Two facts overshadow everything else about Woodrow Wilson's relationship with the Armenian Genocide. First, he was President of the United States when those atrocities occurred. Second, he did not intervene to try to stop those atrocities. Wilson's situation vis á vis the Armenian Genocide eerily foreshadowed Franklin Roosevelt's towards the Holocaust a generation later. The same question arises about both leaders – why? Why did they act or fail to act as they did? Likewise, with both leaders that question has a necessary antecedent. This is Senator Howard Baker's famous, repeated query to the witnesses at the Watergate committee hearings in 1973: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” That is the first question that needs to be put to President Wilson about Armenia.

As is rarely the case with historical evidence, it is possible to give a precise, even quantitative estimate of what Wilson knew about Armenia and when he knew it. Thanks to Arthur Link's monumental edition of The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (hereafter Wilson Papers), it is possible to measure, at least roughly, the attention that Wilson gave to Armenia. The measurements come from the three cumulative index volumes of the Wilson Papers that cover the years between his becoming President in 1913 and his death in 1924.

The first of these indexes is for the twelve volumes that cover 1913 through 1916. Under “Armenia” there are three entries; more important, under “Armenians, plight of” there are six entries.