Until now, none of the diary entries have been revealed except when snippets have been used in museum exhibits or when I have quoted brief excerpts in some of the books I've written about official matters.ĭespite a temptation to conceal my errors, misjudgments of people, or lack of foresight, I decided when preparing this book not to revise the original transcript, but just to use the unchanged excerpts from the diaries that I consider to be most revealing and interesting. I was surprised to find twenty-one large volumes of double- spaced text - a total of more than five thousand pages! I still have the original document in my home, and one copy has been sequestered in the Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta. When my opinions of people changed, for instance, I did not go back and amend the entries.Įxcept for a few entries, I never examined these typed notes until February 1981, when Rosalynn and I unpacked our belongings after returning to our home in Plains, Georgia. Readers should remember that I seldom exercised any restraint on what I dictated, because I did not contemplate the more personal entries ever being made public. When dictating entries to my diary, I tended to ignore this public record and interwined my personal opinions and activities with a brief description of the official duties I performed. When time permitted, my secretary, Susan Clough, would type the notes and file the pages in large binders.Įach week, a record of every public statement or activity of the president of the United States is published, including documents signed, visits to any site, speeches made, and even answers to shouted questions from news reporters. Some days I kept notes and dictated later. During my four years in the White House, I kept a personal diary by dictating my thoughts and observations several times each day.
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