President Reagan tried to shred them electronically.

President Bush tried to take them to Texas.

President Clinton tried to put them beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act.

But the White House e-mail survived, thanks to a six-year lawsuit brought by the National Security Archive and allied historians, librarians, and public interest lawyers.

The most revealing of the e-mail released to date appears in this book and disk set, edited and richly annotated by the Archive’s director.

Here are the highest-level White House communications on the most secret national security affairs of the United States during the 1980s—shockingly candid electronic exchanges you were never meant to see, virtually none of which has ever before been available to the American public.