This comes from the U.S. government passport archive website:
http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/passport/
“Passport applications can be an excellent source of genealogical information, especially about foreign-born individuals. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has passport applications from Oct. 1795-Mar. 1925; the U.S. Department of State has passport applications from Apr. 1925 to the present.”
And these are the comments from the cover letter for the FOIA package:
“We did not locate a 1965 passport application referenced in an application for amendment of passport that is included in the released documents. Many passport applications and other non-vital records from that period were destroyed during the 1980s in accordance with guidance from the General Services Administration.”
Isn’t it fascinating how the government has kept passport applications all the way back to 1795 through the present and yet for some reason they decided they didn’t have room for Stanley Ann Dunham’s application from 1965??