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

Stephanie Reynolds: All right, so I've got the recording started. First, I just want to say thank you for participating in the National Archives Oral History Project, documenting the history of the agency by preserving firsthand accounts of events. My name is Stephanie Reynolds, and I'm based out of the National Archives Facility in Denver, Colorado. I'm assisting the agency Historian, Jessie Kratz, in this important endeavor. Today is Thursday, August 10, 2023. And today I'm speaking with John Constance, whose career and accomplishments spanned 35 years from 1972 to 2007. Okay, John. So could you just start out by telling me where you're from and what your educational background is?

John Constance: Absolutely. And thank you, Stephanie, for taking the time to do this. I am originally from Catonsville, Maryland, which is a small community outside of Baltimore. I had a public high school education, graduated from Catonsville High School, and went to the College of William and Mary in Virginia. I had an interest in history from the get-go. And obviously, Williamsburg was a place that helped facilitate that interest over a period of years. I got a bachelor's degree in what we called "government," political science everywhere else, in 1972. While I was at William and Mary, I was an intern in the Office of the Archivist of the United States for the National Archives for two summers. I later got a master's degree—a master of administration with a specialty in public administration from George Washington University. So that's my education.

Stephanie Reynolds: Oh, okay. So you are highly educated.

John Constance: Well, that's a matter of opinion. But nevertheless. [LAUGHS]

Stephanie Reynolds: So what were you doing then on your internship?

John Constance: I came into the National Archives actually through GSA [General Services Administration], their then-parent organization. I had a neighbor in Catonsville who had become a public affairs officer for GSA and had heard me complaining about my summer jobs as a telephone installer and working on a survey crew out in the hot sun of Baltimore. I was really in search of something that was going to be more career-oriented and more along the lines of something I might eventually want to do. And Doug—Doug Brown was his name—Doug referred me to the GSA summer intern program. The application process involved interviewing with each of the GSA services; the Public Building Service, Federal Supply Service, etc. And one of those services back in those dark days was the National Archives and Records Service, at that time, NARS. So I did a day of interviewing in Washington. The way the process worked was you would interview, and they rated the interviews. You rated who you would be most interested in working for. And my number one choice was the National Archives. And so eventually, through a couple of blips and iterations of that process, I was hired by GSA as a summer intern with the National Archives in the summer of 1971, which was the summer between my junior and senior years at William and Mary. I reported that first summer to Herb Angel, who was the Deputy Archivist of the United States. Herb is significant in National Archives history in that he and Everett Aldredge were two guys who worked for the Department of the Navy in the Second World War and actually came up with a concept of records management. They were the two who even coined the term “records management.” They did it for the Navy, coming out of the Second World War. And as you know, Stephanie, it was the Second World War that exploded the amount of paperwork and the amount of documentation that was coming out of the United States Government. And they were the ones that really took on that challenge. And so Herb came to the National Archives, worked in records management for a number of years, but eventually was chosen as Deputy Archivist of the United States. And he was the one that I had interviewed with and was my first supervisor. And the two things that I must say that I learned from Herb Angel were, even to a lowly intern, give meaningful work. And also let all of the senior staff know that you support them and that when you're speaking to this young, lowly intern, you're actually speaking to the Deputy Archivist of the United States, by extension. Herb had a meeting of all of the top echelon of the National Archives in his office. He introduced me, and he explained that one of the things that he had wanted for a long time was a three-ring binder that could sit on his desk and have all of the key measurements—we call them "metrics" today. Back in those days, there was no such thing as that term associated with accountability. But Herb had a vision that he wanted to be able to open that book up each month and tell where each office of the National Archives was as far as their progress. And so he wanted me to interview each of the offices, let them come up with what those key metrics were going to be and develop a system whereby all of that information would flow through to the Deputy Archivist of the United States. It was a big deal. I mean, I'm a junior in college. I'm not 21. I'm 20 years old. And so it was heady stuff for me. And he made it known in the meeting, “I want your full cooperation with John.” And so there I was. And that was my deliverable that first summer. And that's what I delivered.

Stephanie Reynolds: Wow, that must have been a huge confidence booster. You know, still being in college and being given this responsibility. And they trusted your experience, your skills, everything that you're providing.

John Constance: Yeah, I tried to remember that in my career whenever I had a young, new person coming on board or, you know, I hired interns at various points in my career. And I always think back to that meeting and say that, you know, every person has skills and every person has worth, even if they don't have experience, and that it was really my job to pay that forward to those that had come after me, because you're right, it was a huge leg up in terms of my career.

Stephanie Reynolds: Yeah, I've heard a lot about the importance of mentors, too, within the agency and providing that experience and helping them move up within the agency, so I could see how that would be really important.

John Constance: It was. And it also helps your confidence longer-term, because when you're an intern, I've always told people that you start at the top of the organization and work your way down. I started in the office of the Archivist of the United States, but the beginning of my real career is a good illustration of that fact. At the end of the second summer, I really had liked my time at the National Archives enough to stay. So I went to see the then-acting Deputy Archivist of the United States, Jim O'Neill, and said, “Jim, you know, I would really like to stay here and have a full-time job.” And he said, “Fine, I'll check with personnel and we'll go from there.” Well, it was the Nixon administration and things, you know, were not fulsome, shall we say, in the federal government in terms of finances. And so there were a limited number of jobs at the Archives. So I got a phone call from Judy South, who was the head of personnel for the Archives at the time. And Judy said to me, “John, I heard from Dr. O'Neill, and I just have one question for you.” And I said, “What's that?” And she said, “Can you type?” And again, my ego at that moment shifted into protection mode, I think. And I thought to myself, oh, she just wants me to type my application. Well, no. The next thing that she asked me—I'll never forget these words—she said, "How fast can you type?" And I thought, Oh, oh, oh, no, no, here we go. I'm sitting here with a four-year education from the College of William and Mary. And I'm being asked to be a typist. Oh, no. So, I said, “Well, I guess I can type fast enough. I've never actually timed it.” So, she said, “All right, we'll give you the test to be a clerk typist,” you know, GS whatever it was, GS-2 at the time. In that second summer, I had been working on a project with the National Audiovisual Center, which no longer exists as a part of the National Archives. But it was a group that sat out in Suitland, Maryland, at the records center. And what the National Audiovisual Center was, it was a concept of taking films and other audiovisual materials that have been produced for training or for public information or for specific uses by the federal government, and setting up a business that would market those materials for sale or rental to schools, to businesses, to state or local governments. So we'd take these films and repurpose them for use outside of the federal government. Fascinating concept. I worked on a project to create a computerized catalog for the Center. And I'd made some contacts and some friends out there. So as I'm sitting there perusing my future as a clerk typist, I contacted Glenn McMurray, who was the head of information for the National Audiovisual Center, and I said, "Glenn, I've got a problem. And that is I want to work for the National Archives. But it looks like the only thing available for me downtown is a clerk typist job." And he said, "Why don't you come to work for us?"—the most lovely words that I'd ever heard spoken. Glenn was not the greatest administrator in the world, which he would admit were he still alive and sitting here. So in terms of budget or a position or all those little details, he turned that over to his staff and said, “Get this guy hired.” So that's what happened. My first permanent job with the National Archives was a GS-5, working in the information department of the National Audiovisual Center. I was the supervisor of the keypunch staff, which was composed of seven women who sat all day and typed keypunch cards that were being created for information reports on sales and rentals by the National Audiovisual Center. Also, they would eventually input the data that became our first computerized catalog. So there I sat, never having typed a keypunch card in my life, and I had very little knowledge of computers or anything else for that matter. And, I had no idea how to supervise a staff. And there I was, the first day, bright, shining, hopeful, supervising the keypunch office and just thanking God that I wasn't typing myself. [LAUGHS] That's how I started out.

Stephanie Reynolds: Wow. Where did those videos come from? Did we request copies from the agencies, or were these accessioned records?

John Constance: They were not accessioned records. They were on a different track. Let me give you an example from your background at the National Park Service. All of the national parks throughout the country, as you know, have orientation films. When you go to Antietam or you go to Gettysburg or you go to any national park, the first thing that happens is you're escorted into the dark and the air conditioning, and they turn on an information film to orient you to the history and the context surrounding the site and to give you enough background for you to go out and experience the site with that kind of history under your belt. They were all produced in Harpers Ferry at the Interpretive Design Center for the National Park Service, and I called on Carl Degen one day in my later career in accessions for the National Audiovisual Center. And I said, “Carl, we've got this operation, and your films are exactly like what we're distributing right now from NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration].” We had a huge collection of NASA's information and educational films, and I said we'd like to get into the distribution business for you and put your films in every school in the country. Typically in those days, they were 16 millimeter films. And so we would sell 16 millimeter films or rent 16 millimeter films, depending upon the needs of the user. And we wrote a contract with Carl. And again, these were not on the accession track for federal records, though there was the other group, the parallel group working for the motion picture division for the National Archives that was doing that on their record schedule when it was appropriate to retire them. We were kind of a different and independent player, and that whole system was set up under the National Archives Trust Fund as a revolving fund operation that, when we sold the films or rented the films, the money for that came back to us through the National Archives Trust Fund, and we used that as a budget to hire staff, to rent space, to do everything you would do as a business. And so for 12 years of my career, the first 12 years, I progressed through positions of increasing responsibility with the National Audiovisual Center.

Stephanie Reynolds: So I had not heard about this center before. How did this come to be? I mean, this doesn't seem like something that the agency would do. How did it fit into NARA?

John Constance: It starts out with a guy—a lot of times in federal agencies when you have this kind of a one-off operation, when you trace it back through history, there's usually a salesman involved. And the salesman in this case was a guy by the name of Jim Gibson, who had been in the federal film business. He had been a public affairs spokesperson. He was one of the first voices of Smokey Bear. Jim was nowhere and everywhere in the federal government. And this was a vision that he had of how all of this material that's being produced, millions of dollars worth of audiovisual materials were being produced by the federal government each year being used for their specific purpose, and then going back on the shelf to gather dust until they eventually were accessioned into the National Archives. And Jim said, “That's not right. We really ought to be able to set up a business operation that would see that all of those wonderful federal films got out to the public.” And he pitched this to the National Archives and to the National Archives Trust Fund Board. And they said, “Okay, let's go ahead and do it.” And since it was under the Trust Fund Board, it was very much of a dotted-line kind of office under the NARS Executive Director. And back in those years, the position was—it's kind of now Chief of Staff—in those years it was called Executive Director of the National Archives. Walt Robertson was that Executive Director. And this was kind of a dotted-line off of Walt Robertson's office and his responsibilities. We were very independent. Jim was the first director, and when he retired, he hired a guy by the name of Jack McLean, who had been the head of the Naval Photo Center in Anacostia where they produced all the films for the United States Navy. Jack was a retired lieutenant commander and came to work for the National Archives as the second Director of the National Audiovisual Center. And so that was the way it happened. Eventually, the National Archives some years later decided to work out a deal with NTIS, the National Technical Information Service, which was part of the Department of Commerce, and lock, stock and barrel, the whole operation went to the Department of Commerce. And it is still to this day part of the Department of Commerce in what is now a new iteration of the old National Technical Information Service. Their mission was somewhat similar in that they took federally funded scientific research and marketed it, you know, provided the publishing and marketing of that in a way that the Government Printing Office was not interested in doing. So NTIS was created really for scientific information, developed at the expense of the American taxpayer, that would then go out and be distributed this way. And so some years later, after I left and under a new Archivist of the United States—I can't quite recall right now who it was— but anyway, the decision was made to transfer it to NTIS at Commerce.

Stephanie Reynolds: Interesting. And so they're still marketing some of those same films by the National Park Service and whoever?

John Constance: Yeah. Exactly. I mean, one of the responsibilities I had was accessions and disposal. The disposal, meaning that we didn't actually throw the films away, but when they were outdated or had information that was no longer viable, and most of those would have been under the category of training materials. The Bureau of Land Management created a huge curriculum on how to fight forest fires, how to do it on land, and how to do it by air. And they really were the ones that did all the R&D [research and development] for that. Well, that material, for a local fire department that had a forest nearby or for municipal fire departments or, you know, fire services all over the country, they were very, very interested in acquiring that. So that's an example. But as new techniques occurred or new films came about, or we-don't-do-it-that-way-anymore kind of things happened, we would take those materials out of the catalog and put in updated material. So it was somewhat of a rotation. The Battle of Antietam never changed.

Stephanie Reynolds: The outcome was still the same. [LAUGHS]

John Constance: The outcome was still the same. [LAUGHS] So that didn't change. But even the Park Service, as you know, when the Park Service would update or upgrade a visitor center, they would often not use the old film and create a new film. And so we were right there to basically take whatever their new title was as well. So . . .

Stephanie Reynolds: Do you know anything about the establishment of the National Archives Trust Fund Board?

John Constance: I know the original intent of it was to be able to sell copies of records on a reimbursable basis. In other words, I mean, the National Archives realized that at one point in the life of the Archives, it was realized that, oh yeah, sure, we'll send microfilm copies or we'll send Xerox copies of records to people. But wait a second. There's a hunger for that, that we'll never get enough appropriations in order to satisfy. I mean, the public, when they realized that they could get documents from the National Archives, they said, “Oh, yeah, more of those. Let's have some more of those, and we'll have some of these, and we'll have some of these, and we'll have all we want.” Well, that's fine. But the Archives realized that they had to set up some kind of a funding mechanism to ensure the fact that we didn't go broke providing those copies. And the National Archives Trust Fund initially was set up in order to be able to receive reimbursement from the public for copy costs that the National Archives was expending in order to provide these copies to the public. And so that's how it was originally set up. That's the how and why of its original establishment. And I think, frankly, that might have been in the 50s. I can't quite recall. But they used to have their own logo, and they had a board that administered the Trust Fund, and they operated very much in and of themselves like a business where they were audited each year, they had financial reports, etc.

Stephanie Reynolds: So this was before GSA, that you think that this board was created? This Trust Fund was created?

John Constance: No, the Archives was still part of GSA. GSA took over the National Archives in 1949 as a part of the Hoover Commission report.

Stephanie Reynolds: Okay.

John Constance: The Hoover Commission was created to help organize a more efficient federal government. Archives was independent from 1934 until 1949, when it was swept up into GSA and was part of GSA from ’49 until 1985.

Stephanie Reynolds: All right. I had the wrong beginning date there. So then when you were part of this, at some point, you also became the Chief of Product Acquisitions and Marketing. Is that correct?

John Constance: I did. And we had done the accessioning part. I certainly enjoyed that. And we had a separate marketing department. It was decided at one point to join that together. And as part of that, we eventually got to the point where we were doing about a million pieces of direct- mail advertising per year. And again, this was targeted advertising, going to schools and businesses and municipalities all over the country. It was not without controversy. There were those in the private sector who felt that we were unfairly competing with them in terms of distribution of educational materials. So there was some congressional activity that was associated with that. Barry Goldwater Jr.—not Barry Goldwater Sr., but Jr.—was a congressman from southern California. And it was a number of the associations that were associated with the distribution of theatrical film and educational film that went to him. And so there were hearings on the Hill, back and forth. The bottom line was we survived based on the fact that while our prices were lower, we were distributing a pretty unique product. Our product, yes, it was competing, but it was very, very targeted, and I think Congress at the end of the day, decided that there was probably enough room for the private sector as well as the National Archives in that business. So . . .

Stephanie Reynolds: What kind of training? Oh, go ahead.

John Constance: I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Stephanie Reynolds: I was just going to ask about the training that you received when you were in that position. Were you learning about filming techniques and things like that?

John Constance: When I got the job in the whole area of accessions, initially—that would have been probably like 1975, I think—Jack McLean was the Director of the National Audiovisual Center. Jack had a very strong background, obviously in film, and decided that I needed to at least know some of the rudiments of filmmaking. And so he did two things. One, he sent me to the Naval Photo Center in Anacostia for a week, and I kind of shadowed the production process, the post- production process, the lab work, all the things that are associated with making a motion picture. I was on the floor when they would shoot the films. I went in and watched the editors edit the films. I followed the process of A-rolls and B-rolls in the lab and, eventually, the print production of actual prints coming out the other end. So I kind of had a whirlwind one-week immersion into that aspect of it. The most fun thing, though, was Jack also sent me literally to Hollywood. He sent me to Warner Brothers Studios in California, where a guy named Bill Hendricks was an old friend of Jack's. When Jack was head of Navy filmmaking, Bill was instrumental in Marine Corps filmmaking. Bill eventually became the head of the cartoon division for Warner Brothers Studios. And Jack got in touch with him and said, “I want somebody out there to shepherd this guy around for a couple of days and show him the fun side of filmmaking and the fun side of what we do.” And so I did that. I was out there for a conference where we were looking at some possible film acquisitions. But during that trip, Jack sent me to Bill Hendricks, and Bill took me around the back lot at Warner Brothers, and I watched filmmaking. I watched their laboratory operations. I watched their film- editing operations, all of which were similar to the Navy, but on a much, much larger scale. And it was fun. I had a great couple of days, met some interesting people, and it was fun and they were good contacts for the rest of my career. So . . .

Stephanie Reynolds: Is this when you got to meet Elizabeth Taylor?

John Constance: No, actually, that was a different time. When I was in California, I did get to meet Clint Eastwood. He was one of the people that—we were just sitting on a soundstage one day watching something that's very unique. Hollywood studios—Warner Brothers at the time—had a symphony orchestra, and the full symphony orchestra would watch the projection of the motion picture up on the big screen while the conductor actually conducted the orchestra watching the film and synced what the music would be with what was happening on the screen. That was pretty cool. And so we were sitting on this big soundstage watching that happen when the door opened behind us and some guy came in and sat down. Bill turned around at one point and said, “Oh, hi, Clint.” And I thought, Clint . . . let me think. How many people do I know in motion pictures whose name would be Clint? I spun around, almost threw my neck out, and Bill said, “Oh, Clint, I want you to meet a friend of mine [LAUGHS], a quote [USES AIR QUOTES] friend of mine.” I met Bill, you know, three hours, four hours before. And anyway, we had a brief—and I'm sure for Mr. Eastwood—unmemorable chat. And that was that. But the Elizabeth Taylor story—when I also was working for the National Audiovisual Center, I was working for them in 1976 when lots of federal agencies had projects that they were doing for the 1976 bicentennial of the United States. And the Supreme Court had one such project, and it was called Equal Justice Under Law. And they were producing a series of educational films about the John Marshall era of the Supreme Court, the first Supreme Court, and Marbury v. Madison, and a variety of other key decisions that were made as part of that first court. And they went to WQED production folks in Pittsburgh, a very well-respected film organization, and they got them under a contract to basically produce this series of educational films. And somebody told the court that, hey, you know, there's this outfit over at the National Archives, and they are in the distribution business. So rather than worrying about distributing it to schools ourselves, call this guy and they'll do it. So we met. I got to work with Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice Byron White, who was the head of this film project committee. And when the first film cuts were available, I got a phone call from the Court, and they said, “We're going to look at some of the film footage tonight. And the Chief Justice, since you guys are going to be distributing these, thought it would be a nice idea to have you all come over.” So I said, “Well, great.” It was very kind of casual. And I said, “Fine, do you mind if I bring John Barta?” I was just accessions at that time. He was the marketing director. I said, “Would you mind if I brought somebody along?” They said, “Well, let us get back to you.” And I thought that was odd. So anyway, about an hour later they called me back and they said, “Yeah, that's fine, as long as it's just one more.” I said, “Okay.” So I went over, and John and I parked under the Supreme Court Building and went up to the East Conference room. And when we opened the door to the East Conference room, it was totally dark, and they'd already started showing one of the films. So there's a flickering film up to the right on the screen and a 16-millimeter projector running in the back. And you see there are about 20 chairs there. And our eyes were still adjusting to coming out of the light of the hallway into the darkness, and could hardly see where we were going. And Barta and I found two seats and sat down. And when the film came to its conclusion, the lights came on and I looked to my right and realized that I was sitting next to Elizabeth Taylor. And I was not drinking at the time. [LAUGHS] So, I mean, that's the kind of experience that, you know, you think, wait a second. My first thought was, am I in the right room? [LAUGHS] Because I thought there's no way that I'm supposed to be here. I quickly realized that she's sitting next to—and I can't remember if they were married at the time or just dating—but John Warner, who was the head of the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration, ARBA, before he became a United States Senator. He was the head of the federal government's whole effort on the bicentennial. So Chief Justice Burger had invited him to come over and see this screening along with some other court members. And draped in mink and sitting next to little old me on this little gray metal chair was Elizabeth Taylor [LAUGHS]. I thought, holy mackerel. So anyway, that was an interesting encounter. I had already met with John Warner at ARBA over soliciting any films that they got as part of the bicentennial for the National Audiovisual Center. So he and I had been in a couple of meetings, and so he knew me, and he leaned forward and recognized me. And I thought, well, maybe there is a reason I'm here. [LAUGHS]

Stephanie Reynolds: So it is the right room. [LAUGHS]

John Constance: Exactly. Exactly.

Stephanie Reynolds: So did you get to talk to her?

John Constance: As much as she wanted to talk, yes. She was not in the communication mode that night, you know, until someone asked her what she thought of the film. I mean, someone had the brains to say, "Well, Ms. Taylor, what did you think of the film?" And she kind of critiqued the production that she saw, the production quality, and that was value-added. The producers are there, the director is there, that whole staff, I mean, they didn't exactly think that ever in their career they would get a critique from Elizabeth Taylor, but there they were. And so they were wrapt in attention and listening. So anyway . . . But I will tell you one thing. When John Barta and I walked out of that room that night, we thought it would be a good idea to leave early and not assume that we were really supposed to be there for the entire evening. We left a little early. And as we walked back down through the marble hallway of the United States Supreme Court with the high ceilings and all of the grandeur around us, I don't know whether it was Barta or me, but we broke into that old song from Sweet Charity, "If My Friends Could See Me Now,” and we danced all the way to the elevator singing and dancing. [LAUGHS] We both knew that we had just experienced, between spending the evening with most of the Supreme Court as well as Elizabeth Taylor, that this was something we were going to remember all our lives.

Stephanie Reynolds: For sure, yeah. I don't know how you could forget that one. That's very memorable. I would have thought the same thing. I think I'm in the wrong place.

John Constance: Exactly.

Stephanie Reynolds: Wow. Yeah. What a great story. So you said that you were supervising, I think, seven staff members. Is that right? I'm wondering how many people were in that center to begin with.

John Constance: At its maximum, we probably had 65 employees. We had a huge warehouse with a big film inventory. And that was the rental operation, the films that went in and out, in and out. So we had folks doing shipping and receiving and all that went into that. We had a finance division that took care of our sales operation. We had a guy that did all the liaison work with the laboratories that we bought our films from in order to either put them on the shelves to rent or to resell. We had, as I said, the marketing group. We had an information staff that published the catalogs and did that until we eventually figured out that direct-mail advertising, not just the big catalogs, was going to be really the way to go. And so yeah, it was a humming operation and one that operated in the black most every year. I mean, I think by law, under the Trust Fund Board, we were only able to make so much over cost. We were not obviously able to make a lot of money, but just enough to cover our costs plus. And then we operated truly on that basis all the years that I was there. My last initiative when I was in marketing, I spanned the time where it was all 16-millimeter film to where, toward the end of my time there, videotape was clearly coming more and more online. And I convinced them to make an investment to go into the home video market. And we were pretty successful with it. Basically we targeted the home market with some of the World War II films, documentaries that had been done by the military about World War II, the battles in the Pacific and those kinds of things. This was before the History Channel. And a lot of what's on the History Channel now is kind of driven by that subject matter. So we got into the home video market and started approaching it that way, with advertisements in magazines, publications, and other things. We had done some airline in-flight magazine advertising already. One of the big series that we distributed was a series of audiotapes that were produced by the State Department to teach diplomats how to speak foreign languages. That wasn't commercialized, at that point, through all of the various means now that you can go online and learn a foreign language. Audiotapes that would teach you foreign languages were something that the government had to create themselves. And the Department of State had created a long series on that. And so we just started to distribute those. And we would advertise those in airline magazines. And the tagline was "Speak like a Diplomat." And so again, it was an audiotape series that we sold for reuse.

Stephanie Reynolds: So some of these, like the National Park Service, the Forest Service, those films were you basically just taking it and making copies? Or were all of these kind of re-engineered in a way?

John Constance: Some of them had accompanying written materials. I mean, when the agencies realized, it was in the infancy, I think, of public education for a lot of these agencies. NASA had kind of led the way. The people at NASA realized that the future of the space program, I think, was going to really be reliant on their whole public information operation. And they had really led the way in educational materials being produced by NASA. And a lot of their stuff was just kind of a natural to go into those markets. Some agencies would do learning guides, other materials that were then distributed along with the films and the materials. We sometimes pre-packaged things like—take the Park Service, for example. There were brochures and maps about Antietam or about various national parks around the country, and we would distribute some of that written material along with the films to just kind of broaden the perspective. But for the most part, with those educational materials, we knew that there was a teacher on the other end that was going to figure out how they were going to use this material in their curriculum one way or the other. So, a lot of it was relying on that.

Stephanie Reynolds: Yeah, it's just very interesting. I had not known that NARA was in that business for a period of time. Do you know when it was transferred over to Commerce?

John Constance: I can figure that out for you at a later time. But no, I won't even guess because it was after I left. I left to come downtown in 1985, and I'd been there 12 years. So I went there in '72, coming out of college and was there until '84, '85, that time frame. So it was after I had left that it was transferred. I got involved in some of the negotiations because of my previous involvement.

Stephanie Reynolds: I know that you've done a couple of details to other agencies. When did you do the detail for the Department of Education and for OMB [Office of Management and Budget]? Do you remember?

John Constance: Both of those were during my career at the National Audiovisual Center, because both of them involved public affairs. The Department of Education detail happened when the Department of Education was created during the Carter administration, if you recall. HEW, Health, Education, and Welfare, was the structure under which the education piece of federal policy and direction of education was for many, many years. And under the Carter administration, that's when education was broken out as a separate department, and HHS [Department of Health and Human Services] was created in its wake as the remainder of what had been HEW. So when the Department of Education started, Liz Carpenter was the first head of public affairs for the new Department of Education. And Liz had a connection to the National Archives through the Johnson Library. Liz had been the press secretary for First Lady Lady Bird Johnson during the Johnson administration. And so through those connections, I think it was kind of how the word came back to the National Archives that Liz wanted some help in terms of looking at how their filmmaking would be done or their audiovisual policy would be in terms of the creation of educational materials. And they asked me to come over on a detail and be a consultant to them for a period of time. I can't recall. It was not a year. It might have been four months, five months, and to basically put together a procedures manual in terms of how their whole audiovisual operation, the audiovisual portion of their office of public affairs would be done. And that was fun. I mean, I enjoyed that. A lot of times, you know, in your career, a change of venue and purpose is a good idea. And I'd been at the Archives or the Audiovisual Center for a while, so it was a new possibility, a new place to work. And contractually, my boss let me go with the promise that I'd be back in a certain number of months. And so in that respect, it was—you know, sometimes in the federal government, you get detailed someplace and it's kind of, shall we say, not the best sign of the future for your career if your agency is willing to detail you for a period of time. In my case, I was lucky enough that it was kind of a win-win. The Department of Education got somebody who had good experience, and I was able to help them out. And when I came back to the Audiovisual Center, I had that much more experience in terms of how a different agency did it. And we obviously had kind of a front row seat in terms of getting their training films that were produced through that process as well. So. . .

Stephanie Reynolds: And then what about OMB?

John Constance: The OMB detail was in the first stages of the Reagan administration. Ronald Reagan came into government to cut government spending. He famously said—I think it might have been in his inaugural remarks—that the government does not solve problems. Government is the problem. And so those of us who were in federal service at the time thought there was some concern, shall we say, about that approach. And there were a number of task forces that were set up in the federal government to cut out waste, fraud, and abuse. Those were the big three that they were going to do. They primarily worked through the Inspectors General, the IG corps of each agency, to determine where there had been waste, fraud, or abuse of federal money. There were some broad categories, however, that they decided that they would set up separate task forces, and one of those task forces had to do with what they euphemistically called “Hollywood on the Potomac,” that they weren't really thrilled with the amount of money that was being spent on filmmaking. See also Barry Goldwater Jr. and the whole concept of should the federal government—they were after us on the distribution of films. The question was, should the federal government be producing all these films? Why shouldn't they be using the private sector? Why shouldn't they be using the studios or private film producers in order to produce this? Why do they set up their own filmmaking operations? And that was really the target. And so I was detailed, and this was kind of not voluntary. The guy that was the lead on this for the Reagan administration, they picked some names in the federal government. My name came up as somebody they wanted on the task force because, you know, if you want to rob banks, you need to know where the money is. And I knew where all the filmmaking was in the federal government. And if they wanted to cut all this filmmaking, they had to bring somebody in like me to say, "You may want to look over here, or you may want to look over there." So to say that I was conflicted in that role is the understatement of the year. But no one asked me whether I was conflicted. They brought me in, and I became a part of the task force at OMB. And I was the part that was, yes, working towards cutting filmmaking. I knew that there was a certain percentage of it that was wasteful. No doubt about it. But I also knew that there was a larger percentage that was useful. And so I made every effort to be the voice on the inside saying, yes, there's some problems over here and there's some problems over there, but you don't want to take all of these mechanisms apart, because there are some things that they can do that nobody else can do. There's some expertise that they have that nobody else has, and that to contract out to the private sector, you'd wind up with a director, a producer, and editor, everybody duplicating what was already being done. And so anyway, the goal though, was to be able to show on paper that we had cut a certain amount of funding from federal filmmaking. That was the goal that was given to the task force. And all I can say is that on paper, at least, we met the goal. Whether an audited outcome could ever be done to show that, yes, federal filmmaking was cut by the same percentages that those reports were presented to Congress or those reports were presented in a very large press conference that we held at the end of the project, I can't say, but it was—once again, I'd never worked in the White House before or any part of the White House. So the six months that I worked there was kind of heady stuff, also that I was working in or kind of near the center of the Reagan administration. And so I met a lot of nice people. I met some smart people who had a different perspective on the world than I did. And, that was good also.

Stephanie Reynolds: Yeah. Good experience, it sounds like. Do you remember how many people were on that task force with you?

John Constance: It was small. There were probably at most, at any one time, five permanent staff: myself, and several folks from the Pentagon, a couple of folks from the Department of Commerce. I mean, they knew that the vast majority of money in federal filmmaking was being spent by the Defense Department, far and away. An awful lot of that were things that the National Audiovisual Center would never be able to touch because they were, you know, either classified or they were materials that really, really wouldn't translate very well to the private sector. So I had some experience with Defense Department materials, as I said before, most of which were World War II documentaries and those kinds of things. But what they needed were the experts from the Pentagon, from the filmmaking world at the Pentagon that could help this task force out and identify where the pockets were that could, in fact, be cut. And so that's where a couple of guys from the Defense Department came into play.

Stephanie Reynolds: Wow. I mean, I feel like that would be a little uncomfortable if you're doing it within your own agency saying this is what should be cut. That would be very hard. And then I wonder, did they get any kind of flak from that within their own agency?

John Constance: Yeah, I think so. I mean, most of the guys that I worked with on the task force were people not in the hands-on film production world but in the administrative ends of the Defense Department that oversaw those operations. So I think they didn't have to worry for their personal safety when they went back to work. [LAUGHS]

Stephanie Reynolds: Well, that's good. [LAUGHS]

John Constance: I don't know that they had a big victory party for them when they came back. But nevertheless, I mean, I think a lot of that process was really identifying the things that most of the agencies already knew, that they had some wasteful spending in these areas. Some of the agencies knew that they had duplication of effort. It was funny in the military; the thing that was the most sensitive was that the Navy and the Army and the Air Force, the Marine Corps, they were all producing some training materials that were absolute duplications of each other. The only differences were the uniforms that everybody had on. I mean, literally. And so those were the things that were driving Congress and the Reagan administration totally crazy, such clear duplication of effort. There wasn't really much to debate regarding that. So anyway, it was interesting. It was mainly interesting to see—this was the first time in my career that I'd seen the policy world and the political world collide, and kind of how that operated in real time and in reality in the White House. You had career OMB folks that were in the bean-counting world. And they were there before the Reagan administration, and they were going to be there after the Reagan administration. And then you had the political echelon that knew that it was their job to come up with numbers that were going to look good at that press conference. And they were reporting to folks in the White House that knew that their time was limited. And during that limited time, they needed to produce for that administration for their own political futures and for their own involvement in politics and the rest of their lives. At the National Archives, you know, we're enough of a sheltered workshop when it comes to that kind of politics that I had never seen before. And it was helpful to me when I eventually got into congressional affairs work to have seen that and to really understand kind of how that operates and how that operates within the structure of the White House.

Stephanie Reynolds: Yeah, that's a very interesting point. You got some of that background information that you wouldn't have had otherwise that helps you in the future in the congressional job. In both of those situations and both of those details, do you think that those were valuable experiences and perhaps NARA should be pursuing more things like this? Or what are your thoughts on that?

John Constance: I think it's always good to breathe the air on the other side of the street. I think it's always good, particularly from a career development standpoint, to be intentional about those internships and those opportunities to go out and not get hung up. They have to be contractual. I mean, you have to agree that this person is going to go out and do this work, and they're going to come back on this date. But, as far as the experience of doing that and really understanding—take records management, for example. You know, a lot of times in records management, other parts of the Archives, you say you know what the problems are of the person on the other side of the equation. I mean, do you really unless you've been out there and working in that environment? You know, the National Archives has been very, very fortunate over the years to bring in people, like yourself, who have been out in different environments. But even, and particularly for somebody who comes in through the archivist training program or something internal, where the agency wants them from birth to death, somewhere in that chain, they really need to get out and experience work in other places in other ways. And I got to tell you, at the time did I think I was gaining anything that was going to be useful to me? I don't know. I mean, I always say that you live life forward, but you understand life backwards sometimes and that so many times in my career I would say, "Well, I know how that works" or "I've been here before" or, you know, "I can do this or I can do that." And I'm thinking to myself, "Gee, how do I know that?" And largely it was through those kinds of details or those other experiences. So . . .

Stephanie Reynolds: Yeah, those are really good points. Sometimes we tell agencies to do things, but it's easier to tell than to actually implement and know what the outcome of those decisions are, maybe. So yeah, I think it's knowing the other side is really important.

John Constance: I was involved in enough policy work at the National Archives to have seen, a number of times, policy directives that were sent out and only in the light of the violent reaction that you get other agencies reacting to those things that sometimes, not always, but sometimes that was like the, "Oh, gee, we never thought of that" moment. And you want to avoid those. Obviously, the whole Federal Register process with regulations and things are all designed, the Administrative Procedures Act and all these things that, you know, they're designed to avoid that. Sometimes it's crushingly slow. Sometimes, by the time you get the policy out, the question is, do we still have this problem? And, you know, it's maddening, but it's all necessary in order to ensure that. And sometimes it's not a matter of having the answers. It's a matter of knowing what the right questions are. And unless you've been out there in a different environment, sometimes you don't even know what the questions are, let alone what the answers are. So . . .

Stephanie Reynolds: Yeah, that's interesting. I'm looking at our time here. I scheduled you for another seven minutes. I wanted to ask about your thoughts on when NARA became an independent agency and separated from GSA. I don't know if you want to talk about that now a little bit or if you want to wait and we can schedule another time, because I know we're going to have to schedule another time. There's so many other things I want to talk about.

John Constance: Why don't we go ahead and save that for the next time? And it will afford me the opportunity, Stephanie, to also take a look at some material that I've got that may refresh my memory, because that starts into an area that I may have some perspective on that might be unique and might be helpful in terms of, frankly, where, in my humble opinion, the Archives went right and sometimes went wrong in terms of that process in becoming an independent agency. And we suffered for a long time as a result of some of the boxes that we didn't check and some of the T’s that we didn't cross when we were heading in that direction. So anyway, let me take a look at that, and I’d be happy to schedule again. An hour and a half in my time is not onerous. And it's going to all depend really on what your schedule is. So if you want to arrange some other times now or send me an email, that'd be fine.

Stephanie Reynolds: Yeah. Let me send you an email with some available dates and times and, you know, we'll see what works for you and then we'll schedule another one.

John Constance: Okay, yeah, that's great. That's great. I appreciate it. You're good at what you do, and I thank you for your questions and your time and look forward to chatting with you again.

Stephanie Reynolds: Yeah. I can't wait. Thank you so much.

John Constance: All right. Take care.

Stephanie Reynolds: Talk to you soon. Bye.

John Constance: Bye-bye.