 I would like to thank the National Archives for the honor of inviting me to do this program. I'd also like to thank the National Archives for the fine work they do through all of their divisions, including presidential libraries, to collect, process, and make vital records available to researchers like me who want to write history that mostly tells the truth and that's fairly accurate. I'd like to mention the names of two archivists, Edie Headlin who has worked in the National Archives and Sarah Saunders Mitchell and her colleagues at the Carter Library who have given me so much help but also as symbolic of my thanks to all of those archivists all over the country who have worked so hard at the grassroots level to help the researcher who walks in off the streets and who asks for help. I chose the title for this presentation to be Jimmy and Rosalind Carter, Peace and Human Rights. The book is entitled Power and Human Rights, but I chose this title because Jimmy Carter once said that if anybody remembered him a hundred years from there, they hoped he would remember him for peace and human rights. And since I spent more than 30 years researching and writing on this book, I believe that when we look at the primary sources, we look at the long distinguished Korea, the amazing Korea that they had as a couple. We will discover that he has rightly earned the legacy which he wants. That is the legacy for peace and human rights. Jimmy and Rosalind Carter are an amazing couple. What they accomplished, they accomplished largely as a couple, which is unusual in presidential history. It also lasted for a long time. They've been married now 76 years, which is something of an accomplishment within itself because they started out as just ordinary people who were ambitious, who were intelligent and who took advantage of the opportunities that they had. What I want to do is to give you some examples of what I learned about the Carter's that may not become a knowledge. Those of us who have lived through the Carter era have our opinions about them, how their policies might have affected our personal lives. But there's far more than that to learn about the Carter's. When I started on this project, I intended just to write a short essay about Jimmy Carter as a writer. I was not disappointed. One of the many things he did in his career was he wrote a large number of books. And sometimes I think I wrote a biography of a person who was a writer, who also happened to be a president. The interesting thing about that, one of the first interesting things I learned when I went to the archives in the presidential library in Atlanta was that there was a vast collection of untouched primary sources. I decided that I would start with a clean slate. No preconceived notions about Jimmy Carter or Rosalind Carter and see where the primary sources led me. He always said that there was an equal partnership, but one doesn't get very deeply into the documents before one discovers they truly did have an equal partnership. Rosalind Carter was not just an influence on her husband. She was an equal partner. She was involved in strategy sessions during the political campaigns. During the presidency, she did attend a few cabinet meetings, but she was also knowledgeable of most of the top-level decisions that he made, and often she was the last person he consulted with before he made his final decision. He took her opinion sometimes, sometimes he did not, but she was definitely an equal partner. In order to know the corridors, one has to go to planes, forget the tourist attractions, get off the main street, forget the tourist attractions, walk around the fields, the back streets, there are not many back streets, talk to people and learn where they came from. They shared a religion, they shared family values, they shared a particular background. So in the second place you have to go to get to know the corridors which is, of course, to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta, where there are millions of documents with lots of information about them. One of the first things I learned about Carter that may not be typical knowledge is that his nurturing parent was his father, Earl Carter. Earl Carter's own father was murdered when he was a child. He grew up fatherless and he was determined that his own children would not be fatherless. So he took a hands-on approach to rearing his children. His firstborn child and son, Jimmy, he nicknamed Hotshot, which gives you a pretty good idea about what he expected from him. He was a tough disciplinarian. He was a tough disciplinarian. He expected perfection from Jimmy. If Jimmy delivered it, there was no reward. If Jimmy did not deliver it, there was punishment. That was precisely the persona that Carter grew up to have and exactly the way he dealt with many people once he was president in a position of power. We know a lot about Carter's religion, which was genuine. He was a compassionate Christian, practiced his religion. We know a lot about his mother, who was an egalitarian nurse who took care of black people as well as white people and spoke out. And of course, we know a lot about Rosalind, a companion. As he said, he married the right woman. And I might add she married the right man to produce the kind of couple who were so amazing in what they accomplished. They were in the Navy. They got married young, spent some time in the Navy. Carter, being from a Jim Crow small Southern town, was amazed at what he saw in race relations as he was at Annapolis and later as a couple, traveled around the country and around the world. His best friend at the Academy was the only black person who was there at the time. And as he and Rosalind looked back upon their background, they realized that the Jim Crow system in the south was unjust. And that became his template to attack injustice, injustice wherever he saw it, anywhere in the world. And he expanded that to the state, to the national, and eventually to the world level. So he goes home. The turning point in his life is 1953 when Mr. Earl died. And his mother Lillian told him he must come home to run the family business. The family business was not just a poor peanut farm. It was an agribusiness, which he and Rosalind eventually developed into a major prosperous agribusiness by the time he ran for the presidency in 1976. A bit bored, he read poetry. He looked for other things to do once he got back in planes. He decided to run for politics. He ran for the state senate in 1962. Won it in a contested election and where his opponent had sponsored all sorts of irregularities, including people in cemeteries voting. Once Carter as a young senator got to Atlanta, he and his buddies introduced an item of legislation which said that it would be illegal for anybody in Georgia to vote who had been dead for more than three years. He worked for racial equality, worked for improvement in education more than anything during those years. From that vantage point, he decided he would run for governor. He went down in ignominious defeat in 1966 to the infamous Lester Maddox, who was well known for his racism. Carter said he would not lose again. In 1970, he ran for governor a second time, and this time he won. It was an interesting election, partly because Rosalind had come into her own as a politician. She may have even been a better politician than he was. As she campaigned, she went out and met as many people as she possibly could. She gave the campaign a very personal touch. The big issue in 1970 in Georgia, of course, was still race relations, and Carter was cagey about it. He intended to improve race relations in Georgia, but his viewers could not really tell where he stood on most of the issues. He won in 1970, and at his inauguration, he said that the day for racial discrimination in Georgia is over. That landed him on the cover of Time Magazine. That's what he meant. He meant what he said. He was a very courageous person. He meant what he said, and while he was governor, he was the person who did hang the portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. in the state capital. To keep it from being stolen, he had to post the Georgia Highway Patrol on either side of it on various occasions. He did other things. He promoted education. He was dealing with an energy crisis that was affecting the entire nation. He did other things as well. In Georgia at that time, the state constitution said that a governor could not run for re-election. He did not have to worry about being re-elected in Georgia. He wanted to move to a higher level, either in the Congress, and finally he decided that he would run for president. With Roseland's help and the help of others, Carter volunteered to be the workhorse for the Democratic Party in 1974. He and Roseland, Hamilton Jurgen and others of his primary assistants, helped Democratic candidates all over the country yet re-elected, including some prominent senators such as Ted Kennedy. By the time 1976, Carter, who was relatively unknown, has gained a lot of power and control in the Democratic Party because he has all of these people who indebted to him. In 1976, when he starts his campaign, he and Roseland and their children and relatives go out separately from each other to try to meet as many different people as they can. Carter believed in personal campaigning and later in personal diplomacy. So when people go to the polls to vote, somebody said, oh yeah, I remember that pretty young woman from Georgia when she came to Iowa or wherever she went, she went everywhere to get people to vote. The result, of course, was that Carter won. They both won. The victory was for both Carter and Roseland, Jimmy and Roseland, because they had worked together so diligently to win in 1976. They ran against an incumbent Republican president, of course, Jerry Ford, who went away. Jerry Ford and his family were much like the Cardis, although they were Republicans, and they had to campaign against each other. Carter barely won the election. Carter was something of a political maverick. He could say very politically astute things, and then he could say something that could give him into a lot of trouble. Despite all of that, Jimmy and Roseland won in 1976. Carter earlier had said that his goal in life was to do as much good for as many people as possible for as long as possible. He said that was one reason he went into politics in the first place because he could get in positions of power to do more good for more people and for as long as possible. And so that's what he and Roseland had been doing all of their lives, and now when they're president and First Lady, they have a much more powerful platform from which they can pursue their goals. When Roseland's press secretary asked her what she wanted to do as First Lady, she said, I want to create a more caring world. Wow. The secretary didn't know how to respond to that because how do you create a more caring world? Well, Roseland had some good ideas about how to do it. She, of course, was an advocate of care for the mentally ill challenged, and that was going to be her primary goal. But she did other things, but she did other things as well. At the inauguration, she wore the same gown she had worn when she was inaugurated First Lady of Georgia. And some of her critics then, some of the female journalists, said that Roseland was wearing a second hand dress. The fact that she wore that gown and that they marched down the street to gather hand in hand, dressed as ordinary, well-dressed citizens might be, gave a good indication of what kind of people they intended to be in the White House. They hoped to be ordinary people, even though they were president, even though they were president and First Lady. They intended to have a different kind of presidency. This slide is showing Jimmy Carter contemplating his presidency during his first days in office. They were not beholden to anyone, so they were pretty much free to do the things that they wanted to do. Carter was the kind of politician that he would do what he thought was right, even if it wasn't good for getting political votes or getting reelected. So the things that he concentrated on with Roseland's help, he appointed more blacks, more women to high political positions, including judgeships, than all the previous presidents had done. He worked for equal opportunity, which gave a lot of courage and hope to many people in America who were struggling to find jobs and to be treated equally. He was a great advocate of protecting the environment. He is the president who put solar panels on the White House roof and worked for alternatives to petroleum, especially foreign petroleum, as sources of energy. He set aside more acres of public lands to be preserved as national monuments and parks than all the previous presidents combined, including Teddy Roosevelt. Most of his work was in Alaska, where the land was still available to be preserved. So those were the things that he hoped to accomplish. Roseland had her own issues. She worked for mental health. She worked for care for children, for elderly. She was a prime mover in making sure that their young daughter, Amy, went to a public school. They acted like any ordinary family might act. And of course, Roseland was involved, as I have said earlier, in every presidential decision. She and Carter had lunch together in the Oval Office occasionally, where they did not discuss their children, but they did discuss matters of state. They had plenty of children to discuss. The Carter's had three older sons who were born while they were in the Navy and sometimes visible in their public lives, especially the second and third ones, and others in the older son, less so. Nevertheless, it was a large family with all the ups and downs that one would expect to occur in a large family. Carter said that he wanted human rights to be the basic... Carter said that he wanted human rights to be the basic element in his foreign policy. And he did that. Wherever he went on a diplomatic mission or a secretariat state or somebody went with him, for him, or with him, he brought up the issue of human rights. Negotiating with the Soviet Union, for example, he might actually ask the Soviet leaders, now, will you release some of the Jewish dissidents that you have in concentration camps? He made it very personal. He believed in personal diplomacy. Sometimes he succeeded at that, and sometimes he did not. He did succeed, of course, in getting the SALT treaty negotiated with the Soviet Union. He was willing to reach across the aisle to the Republicans to get legislation he wanted passed. The best example of that is the Panama Canal treatise. Most of these things were highly controversial, but Carter had the political courage. Carter had the political courage to do so. Rosalind was the first First Lady who created the office of First Lady. She created the office of First Lady with a staff of 22 people. She was a diplomat herself. She was the first First Lady to go on a major diplomatic mission to Latin America. She also went with Carter. The slide that you're seeing now was taken in Nigeria where she and Amy were there with Carter, and she was demonstrating the goals of their presidency. Rosalind dressed well. She had a hairdresser and all of that. And she was also a good cook. She went to cooking schools, and she also said that she was not interested in talking about fashion and recipes. She wanted to talk about politics and economics and human welfare. And in her interviews when she was with Carter, those are the topics she tended to bring up. She would also ask whoever she was addressing in any country how they treated their women, how they treated their children, what plans did they have to improve education. In other words, the theme of human rights was as much the First Ladies as it was the presidents. And she probably made great inroads by giving it that kind of personal touch. Private lives were probably not that much different from any other couple except they were famous and they were always in the limelight. They loved to go on vacations. They loved to dance. The slide you're looking at now shows them dancing together on the deck of the Delta Queen on the Mississippi River, which was one of their famous vacations that they took while they were president. Keeping private lives private for the president and First Ladies were difficult. They tried to keep the ups and downs of their lives out of the public eye and especially those of their children, though Amy was the first child in the White House in a long time and of course she attracted a lot of, she attracted a lot of media attention. They didn't always agree. Carter said the secret to the law marriage was to marry the right woman, share the same faith and several other things which Rosalind agreed with, but she always chirped up and added and space. She had her own life. She had her own space, but she was still always there, a major part of the scene. Her press secretary Mary Hort likes to tell the story. One time when Rosalind, his first lady was in her office, she was talking on the telephone. She became increasingly, she became increasingly irate with whoever she was talking with. Finally she hung up the telephone, turned to Mary and said, I just hung up on Jimmy Carter and I may never speak to him again. Luckily she did speak to him again and continued her role as first lady. The Carter presidency of course is celebrated for the Camp David Accords, the peace accords between Israel and Egypt. Rosalind suggested the venue of Camp David for it and she encouraged Carter to pursue it even though he might fail. The Carter's didn't really expect to fail but they knew they were running a major risk in order to undertake such a negotiation. Carter turned out to be the right person in the right place to mediate the accords. Partly his belief in personal diplomacy learned everything possible about Sadat, begging their wives before he met them and he also had a knowledge of the Old Testament which helped him get along of course with begging which was sometimes a challenge. Carter also told them to please bring their wives to Camp David. Of course he would not be without Rosalind, her comfort, her encouragement, her intelligence and he expected if the other two, if Sadat and begging brought their wives as well that the chances of success would go up. They did that, they did that and so Jehan Sadat and Alyssa Beggin were there much of the time. The slide is showing Rosalind and Mrs. Beggin at Gettysburg. We've seen lots of other pictures of that event but really one showing the two first ladies it's very significant because the first ladies, Rosalind's first lady did a lot of talking with the wives and convincing them on many occasions of what needed to be done. She got along easily with Jehan Sadat and what people don't know about Camp David and all the stuff we know about it is how important the wives were. You can't understand Camp David without reading Jehan Sadat's memoir A Woman of Egypt. When Sadat was ready to give up and leave she called him and said, don't do it, right? The Cardis had been so nice to us and he stayed. At the very last hour, at the very last hour Carda practiced his personal diplomacy. He had gotten the names of all of Beggin's grandchildren, he had photographs of them and he presented these to Beggin and he wanted the three men to sign them as souvenirs. It was very touching to Beggin and they agreed on their chords, went to the White House and initialed them. Still there was going to be time before they actually signed the agreement and it looked once in a while as if the whole process might break down. The current slide shows Jimmy and Rosalind in Egypt, I believe they were on a train where they made an emergency trip to Egypt and to Israel to speak with Sadat and Beggin to remind them of the agreement they had made at Camp David and urged them to follow through and come to Washington and sign the final agreement which they did. One of Carda's diplomatic coups that is frequently overlooked is that he managed to negotiate the SALT treaty with the Soviet Union at the same time that he negotiated normalization of relations with China. This picture shows him in Vienna with Brezhnev right before they signed the SALT agreement to reduce nuclear arms. It had been going on for a long time before Carda but Carda picked it up and reducing the nuclear weapons was one of the big things that Carda wanted to do. What the Russians did not know is that Carda, with the help of his Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and especially the National Security Advisor Brzezinski was also trying to negotiate normalization of relations with China. Carda pulled it off. Brzezinski told the Russian ambassador two hours before they announced that the U.S. would soon be announcing the normalization of relations with China. The Russian ambassador almost fainted. He was so shocked he didn't know what was going on but Carda had done as he had restored a kind of balance of power among the big three nations. It was quite an accomplishment that he got very little credit for at the time. Carda, of course, continued to do what he thought was best. He succeeded in getting 75% of his legislation passed. He was handicapped by an international fuel crisis which resulted in lines at the gas pumps in the U.S. which was very bad for votes. He was really limited by split in the Democratic Party when the powerful Kennedy family led by Ted Kennedy decided they would try to get the Democratic nomination away from him when he ran for reelection. The worst thing that happened to him, of course, which he managed quite gracefully and successfully was the famous hostage crisis. There was a revolution in Iran which succeeded in overthrowing the Shah in placing the Ayatollah Khomeini in power. Once that happened, Carda hoped to continue diplomatic relations with the new government but it was almost impossible to do. The Shah who was ill with terminal cancer went into exile and there was a lot of pressure on Carda to allow the Shah into the United States for medical care. Carda didn't want to do it because he thought it would lead to trouble. He finally yielded to pressure from David Rockefeller where the Shah had most of his wealth deposited in Rockefeller's bank and also pressure from Henry Kissinger who thought that the U.S. owed it to the Shah who was a longtime friend. When the Shah was admitted to the country for medical care, Carda made it clear no politics involved, it was just medical care. The Iranians, of course, didn't believe that they took the American diplomatic core hostage and held them for the next 444 days. Carda immediately initiated a military rescue plan in secret, nobody knew that it was going on for quite a long time but more important he immediately froze Iranian assets in banks in the U.S. and around the world wherever the U.S. had any power to do so bringing enormous economic pressure upon the Iranians to release the hostages. The Iranians said they would only release them if Carda would return the Shah and the Shah's wealth to Iran. Carda was in a bind because he knew if he returned the Shah he knew that it would be fatal for the Shah and his family he couldn't trust them. He did tell the Iranians that if they he did tell the Iranians that if they he put them on the hostages on trial or abuse them in any way the U.S. would consider that an act of war. All of this went on for a long time and Carda's reputation, of course, began to go down as they moved into the 1980 election. The 1980 election pretty much hung on whether or not the Hosta Carda would get the hostages out before the election. He and the Republican candidate were running neck and neck and that's when the infamous October surprise happened that the Cardas knew nothing of at the time. It's worth a lot of detail in investigating the October surprise and we are now just learning more and more about it and that is what the Republican operatives, maybe even the vice presidential candidate, certainly William Casey, went to Paris and elsewhere and met with representatives of Iran and told them if you will hold the hostages until after the election when Reagan is inaugurated he will give you the weapons you need in your war against Iraq and that's exactly the way it happened. The Iranians held the hostages, and Reagan kept his word after he became president, immediately after he became president. There's lots more research going on that right now as we speak and I'm hopeful that more will happen but I think it's safe for reputable historians to go ahead and confirm that indeed it did happen. The Cardas went home to planes not to lick their wounds. Rosalind was very depressed Carter consulter they sold their peanut warehouse, they wrote their memoirs and decided what to do next with their lives. They were relatively young and so what they decided to do was to create two institutions one of which is the Carter Center in Atlanta which functioned a little bit like a private nation but on a much smaller scale where it promoted democracy it promoted health it promoted peace. Carter personally worked as a negotiator to settle disputes around the world they attacked the Guinea worm disease and were able to virtually eradicate it. I think the last count showed the only 13 known cases still existing in the world. Rosalind also promoted her same causes care for the mentally challenged education health. At the Carter Center, Jimmy and Rosalind were co-chairs. He was a chair and she co-chair they were both co-chairs they were equal and they were still practiced personal diplomacy they didn't send people just to monitor elections they went themselves they were there in person they talked to the candidates they counted the they helped count the votes and so they were very much hands-on they began to get more and more recognition for what they did and the current slide shows Bill Clinton when he presented them with the presidential Medal of Freedom in 1999 I think it was which was powerful public recognition of what they had accomplished ultimately he got the Nobel Prize ultimately he got the Nobel Prize for what he, Rosalind and the Carter Center had done as far as the general public was concerned the primary thing that the Carter had done in their post presidency was to work for Habitat for Humanity Habitat for Humanity was based in South Georgia it was started by Millard and Linda Fuller whom the Carter's knew and Millard Fuller tried to get Carter to support it even while he was president but after he had left the White House and was living at home in Plains again the Carter's got very interested in it and so they joined Habitat for Humanity which was a religion based organization to build houses for the working poor. Jimmy and Rosalind Carter donned their working uniforms and worked personally with the Habitat volunteers they did this only one year, one week out of the year but it became the most famous thing they did and they gave their name to it so the organization became very large, very popular and very successful not only in the US but around the world the other 51 weeks they worked for the Carter Center and a Parallel Center that they founded called the Rosalind Carter Institute for Caregiving Rosalind still has her own projects they have the Carter Center in Atlanta the Rosalind Carter Center for Caregiving established in America's Georgia at their Albamada as ex-president and ex-fresh lady they had contacts with the best people they could get to help run these organizations and today today the Carter Center in Atlanta is a very strong organization promoting peace and human rights the Rosalind Carter the Rosalind Carter the Rosalind Carter Institute for Caregiving is doing the same thing by establishing those organizations of course they created institutions strong institutions that will go on when they can no longer be personally involved it's a powerful legacy a powerful legacy from an amazing couple who devoted their long lives to creating a more caring to creating a more caring world the day Carter won the Nobel Prize it was 2002 the way he went to Oslo after he went to Oslo and accepted it he came back home to Atlanta to the Carter Center and went right to work right away went right to work on the other projects that he was interested in both Carter both Jimmy and Rosalind were writers they wrote memoirs that were extremely important that were good sellers Carter's memoir Keeping Faith is not your typical presidential memoir he wrote it with the help partly of a professional historian Stephen Hotman whom he had hired for the job but he also based it upon a lot of the primary sources a lot of the documents from his presidency which incidentally were his personal property he was the last president he owned his papers he gave them to the nation but he was the last president actually to open to own them so his presidential memoir is factual much of it is factual and it's a wonderful source for information about his presidency in the Carter Library the staff secretary file is the most useful one because it tells us what Carter actually saw what he commented on it it also gives us inside information about what was what about what was said in private staff meetings so we get some a few off camera comments from Carter he was well known for his religion his tolerance for all kinds of people to point out that the Camp David Accords were an agreement made by Christian Adrieu and the Muslim but sometimes off camera he his temper would show he would use his patience and he would use some language on rare occasions that was not really a part of his public part of his public persona he wrote many books I'm going to mention only three the first one I want to talk about is an hour before daylight it's a quintessential presidential memoir and a historical statement what he talks about in that book is his childhood on the farm in archery his playmates were black the nannies who took care of him were black and he talks about what it was like he grew up in almost a pre-scientific age he was born 1924 and isolated out of southern town it's called an hour before daylight because that's when the people on the farm got up and went to work but he also called it an hour before daylight because it's also right before the civil rights movement it's right before the era when things were changing in the US and the discrimination against African Americans which of course he used as his jumping off place to promote human rights of all kinds all around the world the second book I want to mention is a volume of poetry he wrote entitled in the 90s called always a reckoning and other points in poetic form he talked a great deal about his father the importance of Mr Earl in his life always a reckoning Mr Earl wanted to know if as a boy Carter wrote his pony or as he did if the pony ever served in a useful purpose on the farm that's the way Carter was he also of course talked about about Rosalind in great detail how important she was in his long life his mother his Rachel Clark the African American woman who virtually helped a raring and the last poem, I think it's the last poem is called life on the killer submarine Carter in the Navy of course worked for Admiral Rickova he was on the cutting edge of the nuclear Navy ready for his own command of a submarine when he resigned from the Navy and came home when his mother told him to do so life on a killer submarine he talks about the life under the sea that they might be able to hear in the submarine and he wonders if a nearby Soviet submarine if people on that submarine can hear the same thing the point is human beings are basically the same and the best way to have peace and to promote human rights the best way to have peace and to promote human rights is to have people identify with each other as human beings which is the way he ran his diplomacy and then you might achieve those worthwhile goals the third book I want to talk about is the most controversial one he wrote entitled Palestine peace not apartheid note there's no punctuation in the title of that book Palestine peace not apartheid it was highly controversial because of his use of the word apartheid which was a very strong word to use because it reminded folks of the horrible racial problems that existed in South Africa the Carter went against advice and he used the word anyway one of the things that he wrote hardest for was peace in the mid-E his work there was highly controversial he was not anti-Israel and he was not certainly not anti-Semitic as he was accused but his viewpoint was that Israel needed to respect the human rights of other people as well especially the Palestinians who lived within their borders Carter defended the book successfully I would say but he he defended the book successfully and he pretty much arose above the political and emotional comments those are things that I talked about a good bit in both of my volumes especially the second has a lot to do with has a lot to do with with the post presidency and so and hopefully it will lead to more research the current slide you're seeing shows Jimmy and Rosalind monitoring polls shows them monitoring polls in Liberia I believe is where that one is taken I like that slide because it shows them hands-on working to promote democracy but I like it also because of the expression of their faces especially Jimmy's face as he's watching Rosalind you see that in photograph after photograph of them including some in the extreme old age and the famous one where he had fallen gashed his forehead and they went to Nashville anyway to work on a habitat house he has that same expression he has his bandage that same expression as they have on their work clothes and they're getting ready to well work on a habitat project in Nashville in Nashville, Tennessee this is the Carter Center in Atlanta which is a very strong institution it has a good many workers on site there but it has literally thousands of volunteers around the world pursuing the goals of peace healthcare preventing disease which is its purpose is for existing this is a statue of Rosalind Carter in front of the Rosalind Carter Institute in America's Georgia which she founded it's a thriving and growing institution she argued that every person at some times in his life is a caregiver is a care receiver and it's very important for people to understand the care they need and also how to administer the care they need and so it's a major part of her legacy the books cover all of these things in detail the two books together probably cover about a thousand pages they have some good pictures of anybody who doesn't want to read all of that text but the point I would like to make is despite all the research I did all the things I learned about the Carter my hope for these books first is that they would present a more accurate picture of the Carter based upon primary sources not upon somehow what somebody's mortgage was or political or political debate but I would like for the research to lead to more research more good research based upon primary sources to help us learn more and more about this amazing couple and the incredible legacy I see a few questions let's see if I can okay I'll get to this one I will start with the one about the recent New York Times article about the October surprise Ben Barnes former Lieutenant Governor of Texas confessed that he had gone with John Connolly to various Arabian capitals unknowingly to encourage Arabs to support Khomeini and the Iranians to urge them to hold the hostages until after the until after the election I believe that that's another important detail that we need to know to help prove that the October surprise wise apps did happen it also leads to far more research about it most of the people who research it including me and even starting back with Gear Sick who wrote the first book about it did it sort of from the top down we dealt with the top players and didn't get much down to the grassroots level from what this New York Times article said we can now start researching John Connolly's papers and maybe others who might have played an important role in it I'd like to add when the Iran Contra scandal broke in the Reagan presidency and people began to investigate that they discovered that the roots of it actually went back to 1980 to the 80 election and some of the operatives in the Iran Contra scandal were actually operatives Republican operatives in 1980 who worked to make sure that Carter did not get re-elected yes it's a major breakthrough and I hope it will lead to others second question was the shot as Carter was led to believe the answer to that is yes he definitely was as Carter was led to believe he was terminally ill with some form of cancer and of course that fact probably played on Carter's conscience as much as anything else because Carter did not he was a great humanitarian and he in his mind he admitted the shot to the country for humanitarian reasons of course considering the political environment it wasn't going to stay the rest of the world especially the Iranians weren't going to believe that but Carter certainly believed it Carter was in a serious bind about the shot Carter had no use for the shot at that point because the shot of course had caused him a great deal of trouble but he was willing to risk his political reputation in order to save the shot's life to give the shot the best help he could possibly giving even perhaps risk the lives of the 52 hostages still held in Iran the shot of course went to Panama for a while and then of course Sadat took him to Egypt where he died but the shot's illness was certainly very real and the Americans knew it let's see I see one more question up here maybe what advice would you give young historians and researchers looking to utilize resources from libraries and archives and tell a story well they need to take a good course in historiography learning how to do research at the local library they need to go over to the library and adopt a reference librarian reference librarians are so important in learning how to use manuscripts and archives what sources are available and if they go to a presidential library which they would have to do if they do presidential history they will learn that working in a presidential library is quite a different experience presidential libraries to manage and operate it under the auspices of the national archives but by a professional archivist and the first thing a researcher has to do is to learn how to use it the archivist's own side I will be happy to teach you when I first went to the Carter library I knew nothing about presidential libraries the assistant director Martin Elsie took me into the office I started to instruct me which was supposed to take two to five minutes an hour later he was still trying to teach me how to use the library and when he finished all of this he said I don't have any idea what you're going to do when you walk through those doors into the research room I thought the man was remarkably perspective because I didn't have any idea either but I knew that Jody Powell had been close to Carter so I said I will start by looking at the Jody Powell file and one thing led to another and I learned how to use the presidential library but I got help from some of the best archivists one could hope to me in a presidential library learn how to do it don't take any preconceived notions don't go into historical research to prove something go into historical research to learn the truth about whatever is there historical truth is as elusive as any kind of truth it's always changing as we find more documents more things become available our research methods get to be improved technology has improved them ideally but still see what you can learn don't start out to don't start out to prove anything thank you all of you who joined thank you for those questions I hope that you are others who have sent me any questions will have other questions and think about it and join with me and join with me and join with me in appreciating and being thankful for the historical record we have and for this incredible amazing couple who have left us a legacy a legacy not only of a more caring world but a legacy if we really studied of how this generation in future generations might also learn to create a more caring world thank you