Transcript of National Archives History Office Oral History Interview
Interviewer(s): Anna Smallwood
Interviewee(s): Daniel Rodriguez

Anna Smallwood: OK, my name is Anna Smallwood. Today is March 17, 2020. We are here at Archives II in College Park, Maryland. Can you please state your name and current position?

Daniel Rodriguez: Daniel Rodriguez. I'm an archivist now with the NDC [National Declassification Center], formerly with the Nixon Library.

Anna Smallwood: Can you start off by briefly explaining your career path here at NARA [National Archives and Records Administration]?

Daniel Rodriguez: So in 2010, I came here as an archives specialist, and my job was to do quality control on the fifth "Chron" [Chronological Release] of the Nixon tapes. So the Nixon tapes originally, due to lawsuits, et cetera, were released in Chrons one through five, and then the fifth Chron had parts one, two, three, four, and five. And so the one I was working on was Chron five, part five. And so this would have been the culmination of basically 40 years of work to finish them. Then, the work was done on CDs, so our audio editors would edit the conversations and take out anything that needed to be redacted. And then I would listen to the tapes. My job was to listen to every second of every conversation and every second of every room noise segment just to ensure that the beginnings and ends of conversations were correctly edited and that the sections that needed to be redacted were correctly redacted. And that was all done—I would give them the paperwork, basically, like, “Okay, this needs to be redone. This needs to be fixed.” Or I would pass it on to be finalized where we would make a number of copies for public access. So that's what I started out doing. That was my main job. I also worked on the finding aids. I forget––our finding aids are something like 50,000 pages or something like that. So we were modernizing them by taking out certain formatting and then tabbing them so that, later, they could be put into XML or some more digital format and that, you know, they would be kind of preparing them for future use by someone else. I would be adding in or taking out sections that needed to be taken out. For instance, if something used to be redacted in the 80s, but then was able to be released, I would add in what the reviewers said, kind of what they wanted added in, and I would remove the redaction stuff. So those are the main jobs. I also created an online exhibit for the Library based on the Christmas bombings of 1972. So that was one of the things that they used to sort of help me gain knowledge of the collection and the subject matter.

Anna Smallwood: Are you still working with the Nixon Project?

Daniel Rodriguez: Yes. Once we finished that release, we lost a few archivists, and I eventually moved up to an archivist and was in on the planning, which started in 2013, of how to take the tapes from basically analog to a more digital format and how to increase public access as much as possible. Because at that point, only the fourth and fifth Chrons were available online. The rest of it was sort of available, but they would be like six-or seven-hour-long segments that were difficult for people to find what they wanted. And we wanted to break that down into conversations to make it easier for researchers to find what they needed.

Anna Smallwood: So if someone had a topic, they wanted to listen to some of the tapes, how would they go about doing that now?

Daniel Rodriguez: The first step is always like either reverse engineering from, let's say, a history book. Let's say you're reading something, and then they mentioned something that was on the tapes, so, like, using a footnote to figure out what conversation they're talking about. If you wanted to listen to the segment that they're talking about in that book, and you would try to find it online, if it isn't available online, you could request it through the Library. More often than not, people are trying to find something new. And so the way to do that would be to use our finding aid. And you can either search by subject matter—we try as much as possible. It's difficult, because there's been archivists working on this basically from the late 70s till now. People use different phrases and keywords, et cetera. So we've been trying to standardize all of that, but there's only so much you can do. So we're hopefully moving forward. Things will be more standardized. But you could use keywords if you wanted to. You can use dates, and you can use people who are part of the conversation, and you can use locations. So you could technically look for conversations with Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office, let's say in April, if you knew there was an event that happened and you could tie that in with a keyword. Or now what we're trying to do is create more flexibility. So, like on the website, we're trying to put participants in conversations. So if you click on that person's name, it'll list all the conversations that are available online with that person. And we're hopeful, because we have the metadata to expand that to keywords and subject matter. So you could look up, you know, the War on Drugs or busing, and you could get all the conversations that contain that subject matter. So right now, the easiest way is probably going through the finding aids and narrowing things down based on—you know, doing your research first and then looking up based on dates or subject matter and trying to hone in on the conversations you want. We're hopeful, in the future, you'll be able to do a lot of that online more naturally instead of searching through the finding aid. You would, in that situation, use the finding aid to help you listen to the conversation and less as like a finding aid.

Anna Smallwood: Before you came to NARA, what was your background?

Daniel Rodriguez: So I went to art school in 1998 and 1999, and I studied computer animation and editing and all that. And then the dot-com bubble happened, so nothing really came of that. [LAUGHS] I thought it was like wasted time. I joined the Marine Corps and then, after that, I went to school at UNLV [University of Nevada, Las Vegas] and got a bachelor's [degree] in history. And then I went to St. John's in New York and got a master's. Then I went to work for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and I worked with the senior historian at the time doing research and writing. And then I also worked with visitors, talking to school groups, leading tours and things like that. Then I came here in 2010, and I've been here since then.

Anna Smallwood: Can you describe some of the difficulties you faced while working on the project?

Daniel Rodriguez: Well, the biggest difficulty initially is that the tapes are incredibly difficult to listen to, just the sound quality, because let's say in the Oval Office, there are microphones in the desk. So if he's writing on his legal pad or if he's signing stuff, you can hear the pen as he's writing. If he's tapping his fingers, you can hear that. You can hear other people in the room writing. If they're bringing in glasses, you can hear the tinking of the trays and whatnot. So your brain automatically goes to those sounds. And so the biggest hurdle is just getting your brain to listen to what you need it to listen to and not, like, the interruptions. So the first, probably month, I felt completely lost, like I wasn't going to be able to do this. And I think I'm just going to fail at this, because it was just so difficult. And then one day, it just clicks in your brain. It's just able to, like, start filtering out the sounds and hear the conversations. So that was probably one of the bigger hurdles. The other stuff is more about the actual methods of doing the job. We were a small unit here in the Archives, AII, and our main Library was in California. So we're 3,000 miles away. The Library became a federal institution and actual Presidential Library in 2007. So for the most part, they were concentrating on that, and we got lost in the shuffle. So it was hard for us to get support from the main Library. And then when we lost people, it was difficult for us to hire people because, I guess it was 2014-2015, somewhere around there, and that's when things were really starting to get tight and the current political climate was starting to intensify. And then we had the sequestration. So, actually having enough personnel to do the job was—we didn't have anyone for maybe four years. So to properly complete a tape, you need two reviewers to do it. Those reviewers need to be archivists at a certain GS level, because there's still the possibility that someone can sue us— the family or someone else. And the archivist is responsible for making decisions—not so much with national security, because that gets made by the agencies, but what we call the "G Personal Returnables."1 So those are things that were deeded to us by the family when the Library became a Presidential Library. So these conversations, which used to be withheld, were conversations where the President wasn't acting as the President, so if he was talking to his family or if he was acting as the head of the Republican Party or was talking to the doctors, et cetera. So it's personal stuff like his health and his finances and his conversations with his family. The problem with that is that that leaves plenty of gray areas. So, for instance, when Tricia gets married in the White House, Nixon is coming up with the guest list with her and telling her which people to invite based on people who've been either writing good press for the administration or who've been loyal to the administration. So at that point, you know, you have to make the decision whether that conversation meets the standard of being redacted. So those kinds of decisions are being made by archivists. And in the sense that since we could get sued potentially, we want someone with a high enough level and that's getting paid commensurate with the kind of the decisions that they're making. Sorry, all of that goes to why we need two archivists to review a tape, because then we need a consensus of two people who say, "Yes, this is something that we can release." If we don't have that, then we can't release the tape. I could do, you know, 300 tapes on my own, but they would just sit there and wouldn't be able to be released because there wouldn't be someone else. So for years, we were just kind of bottlenecked where we were, unable to do any work or, we were able to work, but there was no kind of results that people could see. So a lot of times, 1 From the finding aid, Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act (PRMPA) categories: “All presidential conversations had to be reviewed by NARA under PRMPA guidelines and segments found to have restricted content were separated into their proper PRMPA categories. The PRMPA guidelines define eight restriction categories: A: Violate a Federal statute or agency policy; B: Reveal national security information; C: Violate an individual’s rights (pending); D: Constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy; E: Disclose trade secrets or confidential commercial or financial information; F: Disclose investigatory/law enforcement information; G: Disclose purely private and personal information, as defined by the PRMPA; H: Disclose non-historical material.” you know, when that happens, the Library or whoever is like, "Well, you guys aren't really accomplishing anything. Do you really need people?" And so sometimes it's hard to explain why, because it's such a specific and different method of review than a lot of things in the Archives which are textual-based. So sometimes it's hard for people to wrap their heads around why you need extra people. The other problem we were dealing with at that time was the ins and outs of digitization. There really hadn't been something done at this scale, you know. We have an AV [audiovisual] lab that will digitize some audio here, digitize a little bit of, you know, video or film, et cetera, but we were doing 4,022, I think it is, reels of 1/4-inch tape that needed to be ingested into a computer in real time and edited. And then we had to find all the national security segments and then get them reviewed by agencies. And so it was just a massive project. And since there were only like four of us working on it and only like really two of us who were really trying to plot out the entire spectrum of everything from beginning to end, you know, it was slow going because there weren't a ton of people to lean on. And we had to kind of feel our way out because, like I said before, everything and most things in the Archives here are textual-based. So finding the right path is a little difficult when there's really nowhere to go to ask for advice, you know, specifically, like, how do you do this X, Y, Z? People just could give you hints, but nobody had really done it before. So it was really breaking new ground and trying to feel our way through every aspect of it.

Anna Smallwood: Did you work on the first and second review, or did you do the review after the tapes had been edited or both?

Daniel Rodriguez: You mean after the digital or . . . ?

Anna Smallwood: Yeah.

Daniel Rodriguez: Okay. So when we started digitizing, basically, I was like the QC [quality control] person. We had a secure server in our SCIF [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility], and our audio people would digitize the tape and send it to me, and I would ensure that the entire tape has been digitized. An entire tape can be anywhere from a few minutes to seven hours long. And so each tape, though, is broken down into reels. So a tape can be one to six—[THINKING OUT LOUD] seven, eight, six—one to six reels. So what I would have to do is I'd have to check every reel to make sure that there was a beginning and an end. And we call those tops and tails so that it starts with silence, the tape begins, the tape ends, and it goes into silence. So we ensure that we've captured the entire tape. We also have a time code that has been embedded in the tapes, which allows us to find our conversations and withdrawals on the tapes. So I would make sure that both the audio is captured and the time code [is captured] for every reel. And then again, doing a similar thing I did before CDs, I would send it back if something is incorrect. And since we wanted a flat transfer, like of preservation quality, we didn't want to boost the audio or change it or anything like that. So if we couldn't get it, usually the problem was time code, because there was like some degradation in the tapes. So time code was something that we would boost because it wouldn't affect the audio, and you can't hear it. But we didn't do that. We try to capture that itself without boosting it. So that was my first thing would be getting ahead and trying to get the QC done on these tapes. And I probably did 90 to 95 percent of the QC on those. And then the next step was creating the montage, and a montage is basically like an onion skin that allows us to cut tapes or edit them together or do different things to them without actually affecting the file. So after that, I would create the montages, which are basically I'd be stitching together the reels. So we had a seamless full one-, two-, six-hour tape and then laying down the markers for the beginnings and ends of conversations and the beginnings and ends of withdrawals. And then after that, I helped start, like, we kind of knew how a review was done before in the 80s, so we had a sense that they didn't really have SOPs [standard operating procedures] that were written down. So we kind of reverse engineered it a little bit and then created SOPs for how to do the first and second review. So I kind of did that. And then I also helped create the process for how we do review with the agencies. We had tried to do it via CDs, like it had been done before. Some agencies lost our stuff. Some didn't do it. So we realized that we needed to find a new way going forward. CDs are expensive, and we knew that people wouldn't want to give us money to do, you know, pay for thousands of CDs to send to agencies only to have them sometimes get lost. So we decided that we would bring agencies into our SCIF and have them listen to the segments on MP3 players, which allowed us to just create playlists for each agency that they could go through that would allow us to wipe it and then re-reset it for another agency. So that process took a while to figure out, because most of that information we had taken from forms and put into spreadsheets. And to properly do this, we had to get that information out of spreadsheets and put it back into paper form. So we had to create our own kind of withdrawal sheets for agencies that let them know kind of here's the segment you're listening to. Here's the subject matter. Here's where it begins and ends. And here's where you either say you wanna redact it, you want to hold it, or you want to hold it all or release it in full. So we had to create those forms. And then I figured out how to do a mail merge so that instead of filling out each form manually, we could harness our spreadsheets and automatically fill out all these forms. So that was interesting. And kind of another roadblock is figuring out all this stuff because, you know, we're slowly figuring out how to take a tape from analog to digital. And then every time we get a little bit, you know, there's either a roadblock or another complication where it's like we have to branch off and start a new kind of offshoot, like a new method, because it just wasn't a straight line. So basically that was part of it all from the beginning of planning out the whole thing all the way to the end. And now basically, you know, I've trained a number of people and kind of make sure that the project stays on task by handing out assignments of, “Okay, these are the tapes we're going to concentrate on. This is what we're going to release. This is what I want people to work on.” And then I kind of help if people have questions about what is being said or, for instance, right now we're working on some of the “A” withdrawals. And so I've kind of set the template for how we're going to go forward, how we're going to take these segments which generally can deal with the Secret Service or maybe grand jury information. They're like statutes, how we're going to go forward in figuring out what to do with those segments. So I'm still trying to stay ahead and find problems and smooth them out before the other people get there and then kind of help them see the logic of what we're trying to do. So I hope that answers it.

Anna Smallwood: And so the process of digitization, are you taking the original tapes, the archival copies that were made when they came here? What's the one you're using?

Daniel Rodriguez: So right now—or we used the “P” copies, which aren't the originals but were copies that were made. There were preservation copies that were made in, I think, late 80s-90s. And these are ones that had time code inserted because, you know, that's the only way we can accurately find our way through the tapes. And all the work is premised around everything that's been done. So, everything that's been done for the last 30-plus years has been premised on that, like the time code has been at the beginning and ending of any conversations, et cetera. We didn't want to throw away all that, so we used the “P” copies. And the problem with those was that, at that point in time, there was a legal battle. I think they were under a court injunction, so they couldn't actually listen to the tapes as they were transferring them. They had to just use the dials and make sure that the volume was high enough so that it was registering on the needles. So, it isn't a perfect copy, but I mean, it's probably nothing that would be perfect. But there would have been something better if they could have listened to it or they could have gotten a little better of a transfer, but they were under their own, you know, they had their own problems that kept them from being able to do that. So, yeah, ours was the copy made from the originals. I don't know if the originals have been taken out, so I don't know what shape they're in or anything like that. But I do know that the copies we used were starting to degrade, and some of them had sticky shed, which is like the beginnings of vinegar syndrome. So we got in at the right time.

Anna Smallwood: The newer Chrons that were done and the research copy was made on CDs, did you have to go back and do those again or which segments were you specifically working on in the digitization project?

Daniel Rodriguez: So we're doing the copies that were there from the fourth and fifth chron. We're going to replace [them] with the newly digitized ones. As far as the review goes, we're reviewing the first through fourth Chrons, because they came before the deed of gift. So those ones have lots of “G” segments that can be released now, because they deal with politics. And so we need to review those segments and release them. And so the first and third Chrons–there's really nothing online for them right now—so that'll be like a net benefit for everybody, all the researchers when it's done, because all those conversations that weren't there will now be available online. The fourth Chron, those will be replaced with the new segments of the new “G's” that we'll be able to release and then the fifth Chron, because that was done after the deed of gift. Those have already had all the segments reviewed. So when we come upon a “G” now that was reviewed, if the reviewer then said that it had to be withheld, then we have to abide by that decision because it's already been reviewed. So we can't listen to it again and be like, “Oh, I think they made a mistake.” Like once it's reviewed after 2007 and those choices are made, then that's kind of it, because in theory, these segments have to be given back to the family and then destroyed. So that will be another complication for another day, once we reach the end of this. But yeah, so the fifth Chron ones now are really easy to do because, basically, all we got to do is to re-review national security segments. Well, the first through fourth Chrons are taking a little bit longer, because those ones have longer national security segments, because there's a lot of head-of-state stuff that would be hours long. And then there's a lot of political stuff, because it's dealing with a lot of midterm elections and the reelection campaign. So there's a lot of stuff on there that needs to be reviewed.

Anna Smallwood: What insights did you gain of the President by listening to these tapes?

Daniel Rodriguez: I mean, I think one of the things is listening to this gives you a sense of the wide breadth of knowledge that people need to have in this position. So you can see how a typical day can be spent let's say meeting with diplomats and then talking about bills that are coming through Congress and then dealing with maybe something that flared up somewhere in the world while also dealing with the Vietnam War and just kind of the things that were happening, you know, understanding the economy and just everything that comes with just being a world leader. So you sort of get a sense of how you have to be able to, like, not micromanage, how you have to be able to swing from one subject matter to the other and hopefully understand it. One of the other things is like it really demystifies the Presidency for you because, you know, you're a fly on the wall and you get to hear all the coarse conversations and the jokes and any of the slurs or anything that comes along with it. So in one sense, you have all of this Presidential stuff where, you know, he's talking about how to open up China and the net benefit for the United States if we can play China against the Soviet Union and Vietnam. And then in the next, you know, 20 minutes later, they could be joking or they could be talking about something that they don't like in very frank terms. So you sort of stop thinking of these people as kind of great men in a sense and just start thinking of them as kind of what they are– people, politicians who found a way to reach the peak of their field. So you lose respect in a sense. And then you also have a lot of respect for the job and what it entails. Nixon, I think, one of the things that you come away with is that he was really cagey and seeing kind of these trends that we're still dealing with and also understanding kind of how to work diplomatically and how to thread the needle sometimes with these crises like India-Pakistan and stuff. So he had a good sense of how to work some of this with these countries. But then he'd do wild things like talk about, you know, "Hey, maybe if they just think I'm going to drop a nuclear bomb, they'll just do what I want," which kind of referred to the madman theory. And the way he's caricatured throughout, you know, since then, whether it's Futurama or any of the pop culture stuff that's come about, you kind of get a sense of this one side of him that's like conniving and kind of hungry for power or whatever. And while a lot of that's true, when you listen to the conversations with his wife or his daughter, you really get the sense he really did love his kids and like he really wanted the best for them. But then, you know, he also was conniving. So you get a full sense of who he is as a person and you kind of get some grudging respect. But then, you know everything. You can never have him for too long because then in the next breath, something he said, something crazy or something, just, you know, completely racist, and you're like, "Oh, yeah, this is that guy that has been, you know, made famous in popular culture."

Anna Smallwood: What difference of the place the tape was made at, what difference did that have on your ability to hear or the kind of background noises that you would get? Did that have any effect on your work?

Daniel Rodriguez: Yeah, I mean, it has an effect on the work, and it has an effect on how we talk to researchers and new listeners. We try to steer them towards the phones, because the phone conversations are really clear. So a lot of times you don't have to deal with background noises. You can just hear the two people talking. And that will, if you're a new user, that helps your ear get attuned to the quality. The Oval Office would be the next best because there are a number of microphones, so you get a clearer—that's probably the best room because you get a nice, clear recording and the background noises and stuff aren't as abrupt. And then from there, you go to the EOB [Executive Office Building], which is pretty rough because I believe there's only a couple microphones. So there are sections where you can't really hear people, because they've moved to a corner. They moved to another spot in the office. And unlike the Oval Office, which had microphones all over the Office, the EOB only had a couple. And so the quality is worse, and there’s more background noise. And Camp David only had small amounts of microphones, too. I think they had one. And then the Cabinet Room only had one microphone, and it was right at where the President sat. So anybody that was on either end of the table, it was difficult to hear what they’re saying unless they were giving a presentation. And there was just a lot of noise because there’s cameras, there’s, you know, if the press is in there. And then people oftentimes devolved into a number of conversations around the table. So there was a lot of muddle in it. So it affects how you kind of talk to researchers about it, and it affects the work, because when you're dealing with these conversations where there's lots of noise and it's a “G” or it's a national security segment, then it's harder for the agencies to listen to those segments. And it takes them longer to come to a decision, because they're listening to it over and over and over again. And then we do the same thing where, you know, you want to try to catch as much as possible to help researchers. And so these segments where there's lots of background noise or they're hard to hear, we generally have to listen to them a lot. We have some audio tools within the program that we can use to try to take out the background noises and kind of pick up the vocals. But at the end of the day, you know, there's just two people working on these tapes and we have hundreds of hours to review and, you know, all these tapes to get through. So we try to limit ourselves to not spending too much time on these. The kind of formula I've talked to people about is if the segment is, let's say, eight minutes long, you only want to spend probably, at the most, double the time on it. So that allows you to kind of listen to it twice and then move on. So it really does have a large effect since so many of the conversations are hard to hear, that it really can bog down the work.

Anna Smallwood: What records or secondary sources assisted you in your work, if any?

Daniel Rodriguez: So we use the Presidential Daily Diary a lot. So we have those on our server, and that tracks where he was every day for conversations with people, what time it was at phone calls, whether it was incoming and outgoing. And so it can give you a list of, you know, if you're not sure who's in a meeting, you can look at the Presidential Daily Diary and it'll tell you all the people that are in the meeting. What we find most useful for it is that if he tells his daughters, "Hey, let's go have dinner at . . ." sometimes it's like 21 Club in New York and then, you know, go to X, Y, Z show. That could be seen as a private thing between the President and his family. But if it's on the Presidential Daily Diary, then it's public, so then we can release those conversations. It's really helpful that we also have the schedules for the daughters and his wife, so we can use those to see when they talk about going to certain places, whether it's a campaign event or not, or whether it was a public event, you know. And that allows us to release it since their schedules are public also. We also use a number of books, whether it's monographs about Vietnam or his biography. And we use historical newspapers. We have what's called under PRMPA [Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act] “D's,” which are privacy segments. And those are different from “G's” because the privacy is dealing with a secondary person, so not the President. Whoever he's talking about or who he's talking with, you know, the person might be saying, "Oh, yeah. I had a heart attack last year, and I found it difficult to ramp back up to my usual schedule." Well, that would have been a "D," and it would have been withheld. But now we use newspapers and we can see, you know, [by an] easy Google search, is the person alive or dead. If the person is dead, then they no longer have privacy rights. So then we can release those. So, we kind of use anything that we can to either help us gain a grasp of the situation. So, like, I use an almanac a lot. Sometimes he'll say, "Call the Ambassador of France." I don't know who that person is so I can pull out the, let's say, 1971 almanac and I can see who the Ambassador of France is. So for things like that, almanacs are helpful. Atlases are helpful. I mean, we'll use anything that we can that will help us really pack in information that'll be useful to the public and kind of help elucidate whether something should be released or not.

Anna Smallwood: Do you work with researchers often?

Daniel Rodriguez: Sometimes. Not as much now as before. A lot of the requests now kind of go to the Nixon Library, and then they'll contact us if they need help. Now, mostly we deal with people who want to request tapes that aren't released yet. And so we've kind of created another workflow for how to accept these special requests and how to insert them into our pipeline and get them released for researchers, you know, hopefully within three or four months. So not as much now as we used to. And now it's mostly just, like I said, [special] requests.

Anna Smallwood: Is there anything else that you wanted to add at this point?

Daniel Rodriguez: I think that's probably mostly it.

Anna Smallwood: Okay. The last question I have is what would you consider the lasting legacy of this project to be?

Daniel Rodriguez: I mean, there's a couple of things. Like one is, you know, I would say the importance of civil servants. This is a multi-generational project. You know, everything that we've done is kind of building on what has been done before us by other archivists. So it's since the late 70s to now, you know, everything we have has been done by other people. And so we're building upon that and hopefully we're leaving it to the next generation to improve on. And we're kind of trying to think constantly about what is new technology that is coming out or how is the best way to leave this so that people can just pick it up and move forward and not try to figure out why we made decisions. So we're trying to be very transparent and very open about why we did things and then also leaving it in a better place than we found it so that the next generation can kind of improve on it. And then I think the other important thing is just that this is one of the most unique collections in the world and definitely probably [one of the] most unique at NARA. A little bit of bias there, but there's really nothing like it. There are other Presidential recordings, but nothing as unfiltered as this, because he was such a technophobe. They created a system that worked basically by voice activation. So we hear everything from everyone from that time period. And it's an insight into both how the Presidency, the Office is wielded, how power is projected nationally and internationally, and also kind of how power corrupts. Sometimes we get asked, "Is it okay? Will there be problems if we release . . ." X, Y, Z, because he says a racial slur or because this happened or that happened? And our response is that we literally have a President committing felonies on tape. That's the worst thing, you know, not to belittle or minimize that other stuff. But we have a President on tape trying to subvert the institutions of democracy. And that's everything that kind of—that's our tradition for hundreds of years. That's everything that's important to our country. And so it's a lesson for people in kind of like, you know, people in power are not—absolute power corrupts absolutely that whole adage. And even if he didn't have absolute power– because people did oppose him and they wouldn't accept his orders. There's a number of times where people were ordered to do things, and they want to do it. But it shows you kind of how having that power can corrupt a person who some would say was already kind of corrupt. But it pushes you to try to form and pervert those institutions to your own ends. And I think it's important for people to understand that. These people in power are there to serve us and the public, not vice versa. And I think the tapes or their legacy will be, hopefully, in providing people a cautionary tale of what can happen when someone who isn't on the level has the power of the State in their hands and how they can subvert democracy. And it can help people learn things that they can carry forward, you know, throughout their life as a citizen in a democracy and things to be aware of.

Anna Smallwood: Great! Thank you.

Daniel Rodriguez: No problem.

Anna Smallwood: That was all I had. Is there anything else that you had that you wanted to add or talk about?

Daniel Rodriguez: I think I'm good. I think that's everything.

Anna Smallwood: Great! Thank you again.