're working with congressional members and committees. What do you think was key in forging some of those successful relationships?

John Constance: You know, I think at some level—and I don't know whether this is the case today. In fact, I've been scratching my head recently regarding Congress and what it is today. But when I was up there advocating for the Archives, I ran into a lot of people that had a respect for history. I ran into a lot of people that had a respect for tradition, and I ran into a lot of people that understood the importance of preserving the past. As I jokingly said to you, I think at one point, that what you're trying to convey to them is you are preserving their legacy as well. I mean, they see themselves as key actors on the stage of American democracy. And by preserving their records and the materials about the agencies that they are working with and working for, you know, we achieve goals that put a good light on them as well. But I think it's very, very hard to come to Washington as a member of Congress and be sworn into the chamber and stand there on the House floor or the Senate floor and not have a sense of everything that's come before. And we really, really worked hard on that. When new members would come, we would have, as I think I said, orientation for them at the Archives, where we showed them really what we did. And once they understood what we did, the reason for it and the need for it became pretty evident. So for the most part, I would say the majority of people that I worked with over the years had a—even if they didn't have an interest in history—they had a respect for it and that really was the key.

Stephanie Reynolds: Interesting. Okay. Do you have any lessons learned from your time as the Director of Congressional and Public Affairs?

John Constance: Okay. You know, I think the most important thing, as in a lot of things in life, you work on skills and you work on this and you work on this ability and that ability. It really all came down to relationships. I mean, it all came down to very personal relationships with people. And if you're interested in people, and you're interested in their lives—you know, I would typically go up there with the sense that I was calling on friends. I think that becomes very, very important. I had at least one Archivist of the United States, whose name I will not mention, who left one meeting once scratching his head about the interchange that we had with a staffer up there who said, "No, I'm not going to get you this number [SHOWS LEVEL WITH HAND]. We're going to try to get you this number [MOVES HAND UPWARD]." And he just couldn't wrap his head around how in the world it was that they were as welcoming and as willing to work with us as they were. And I remember in the car going back to the agency saying, "They like us. They like me. They like our mission. We have a great relationship with them. And at the end of the day, you know, they want to support the mission. And they also, the next time they see us, they want us to be happy." That sounds so simple and simplistic, but I think it is about relationships, and it is about, you know—they knew that if there was something negative at the Archives, if there were something that was going to make them or their boss look bad, I would be the first one on the phone with them to tell them, "Boy, we really screwed up, and here you go. This is going to be embarrassing. It's going to be in the press. This is our answer. This is what we're doing to fix it." Whatever, as well as telling them, "Boy, this is a success we just had, and this is really a breakthrough, and this is wonderful, and, you know, I want your boss to come down. I want you all to be in the photograph when we celebrate this," whatever this was. And so it's both sides. And they always knew that I was going to be an honest broker. And, I think, that was the key.

Stephanie Reynolds: So relationships, kind of building rapport with them, and building trust, it sounds like.

John Constance: Yeah. I might have told you this story, but I had a cousin that was in the banking business, and I always remember that he required his tellers at the bank to know the names of every dog that came into the bank with their owner. This was in a posh area of Carmel, California. And, again, if you do that and you're not interested in dogs and you're not interested in people, it's kind of fake. But if you really are interested in people, and you go in and say, "How's your daughter doing at Clemson?" or "How's your dad doing? You said that he was in ill health, and is he getting better?" I mean, if you're faking that, you can see it 400-miles away. If you are interested in people, it comes across as genuine. And you develop a friendship over the years. And so, you know, that was something that was probably the most enjoyable part of the job as well.

Stephanie Reynolds: Mm. Okay. Yeah, just getting to know them as people and their families and making those friendships.

John Constance: Yes.

Stephanie Reynolds: It sounds like, so you were kind of the point person when something would come out, say, for example, like in the media? Like they may hear that an agency deleted their email or somebody's using a private server or private email for government business and things like that. Classified records. So were you the one that was the point person that handled those questions, those cases?

John Constance: Yeah, the information about those, I would handle it as a first point of contact. I mean, what my goal was, was to always get the subject expert to touch base with the staff person, because the subject expert was also the one that knew the issue with the most granularity and also what we were going to do about a particular issue or a particular violation or the theft of documents, which was, you know, a lot of times. Those were the things often that got the biggest press. I mean, the press might not understand the Archives, but they do understand someone stealing something from the government or from . . . yeah. And so in those cases, the inevitable cases that would come up, you know, I would be the point person, but I would quickly try to transition to the people who ran the search room or who were responsible for the records management program that had been violated or whatever. Because I never, internally, wanted people to think that I thought I knew more than they did, which frankly, I never knew more than they did. They were doing their job, their task. They've been professionally trained to do it, and they were doing it 10 hours a day. I was coming in as the messenger, and so . . . One of the biggest battles I think I had with the Archivists of the United States over the years was my feeling of the need to get negative information to the Hill very quickly. And a lot of times, the Archivists would say, "Well, we don't know what we're going to do. You know, we haven't investigated this enough." And my point always was, "Well, yeah, but it's going to be public possibly before we are prepared for it to be public. And the Congressman or the Senator is going to get a phone call from the press and say, 'What do you think about this?' Well, if we have gotten in touch with them early, and I have gotten a subject person in touch with them early to say, 'We know we've got a problem. We're going to fix it. And this is the timeline on which we're going to fix it,'" then, you know, you basically have created a space of time for you to work in, because if a Congressman was caught flat-footed on something, then suddenly they were the ones in control of the timetable and not us.

Stephanie Reynolds: Yeah. Okay. You're kind of a point person, and then you turn into more of a facilitator, in a way, and getting that subject matter expert involved.

John Constance: Exactly. Exactly. And again, it also helped preserve my relationship with the folks on the Hill from the standpoint that I wanted to get them the best information possible. And they knew that they were going to get that. One of the things that I learned over the years is that there are some archivists who can—how should I put it?—describe what they do with a very, very good ability to explain. There are other archivists that can't. And one of the things that I was constantly doing was trying to assess which ones were the ones that I wanted to put in front of the Congress and which ones I was—I was ultimately also the broker with the press, and my Public Affairs director, Susan Cooper, for many years, she and I were trying to figure out, okay, we need to tell this story. Who do we want to put in front of the camera to tell the story? An awful lot of the Kennedy assassination interest in the country and the people in the country who were, you know, everything from the conspiracy folks to the people who were genuinely interested in that being released. They wanted to talk, once again, to the expert and thank God, I mean, we had in Steve Tilley, who was the custodian of all those of the Warren Commission and all those records. We had a guy that not only knew everything inside out, but, as we say in the business, the camera just loved the guy. He was very good on his feet. He was very good. And he was very diplomatic and extremely knowledgeable. So we had him, and I could list dozens of other people that we went to over the years in various areas of the Archives that could really tell the story.

Stephanie Reynolds: Yeah, I could see that it would be good to get the right person in front of the camera to tell the story.

John Constance: Oh, yeah.

Stephanie Reynolds: Did you want to talk about any other high-profile cases that you had to deal with in any fashion while you were the director? I don't know. I had a few things listed here, like access to Presidential papers, preservation of electronic records, theft of national treasures. Anything that you want to speak about?

John Constance: Yeah, I mean, we certainly had all of those. I mean, I would say that one of the things is the preservation of electronic records. Unfortunately, we were in the same subcommittee that had oversight over the Treasury Department and the IRS [Internal Revenue Service]. And one of the things that was a very large challenge for us as we were entering into the whole funding of the ERA, the whole thing came right after there had been some very large and very public screw-ups—for lack of a better term—by the IRS with their electronic systems and their electronic recordkeeping. And the IRS had dumped a whole lot of money into some systems that turned out just not to work and became obsolete in a short period of time, and it put the Congress—it put our subcommittee in a bad light. So on the heels of that, in terms of their failure, here we are coming in and asking for in the neighborhood of a half-a-billion dollars for the development of the ERA system. And I can tell you, to say that they were wary of entering into a funding relationship on a large system would be the understatement of the year. And so a lot of it was a negotiation with them to come up with a way that we could get the money, but they would feel comfortable. This drove people in the agency just nuts, but the only way that we could get the money was with an agreement. The GAO would come in and really do a parallel audit as we were spending the money. I mean, GAO was very regularly onsite. In fact, they had, in the early days of ERA, office space in the building kind of right next to us. And our subcommittee staff and the subcommittee were adamant that they wanted eyeballs that were reportable to the Congress—GAO being their investigatory arm. They wanted to be sure that they had that kind of oversight. And that was the only way we were going to get the money. And so we said, "Okay." GAO . . . they were scratching their heads, because their expertise is coming in after a project or after something has been done and, you know, investigating and auditing then. One of the things that I told our people is, "Look, if this screws up, GAO has got money in the game as well. I mean, they're looking out for themselves just like we're looking out for ourselves. So with them in the room, we have a new kind of credibility in terms of the moves we're making and the way we're spending the money." So, GAO had a pretty sophisticated group that just looked at IT systems, and they were the ones that basically camped in with us. So that was really, I mean, that was the way that that was accomplished. And eventually, as I think I mentioned earlier, when Lockheed got the contract, then all of a sudden I had all of the horsepower of Lockheed Martin and their lobby organization working alongside of me in order to ensure the money kept coming and the money kept flowing. They had a corporate interest in that at that point. And as is the case with weapons systems and a lot of things not quite as noble as ERA, in my humble opinion, that's what they do. They know how to get the train on track and continue the money flow for the development of those systems. And that also worked to our advantage at the Archives for ERA. So . . . I think, obviously, a lot of the document theft issues over the years—the whole Sandy Berger fiasco, the much smaller but still no less aggravating disappearance of records over the years— was difficult. And I won't go into details on this because some of these people are—I think they're good people, and they've been punished, and they've paid their dues. But the thing that was the most aggravating, I think, to most people in the Archives was when employees would be associated with the theft of archival materials. And there have been some high-profile ones of those over the years as well. And those are even more difficult, because no matter what you try to do in the search rooms and no matter what you try to do with the interaction of the public, if you have a member of the staff who has fallen in love with a certain document, group of documents, or a category of records, and takes them away, they have numerous opportunities to do that, you know, undetected and undeterred. And those were, oftentimes, the most difficult and the most hurtful, I think, to people in the agency. And I had a couple of those to deal with as well in my tenure. So . . .

Stephanie Reynolds: In your position as the director, then, were you doing the same thing? Were you talking with the media and getting those subject matter experts or whoever in there to sort of explain or smooth over what was happening?

John Constance: Yeah. Yeah. And, again [LAUGHS], a lot of times you were dealing with the inexplicable. I mean, a lot of times with something like that, you were staring at this and staring into the abyss, and they would say, "Well, so what are you going to do about it?" And again, there's some of those things that just are not answerable. Fortunately, they were very, very rare. And that's one of the things that you tried to explain to people, but from a staffing standpoint, you know, it's difficult in business. You always have the checks and balances associated with not one person handling the money, but more than one person handling the money and signing off and all the approvals and sign- offs having to do with petty cash or whatever it is in a business. In the Archives, by virtue of how thinly we are spread, ofttimes, I mean, it's one person by themselves in the stacks. I mean, it's not somebody with somebody looking over their shoulder. It is one individual. And we are an organization that truly relies on the integrity of every individual to do the right thing, particularly given the fact—and again, this was a matter of even when things aren't explicable in terms of why they happen, things like the fact that we do not have an item-level control over textual archives. We know that that box contains these files, but what specifically is in each one of those files? We don't know that. And so if there happened to be an Abraham Lincoln signature that somebody came across, or if there happened to be a piece of Confederate money that was part of a serial set and invaluable, and if there was something that was very unique, we did not have an inventory that said, "Oh, here it was, and it's not there anymore. And so who had access or contact to it?" So when you don't have that item-level inventory, it's very difficult to do that. So again, I have the highest respect not just for the National Archives, but for—in spite of what we're talking about right now—for all the people that work there, because by and large, 99.9 percent of the people that I worked with in my career loved history, loved archives, loved who we were and loved working for the agency. And when you had the occasional rogue, it was tough. It was tough for everybody. And once again, if you've established a relationship with people on Capitol Hill, and you go in, and you express true regret and true angst and true heartbreak over these things, they get that, too. You know, that's the other side of those kinds of personal relationships is when I or one of my colleagues would go up there and say, "Boy. I mean, this is bad. This is really, really bad." And one of the things that I might have mentioned earlier was that, back in the day, when you were relying on if somebody took a document—if they take a document, and they want to take it home, and they want to put it in a desk drawer, and they just want to keep it—that has always been a problem. But if they want to monetize it, if they want to take it and sell it or get money for it—back in the day, you really relied on just a handful of really good rare document dealers. That was the name of the game. They were the people, the guys in Boston or Philadelphia or New York or Los Angeles. There were a handful of people where the top dollar came from if you walked in the door and said, "I got a signature. I got . . ." whatever. They had an integrity where they would pick up the phone and call us and say, "Hey, I think we got something that's yours here. It looks like a federal document to me. It certainly looks like the chain of custody on this at some point came through you guys. And I got a guy here who is coming back tomorrow and wants to sell it to me." So that would bring us into a scramble to kind of try to figure that out. And oftentimes, those things ended well in terms of getting both the document recovered and also the punishment meted out. What changed all that, of course, was the internet and eBay, where somebody could put a document on eBay, and maybe they would not get top dollar for it, but they would get a lot of money for it so quickly that you couldn't keep up with it. And so consequently, that really became something that was damaging. Eventually, both our IG shop as well as some third- party sleuths in the history world caught on to this and were regularly reviewing eBay and regularly reviewing all that. And so that, in those cases, was what we went to the Hill and said, "Here's the solution. Here's what we're doing is trying to be out there shopping right along with everybody else so that if something comes up that looks like ours, we'll be able to get in the game and get the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] involved early on as to the fact that this is federal property." So anyway.

Stephanie Reynolds: Huh. Interesting how technology has changed and how that changed our processes both externally and internally.

John Constance: That person-to-person commerce that eBay created, while very convenient if you're dealing in stolen goods, is also very problematic. And so that was that. But just in summary regarding all of that, again, I thought the responsibility was always first and foremost, to be honest. I mean, once you lose your integrity, you can never get it back with people. And so always, always being honest in terms of what we were thinking and what we were trying to do was really the key. And in turn, that would help us be put in circumstances and situations by the folks on Capitol Hill that would enable us to be successful. And, you know, they respected that. I'll tell this brief story—one case where Senator Stevens of Alaska staff reached out to us and said, "You know, we're going to Alaska for the 100th, for the centennial, of the Alaska Gold Rush, and we are taking with us a delegation from the U.S. Postal Service. We're going to be doing first-day covers, stamps that are associated with the centennial." And they asked me, "Do you happen to have any records that would be helpful to that effort, records that you could take color facsimiles of and, for example, present to local officials in Alaska as part of this effort?" And we said, or I said, "Let me check with the experts." And so I went back and sure enough, within 24 hours, we had identified a number of territorial records and things that we had that we were pretty certain that were not existing in public libraries or local archives within Alaska, and that would be something from which we could make color facsimiles and present to local officials. And so I went back. I had some samples, and I pitched this to Senator Stevens' staff, and they said, "Oh, my gosh. This is exactly what we're looking for." And so they arranged charter transportation for the Archivist of the United States and I to go to Alaska to do a multiple-city tour associated with this centennial, to present these things to local officials, and to be part of just this joyful celebration in Alaska. And Senator Stevens, who really was a hands-on politician—I mean, I'll never forget. We went to Nome, Alaska, and we sat there, and we watched this long line of Native Alaskans out the door at a restaurant called Fat Freddy's. And there sat Senator Stevens, along with his staff. And these people came in one at a time and told him about some problem that they were having with the federal government, some issue of the U.S. mail or Social Security or whatever. He listened to every single person for an hour and a half and then would turn to his staff, and they would solve these problems one at a time.

Stephanie Reynolds: Huh.

John Constance: The rest of the story is that we established a very personal relationship with Senator Stevens—not an easy guy to get to know. And the Archivist established a very good relationship with him. Wind the clock forward about a year, and I went to a hearing and in a nighttime kind of cabal where our Senate appropriations subcommittee was looking for a big chunk of money to be shifted from one agency to the other, our Electronic [Records] Archives money went away. And I'm sitting there at a hearing, a bill markup, the next morning, and I pick up on the fact that there's a line item on this chairman's mark that's missing. And what's missing is all of our ERA money. Well, there were two people on the subcommittee: the chairman at that time—Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama—and the vice chair was Barbara Mikulski. The ranking member was Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, someone who I thought we had had a pretty decent relationship with. But obviously, she was willing that night to cut a deal and to cut us out. So I ran out the door, called the office and told the Archivist that we had a problem and suggested that he get on the phone to Ted Stevens. Ted was going to be opening the Senate that morning. He was President pro tempore of the Senate at that time, and he was going to gavel the Senate in at 10:00 a.m. that morning. This hearing, this markup, had been at 9:00 a.m. And so Governor Carlin got on the phone and was able to get Ted Stevens in his car as Stevens was going to the Hill. John basically explained to the Senator what had happened and Stevens said, "Don't worry about it." He said, "The bill is going to come up this afternoon before the full appropriations committee. By the time the bill comes up, your problem is going to be taken care of." Well, so that afternoon, I go to the full committee markup and, all of a sudden, I get a progression, and I mean a progression of Senate staffers from both the subcommittee and the full committee seeking me out and apologizing for what had happened. They all conveyed the fact that Senator Stevens was extremely angry that this had all come down. They assured me that the money had been restored to the bill. And they wanted me to get back to John Carlin with sincere apologies for the fact that our money was wiped out in a nighttime deal on this bill. And I mean, I'll never forget that. And again, if you draw a line back to how we established that relationship with Senator Stevens, it was the wonderful Hill staff who I was calling on that thought of us and said, "Hey, you know, here's an opportunity in Alaska where you can spend five days with us, you know, one-on-one with the Senator." And it was really through that then that you wind it forward a year or so and boom, there we are needing a favor at the 11th hour and getting it. So . . .

Stephanie Reynolds: Oh, my gosh. What a story. Transitioning a little bit. . . . I'm not sure if this is at the same time or at some point towards the end of your career, but you were appointed to the Senior Executive Service [SES]. And I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit, maybe the process and some of the pros and cons for becoming an SESer?

John Constance: Yeah, it was really when I took over Public Affairs as well as Congressional Affairs. The job got larger, and it paralleled with an awful lot of colleagues in other agencies, other independent agencies, that wore both hats and they were typically SES. So I went to the Archivist—again, John Carlin at that time—and I said, "You know, I'd like to explore this and, you know, no harm, no foul. Can I look into it?" And he said, "Yeah, sure. Go ahead." So I looked into it. I got the information from our personnel shop. They in turn got the information from the Office of Personnel Management. And this process started. Essentially, what I had to do was write a pretty lengthy justification. They had a number of categories, and I don't remember now what the categories were, but it was managing change and, you know, a variety of things that really paralleled all agencies. And I had to write like I hadn't written since I had been in graduate school. I had to write these long, long justifications. And again, that exercise was—while I kind of railed at the process—I understood that they were forcing anybody who was going to apply to become a member of the SES, they were forcing you into kind of an intellectual exercise that really helped prepare you for the wider responsibility or the bigger responsibility. And, you know, I will be honest with you. I don't remember. . . . Each agency had a certain fixed number of SES slots. And my recollection is that the agency itself had to recommend my appointment to both the White House and the Office of Personnel Management, as I recall. And then, you know, you wait to see, and you get the word. I don't remember getting the word, but I do remember being sworn in at the White House. Judge Roy Lamberth was the federal judge that swore us in, and the swearing-in was in the Indian Treaty Room at the White House. It was pretty cool. I mean, it really was one of those days in my career that I fondly remember and think to myself, "Boy, something special is happening today: One—going to the White House, and two—having a federal judge swear you in for the SES." And it was good. I mean, and again, a lot of people just associate it with the pay aspect of it. That certainly helped, and it certainly helped in my retirement. But just the honor of being part of that community was good. And then there were training opportunities and things that I was able to take advantage of that were just for the SES. And that was fun as well. So, you know, that was clearly a good moment as I think back on it. Thanks for that question.

Stephanie Reynolds: Yeah. I had no idea that you would be sworn in at the White House and that each agency had a certain number that they could appoint. Wow.

John Constance: And they had a very nice reception for us. The reception included these little White House cocktail napkins. I think I might still have some of those here at the house. [LAUGHS]

Stephanie Reynolds: Yeah. Well, that was a big moment. Of course! [LAUGHS] Speaking of the White House, did you notice any differences when there's been a change in Presidential administrations?

John Constance: In my career, the answer was no, because each White House had the common sense to let the records management folks in the Office of Administration and the Office of Records Management within the White House really take charge. I mean, they understood the continuity of that expertise. All administrations in my career were usually very open to having the Archives come in and provide advice and training. The Archivist of the United States, being a nonpolitical appointment, facilitated that. And there was always this openness in that. Once again, I'm sure there are people that had that specific responsibility in the Archives that would probably answer this question differently. But as someone who is looking at it from a distance in terms of how it impacted me with any battles with the White House or any, you know—no. And that was what was so disappointing, certainly with the Trump administration and all the very high-profile things that have come out of that lack of understanding or lack of respect or lack of . . . "Lack" is a good [LAUGHS] . . . Just cover the waterfront with that term. Everything that has come as a result of that, up to and including federal felony charges, I think, like a lot of things that had become very routine and should have been routine through the years were no longer routine in the Trump administration. And that has been the result. So . . .

Stephanie Reynolds: Yeah. So over the last four sessions that we've had, we've covered a lot of ground. What do you think are your most, like, proud moments or your favorite accomplishments throughout your time at the National Archives?

John Constance: I would say groundbreakings, plural. Certainly Archives II. That day was very, very special for me and my colleagues. I mean, and there were many, many, many people whose hard work made that day possible. And I'll never forget that. I still, in my library here, have photographs of that day and, in fact, a souvenir paperweight that's somewhere here on my desk. Jim Megronigle, Adrienne Thomas, Michele Pacifico, and others should have their names engraved on that building. I was a bit-player by comparison, but certainly played a role. When we opened a new building for the Georgia regional archives . . . I mean, that was great in that there had been a lot of hard work associated with that. By virtue of the way that Presidential Libraries are at least initially funded, those were not things that—I mean, they are funded by their foundations—so while the ribbon cuttings of Presidential Libraries were always a very fun social event, for us in terms of any individual sense of accomplishment, that was different. And I would say that, you know, the day that I retired from the Archives, they had a reception for me in the Archivist's conference room and—I'm going to try to say this without getting choked up, but that might be too much to ask—I looked around that room at colleagues internal to the Archives that I had been honest with and worked side-by-side with all those years, people on Capitol Hill that came when they didn't have to, but came to the reception in numbers that, to me, were significant, and having my family there that had kind of seen the other side of this up to and including my daughter Brittany, my younger daughter, who was then getting ready to go to law school. She was the one I took to Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, who disgustingly said at the dinner table one night to the family, "All Dad does is talk for a living."

Stephanie Reynolds: [LAUGHS]

John Constance: [LAUGHS] But she got to see a room full of people that I did talk to for a living over the years that had enough respect for me and what I had done that they came out that day. Yeah, those are the ones that stand out and all of the small moments that people reached out and thanked me every year for a number of years. It was a battle to keep NHPRC in business, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. They would get zero funding, and we would fight and fight and fight, and we'd get them funded again. And every year, I mean, those folks at NHPRC never, ever failed to say thank you. And they were there that day as well and gave me a gift recognizing that. So that was a real poignant kind of moment in my life, in my career, and one that I'll really cherish. So . . .

Stephanie Reynolds: Yeah. It must feel very nice to know that you were appreciated that much, that that many people turned out and gave you their thanks.

John Constance: Yeah, exactly. You know, you can get carried away. The first thing I said that day when everybody had said all the nice things about me, and I looked at this room full of smiling faces, I got up to the podium and said, "I'm announcing today my candidacy for President of the United States." [LAUGHS]

Stephanie Reynolds: Of course you did. [LAUGHS]

John Constance: And I thought, "Whoa! Hold on a second. I've [LAUGHS] gotten a bit carried away." So, anyway . . .

Stephanie Reynolds: [LAUGHS] That's awesome. So you retired from the National Archives, but then you went into the private sector, correct?

John Constance: Well, yeah, semi. The organization that I worked for was Legal Services Corporation, and they are a government corporation, a nonprofit. They're set up very similarly to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, CPB. And Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS [Public Broadcasting Service] are kind of, you know—they get federal money, but they're a nonprofit. The structure is somewhat the same. And I went to work for them as their public affairs and congressional affairs guy, able to call on a lot of the same people. And I euphemistically said as I was retiring, that I had worked for 35 years for an agency that preserves the United States Constitution, and I was going to work now for legal aid, seeing that low-income people have the ability to get counsel in the courts. And now I was going to work for an organization that tries to make the U.S. Constitution work for everybody. And that, for me, was the connection. A lot of the subject matter was different. I had to learn the subject matter quickly, but the skills were the same. In fact, one of the people that I called on regularly in the appropriations committee was the one that picked up the phone when he heard I was interested in possibly retiring and saying, "I'll tell you the people that need your help, and that is the Legal Services Corporation." He said that they've just lost their congressional affairs guy, and he said, "Call this guy, and ask him about the job." And so once again, because of my relationships with people on the Hill, they looked out for me as I was retiring and suggested this job, which turned out to be a good five years. I really enjoyed that, and I learned a whole lot more. I met hundreds and hundreds of new people in that job, and I can proudly say I took them to their high-water mark of appropriations. We got them $420 million for appropriations in the year before I left, and it was the highest appropriation that they had had in their modern era. So . . .

Stephanie Reynolds: Wow.

John Constance: I felt really, really good about that as well. And again, I made some new friends on the Hill by virtue of some different committee assignments. But when you have a network like that, people would, unsolicited by me, call the new people I was calling on Capitol Hill to tell them, “This guy is a good guy. You know, he's honest. You can believe what he says,” you know, whatever. So, they really paid that forward for me. And that was something again. I regularly stay in touch through Facebook and my blog and other means with all of those people. And on the rare occasion I get back to Washington now, I go see them. And all those folks on the Hill from both my Archives years and my Legal Services Corporation years are still friends.

Stephanie Reynolds: That's great. Is there something or someone that you miss most about NARA, about your time there?

John Constance: You know, one of the people I've thought a whole lot about the last couple of years is Deb Wall. Debra was a very young staffer when I first met her, and she worked for a guy named John Scroggins, who I'd worked for also. And just to see her career advance through the years and then take over the positions of Deputy and then Acting Archivist of the United States in maybe the most challenging year of the Archives' modern history, and the way she handled it, and the honest way that she was the broker for that whole year. Very impressive. And I've stayed in touch with Deb, and that's been just great to see that.

Stephanie Reynolds: Yeah.

John Constance: The guy that I recommended for the job, John Hamilton, head of Congressional Affairs, he's still there. And Shawn Morton and Kate Slaugh, who I hired and who worked for me in Congressional Affairs, are still there. They are good people. So it's very nice to see that continuity. An agency like the Archives needs that continuity. They don't need one guy like me in there for too long, but they need people who've kind of learned in the vineyard and, you know, continue the legacy. That's very important to a place like the Archives. And one of the things about archivists and one of the things about people who like history, they hate change. [LAUGHS] So consequently, they're so averse to change. The benefit of that is that you get people who don't want to move, who don't want to, you know, they certainly want more money and they want to move up in their career, but they look around at the landscape and they say, "Well, who's doing what we do?" And the answer is nobody. And so it's like, this is a nice place to be, you know? I mean, if you're a walrus, you want to be in the water, you know. You want to be up north where it's cold. They look around and say, "Well, I'm a walrus. I don't want to go to Miami Beach. You know, I like it right where I am."

Stephanie Reynolds: [LAUGHS]

John Constance: So consequently, it works out well for everybody. And the people that it worked for the best are the people that are the least likely to understand and the least likely to say thank you, and that's the American public. That's stuff that's—you have to carry your “attaboys” along with you in an agency like the Archives because, unfortunately, the pats on the back are, I think, sadly few and far between. But you all do very, very good work and important work. And that's why everybody kind of stays in place.

Stephanie Reynolds: Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of long-timers with the agency, for sure. Yeah. Well, believe it or not, I've run out of my questions. But was there anything that we haven't covered that you would like to talk about or any words of wisdom or anything that you wanted to add to the interview?

John Constance: No. I just want to thank you and thank the History Office, and the fact that the agency has this program of oral histories says a lot about the National Archives. And from what I know of you and your leader, Jessie Kratz, I mean, you got the absolute right people doing it, and you've got them doing it for the right reasons. And because you're in an agency that understands the past is prologue, it's a good thing to do this. And I just want to end by congratulating you and your colleagues for your patience and your preparation and your time, because I've genuinely enjoyed it.

Stephanie Reynolds: Good, because I've really enjoyed it too. So I'm glad that you enjoyed it also, that it wasn't just a long exercise that you were putting yourself through. So this has just been wonderful. It's been so interesting over these past four sessions, and I appreciate you taking the time out to do this, even though, you know, you're traveling around the world and whatever you're doing, a lot of other other projects that you have going on. So I appreciate you taking the time out to talk with me about everything.

John Constance: Well, Stephanie, it's been a genuine pleasure to meet you. And I will [CROSS- TALKING].

Stephanie Reynolds: Thank you. Thank you.

John Constance: You're another person whose career I will now follow. So congratulations. Yeah. And congratulations Archives to have somebody like you in this role. So . . .

Stephanie Reynolds: Well, thank you. Well, hey, I'm going to stop the recording now, okay? And then I just want you to hang on just for a second, okay?

John Constance: Okay.

Stephanie Reynolds: Okay.