Four Boxes Of Press Contacts Opened. 3,110 Names, None Redacted.
COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Four archive boxes of press-liaison index cards covering 1951 to 1959 were opened to researchers on Monday. They contain 3,110 name cards. None is redacted.
This newspaper's correspondent has read four hundred of them and will not characterise the collection until she has read all 3,110, which will take about six weeks.
Professor Delia Marchetti-Osei, who has written on the period, offered the caution this item will carry every time we return to it: a liaison card records that somebody was contacted. It does not record payment, agreement, or influence, and a great many of the names on cards like these belong to people who were telephoned once and said no.
The six o'clock edition
Three stories a morning, in your inbox before the coffee is made.
Sources & Method
A reading-room release, read in person. This item reports the existence and extent of the release and nothing about its contents beyond the count.
Who we spoke to
- National archival reading room staff, Named in our notes. In person 4 August 2026
- Prof. Delia Marchetti-Osei, Historian of Cold War information policy. Telephone 4 August 2026 Cautions that a liaison card records contact, not payment or control.
What we could not confirm
- What the cards mean. A contact card records a contact. Our correspondent has read 400 of 3,110 and will report properly when she has read the rest.
How was this story?
We publish the result, whatever it is. Reader verdicts appear on the front page and in our newsroom metrics.
Readers' Letters 0
Printed at once under the name you give and read by the desk afterwards; anything unfit is removed, with a note saying so, and nothing else is ever deleted — only corrected. Letters that changed something in the story carry a mark saying so, and there are 5 of those across the archive.