Former Sen. Ted Stevens has agreed to allow his Senate papers to be kept at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the university announced Wednesday, but he will retain control over access to the collection and he or his estate can rescind the agreement in 10 years.
The material won't be available to researchers until five years after Stevens' death unless he gives special permission, according to the contract between Stevens and the university.
Specially excluded from the collection are any personal papers, financial records or correspondence with members of his immediate and extended family. If archivists discover any personal documents in the collection, they must be removed and returned to Stevens or his estate. Among the members of his family to whom that section would apply is at least one successful Anchorage lobbyist, brother-in-law Bill Bittner, and a former state Senate president, son Ben Stevens, also once a Washington lobbyist and a consultant to companies seeking legislation from Congress.
Even though the records will be maintained by the state, the contract specifically exempts the archive from the Alaska or federal public-records laws. If a judge ever disagreed and ruled they were public records, the contract specifies the entire collection must be returned to Stevens or his heirs as quickly as possible.
'A PHENOMENAL RANGE'
The trove of papers, covering Stevens' 40-year Senate career and some of the young state's most critical federal issues, are already on their way to the Rasmuson Library in Fairbanks in seven or eight 40-foot shipping containers, according to Tim McKeever, a spokesman for Stevens. They had been stored in a federal records center in Washington, he said.
Paul McCarthy, the retired Rasmuson library director and a consultant for the university on the Stevens archives, said the papers fill some 4,700 shipping boxes and, at 25 to 30 pounds a box, weigh about 60 tons.
"It's a phenomenal range," McCarthy said.
Stevens played pivotal roles in some of the state's most important issues: the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and its creation of regional and village corporations in place of reservations; approval and construction of the trans-Alaska pipeline; the classification and set-asides in parks and refuges of national interest lands; the elimination of foreign fishing off Alaska waters by creating an exclusive economic zone 200 miles out to sea and the introduction of conservation practices through fishery management councils; protection of marine mammals; and construction of a missile defense system based largely in Alaska.
"We're really excited," said Anne Foster, head of archives and manuscripts for the Rasmuson Library. "The benefit to researchers of the future is going to be enormous."
"I am told it's the second largest collection of documents in the history of the Senate, the first being Robert Byrd's," Stevens said during his trial on ethics charges last fall, where the subject of his archives, and a future Stevens library, came up several times.
Richard Baker, the Senate historian, described Congressional offices as the "eye of the needle" through which the most important home state and national issues pass.
"If a member doesn't document the material, who will?" Baker said. Stevens' four decades of papers constitute a "wonderful resource" for Alaska, he said.
MEMBERS RETAIN OWNERSHIP
Stevens, 85, was the Senate's longest serving Republican. But his final days in office were bitter and didn't lead up to the kind of joyful retirement he might have once envisioned. He was convicted in October on federal charges of failing to disclose gifts and services from the oil field service company Veco Corp. and its chief executive Bill Allen, and then, a week later, lost a close election to Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. Though Stevens has returned at least once to Alaska since then, he has not made any public appearances.
McCarthy said the agreement with Stevens had to be consummated by the end of February if the federal government were to pay the shipping costs to Alaska. As for the expense of repacking and shelving the material in suitable archive storage, then cataloging and organizing it -- that's up to the university, not Stevens' responsibility, he said.
Unlike presidential papers or the documents prepared by state officials, members of Congress retain ownership of their archives and memorabilia, Baker said. Only committee documents are official records and owned by the government, as are foreign gifts that senators receive from officials of other countries.
Baker, the Senate historian, said his office has encouraged senators to have archivists on their staff, and Stevens has done so for years.
McCarthy said he would welcome private support for the expensive task ahead of organizing the Stevens material, but has not been offered help from the North to the Future Foundation, set up and funded by Stevens' friends, former staff, lobbyists and companies to "preserve the records and mementoes of Senator Ted Stevens' lifetime of public service." The foundation has nearly $3 million in assets, according to its most recent report to the state.
McKeever, chairman of the foundation and Stevens' longtime campaign manager, said the foundation may someday provide assistance to the Rasmuson Library. "We've been talking to potential donors about helping the university process these papers," he said in a call from his law office in Seattle.
Foster, the Rasmuson Library archivist, said it would take two archivists roughly two or three years to rebox the material and write useful descriptions, a cost of roughly $200,000 to $300,000. Digitizing the most important paper documents to make them available over the Internet would cost at least another $200,000, she said.
That doesn't count the cost of purchasing special archival quality acid-free folders and boxes, she said.
The goal would be to organize the material so a researcher would be directed to no more than a couple boxes to find a particular document, she said.
A 'DEPOSIT,' NOT A GIFT
The term used for the agreement with Stevens announced by the university is "deposit," not "gift," because Stevens or his estate will continue to own the material. After 10 years, if Stevens or his heirs decide to renew the deal, the collection could be transferred to the Anchorage campus of the university, according to the contract.
As long as Stevens is alive, he can approve or deny requests made by the university on behalf of political scientists, historians, reporters and others to open sections of the archive before the entire collection is processed. If a demand for material comes to the university in the form of a subpoena or search warrant, the university is required, under the contract, to alert Stevens before it complies.
A tiny fraction of Stevens' e-mails and handwritten notes became part of the public domain when they were used as evidence in his trial. Some were used to prove that Stevens knew that Veco and Allen were paying to remodel his Girdwood home, or that a $2,700 Brookstone massage chair from Double Musky owner Bob Persons was a gift to him, and not the loan he claimed it was. E-mails like those that showed up in the Stevens collection would clearly fall into the banned category of "personal material."
Some of the e-mail evidence and testimony in the trial concerned Stevens' archive and suggest that Stevens believed the foundation would support it. Among that evidence: A bronze sculpture of three salmon that sat on the deck of Stevens' Girdwood home, valued at $29,000.
Testifying himself, Stevens said the sculpture wasn't his, but belonged to the North to the Future Foundation and was for his library.
"The foundation was formed to take care of my papers and the memorabilia I have when I leave this world," Stevens testified.
McCarthy, the archivist consulting for the university, said he never heard of the fish sculpture. McKeever, the chairman of the foundation, said he couldn't talk about the sculpture.
Stevens continues to fight his conviction in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
Find Richard Mauer online at adn.com/contact/rmauer or call 257-4345.
By RICHARD MAUER
rmauer@adn.com