National Archives News RSS FeedPrime Minister of Iraq Makes a Stop at the National Archives during Washington, DC, Visit
On Thursday, June 23, Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein hosted Prime Minister Dr. Ibrahim al-Jaafari of Iraq for a special visit to the National Archives Building in downtown Washington.
The first stop on the hour-long visit to the Archives was the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom. The Archivist and senior curator Stacey Bredhoff explained the significance of several original documents that are on display.
Highlights of the tour included viewing an original draft of the Constitution with annotations in George Washington’s own hand and the three documents that are known as the Charters of Freedom: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
Marvin Pinkert, Director of Museum Programs for the National Archives, joined the Archivist and the Prime Minister for a tour of the Public Vaults, a new permanent exhibit that is one of the major components of the National Archives Experience.
The Public Vaults exhibit offers visitors an opportunity to look inside the working archives where billions of pages of records from all three branches of the Federal Government are kept.
The Prime Minister saw home movies of Presidents when they were children, an original letter signed by George Washington, an interactive display featuring the Watergate investigation in the 1970s, and video footage of the D-day invasion of France in 1944.
On his last stop in the Public Vaults, the Prime Minister viewed a letter that President George H. W. Bush wrote to his children on the eve of the Gulf War in 1991, describing how difficult it was to commit American soldiers to war.
Finally, Archivist Weinstein escorted the Prime Minister and his delegation to a private room where special documents were displayed.
Milton Gustafson, former Chief of the Diplomatic Branch of the National Archives, and Richard Hunt, Director of the Center for Legislative Archives, showed several original documents that relate to the Prime Minister’s interest in diplomacy and in American history.
Among them were:
- The first volume of dispatches from the U.S. Consul in Baghdad, dated 1888;
- The Declaration of the United Nations signed by Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 1, 1942, and by a representative from Iraq on April 10, 1943;
- The first treaty of navigation and commerce between the United States and Iraq, signed on December 3, 1938;
- The Monroe Doctrine; and
- John Quincy Adams’ First Annual Address to Congress in 1825.
Before the Prime Minister departed, Archivist Weinstein presented him with several gifts, including a book on U.S. history that he authored, a book on the Charters of Freedom by senior curator Bredhoff, copies of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, and a necktie featuring the words “We The People.”
