Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 1968 - 1981 (Creation)
Level of description
Series
Extent and medium
8.40 linear feet of textual records
Context area
Repository
Archival history
McNamara's dictated impressions of his trips were removed from this file at his request, after he left office and before he transferred the series to the Bank-Fund Joint Library, by Blanche Moore, McNamara's former secretary. Ms. Moore prepared an item list for each country's file, consisting of date of each meeting and the persons in the meeting and their titles; she annotated the list to show each item removed and retained by McNamara. A copy of this list is filed at the beginning of the file for each country.
After the series was transferred to the Archives by the Joint Library, two blackbooks of briefings for McNamara's trip to China in 1980 were removed from this series and placed in the Travel Briefings series, WB IBRD/IDA EXC-10-4540S.
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
McNamara took this series with him when he retired in 1981. He transferred it to the Joint Bank-Fund Library on 13 November 1984, and the Library transferred it to the Archives on 27 October 1993.
Content and structure area
Scope and content
The Contacts - Member Countries files are the record of President McNamara's meetings with famous individuals, representatives of member countries other than the United States, and representatives of organizations (e.g., Executive Directors, Annual Meeting delegates, heads of States and organizations, government officials, parliamentarians, bankers, businessmen, industrialists, economists, journalists). The files contain minutes of meetings, briefings, questions and answers for press interviews, background material and some correspondence.
Although the minutes were generally prepared by staff from the concerned region or the Personal Assistant to the President, the files contain many memoranda of conversations and notes on meetings and visits drafted by McNamara, some handwritten. Also in McNamara's hand are a number of points to discuss for meetings and annotations on the briefs prepared by staff. Among the items personally drafted by McNamara are notes of, or for, meetings with King Baudouin (1969), Pierre Trudeau (1976), Anwar Sadat (1975), Georges Pompidou (1969), Valery Giscard d'Estaing (1972, 1975, 1979), Karl Otto Poehl, Hans Dietrich Genscher, Helmut Schmidt (1975), Indira Gandhi (1973), the Shah of Iran (1973), Felix Houphouet-Boigny (1969), Takeo Fukuda (1978), William Tolbert (1973), Nicolae Ceausescu (1968), Leopold Senghor (1969), Alec Douglas-Home (1972), Edward Heath (1973), U Thant (1969), Joseph Mobutu (1972).
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Accruals
System of arrangement
Records are arranged alphabetically by name of country, organization, or individual and thereunder chronologically.
Conditions of access and use area
Conditions governing access
Records are subject to the World Bank Policy on Access to Information.
Conditions governing reproduction
Records are subject to the Copyright Policy of the World Bank Group.
Language of material
Script of material
Language and script notes
Physical characteristics and technical requirements
Finding aids
Allied materials area
Existence and location of originals
Existence and location of copies
Related units of description
Notes area
Alternative identifier(s)
Access points
Subject access points
Place access points
Name access points
Genre access points
Description control area
Description identifier
Institution identifier
Rules and/or conventions used
Internal World Bank Group Archives rules based on ISAD(G).
Disclosure status
Level of detail
Dates of creation revision deletion
7 June 2006