This is intercepted.

I'm Betsy Reed, Editor-in-Chief of the Intercept.

No president has served in public office prior to his election to the White House longer than Joe Biden.

He's been at the center of America's foreign policy decisions for decades, from the church committee's reckoning with CIA abuses of power to congressional debate over Reagan's dirty wars and central and south America.

And the invasion and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Joe Biden's career is a reflection of the evolving nature of American military power and the struggle between the executive and legislative branches and wielding the authority to execute that power abroad.

Our editor at large and senior correspondent Jeremy Scayhill and reporter Murtaza Hussein asked the question, what if you went back and looked at every foreign policy decision Joe Biden made, every single one?

Would you be any closer to understanding him? Does a Biden doctrine exist?

Their resulting investigation is called Empire politician and it's a detailed examination of the past 50 years of Biden's decisions.

This project is a result of painstaking research. In many cases the historical record of Biden's role in important episodes has all but vanished.

Reconstructing it required pouring over hundreds of pages of archival copies of the congressional record to find raw transcripts of his words.

Jeremy and Murtaza also dug into the memoirs and biographies of government officials and reviewed declassified CIA documents for mentions of Joe Biden.

You can find a link to Empire politician encompassing more than 50 separate articles in today's show notes.

Interceptive lead producer Jack Desadoros spoke to Jeremy and Murtaza about this project.

Joe Biden is an unprecedented president of the United States.

There's the obvious things. You know, at 78 years old he is the oldest person ever sworn into office and back in 1972 when he ran for the US Senate and wins,

he ends up being sworn in at the age of 30 which made him one of the youngest people ever elected to the United States Senate.

They gave a surprise party yesterday for Joe Biden who will make history because of his age when he takes his seat in the new Senate.

If he stays in the Senate till the end of this century he'll be 57, the average age of senators now.

What that means especially in the Internet age is that we have this serpentine paper trail that follows Joe Biden into the White House.

Much of it is documented on the Internet.

A lot of information just disappears after a while. It's very ephemeral.

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