The Bill Clinton Presidential Library recently posted declassified memoranda of 18 meeting conversations (memcons) and 56 telephone conversations (telcons) between Clinton and Boris Yeltsin from Jan 23 1993 to Dec 31 1999 1/
While @McFaul and I told the story of those years in great detail in Power and Purpose, and @strobetalbott quoted from many of these docs in his excellent memoir, it’s fascinating to read through the docs from beginning to end. 2/
Thanks to @TXNatSecReview for publishing my piece on the documents and what they tell us about US-Russia relations in those years. As you can see from the piece, reading through the docs left me feeling quite sad! 3/
Also, for those who don’t understand why it was harmful to Trump’s own team not to have notes from the July mtg with Putin in Helsinki, these docs highlight the value of great notes for those making policy not just those of us reading them two decades later. 4/
And Clinton had some great notetakers like Talbott @steven_pifer and @andrewsweiss . The piece has the links to the document collection- looking forward to seeing what other scholars like @shifrinson @ProfSaunders glean from them. fin/
