The diaries of presidents offer history in the raw — even the naked — and may have secrets to tell

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just before dawn one summer day in Washington, the president of the United States stripped naked on a rock by the river, plunged in and saw a dead man float to the surface.

We know this about John Quincy Adams because he kept a diary for the ages. So have many presidents, from George Washington to Joe Biden. In these journals — a collection of notebooks in Biden’s case — they confide to themselves, express raw opinions, trace even the humdrum habits of their day and offer seat-of-the-pants insight on monumental decisions of their time.

Here, also, they may possess and spill secrets they shouldn’t. That’s part of why Biden is facing more congressional scrutiny this week for his sloppy handling of classified documents after his vice presidency. Meantime Donald Trump became the first person in history to be charged with a crime for making off with sensitive government records as president — and then, unlike Biden, resisting demands to return them.

Adams called his diary his “second conscience” — not to mention a place to record his frequent skinny-dipping in the Potomac — and presidents since have vouched for the value of scribbling down the day’s observations or dictating them to a recorder to help them think things through and preserve them in memory, if not memoirs.

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