Former President Jimmy Carter found classified materials at his home in Plains, Georgia, on at least one occasion and returned them to the National Archives, according to the same person who spoke of regular occurrences of mishandled documents. The person did not provide details on the timing of the discovery.
An aide to the Carter Center provided no details when asked about that account of Carter discovering documents at his home after leaving office in 1981. It’s notable that Carter signed the Presidential Records Act in 1978 but it did not apply to records of his administration, taking effect years later when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. Before Reagan, presidential records were generally considered the private property of the president individually. Nonetheless, Carter invited federal archivists to assist his White House in organizing his records in preparation for their eventual repository at his presidential library in Georgia.
The National Archives declined to comment when asked to provide a list of times that classified documents were turned over to the agency by former officials.
[Notably, one of Carter’s appointees was forced to withdraw when he admitted that he’d taken classified documents during the Kennedy administration for review. Who torpedoed Ted Sorenson’s appointment? None other than Senator Joe Biden. — Ed]
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