Correspondence, diary notes and other jottings, speeches, writings, interview transcripts, television scripts, legal and subject files, legislative and political material, newspaper columns, book reviews, appointment books, financial records, family papers, printed matter, and other papers documenting Weinberger's career in journalism and government. Relates to his involvement in California and national Republican Party politics and to his career as a lawyer, television broadcaster, and newspaper columnist in San Francisco; executive with Bechtel Corporation; cabinet member during the Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, and Ronald Reagan administrations; and publisher of Forbes Magazine. Documents his service as head of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, and U.S. secretary of defense. Includes material pertaining to his work as moderator of the television program Profile: Bay Area and to his newspaper column "California Commentary."

Subjects include domestic policy issues such as abortion, affirmative action in education, federal budget, health care, social security funding, and welfare reform. Subjects of diplomatic and military policy include Afghanistan, Central America, U.S.-Soviet nuclear weapons discussions, Iranian hostage crisis, the Iran-Contra affair, the invasion of Grenada, Falklands War, crises in Lebanon and the Persian Gulf, U.S. attacks on Libya, American policy toward Nicaragua, NATO, the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, the Strategic Defense Initiative, terrorism, and White House and National Security Council meetings.

Persons represented include Muḥammad ʻAbd al-Ḥalīm Abū Ghazālah; Spiro T. Agnew; Richard Lee Armitage; Menacham Begin; Harold Brown; George Bush; Frank Charles Carlucci; Peter Alexander Rupert Carington, Baron Carrington; William J. Casey; Richard B. Cheney; George Christopher; William Patrick Clark; William J. Crowe; Fahd ibn ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz,King of Saudi Arabia; Robert H. Finch; Indira Gandhi; Barry M. Goldwater; Alexander Meigs Haig; Charles Hernu; Michael Heseltine; Hussein, King of Jordan; Fred Charles Iklé; Goodwin Knight; William F. Knowland; Helmut Kohl; Yūkō Kurihara; Robert C. McFarlane; Muḥammad Ḥusnī Mubarak; George Murphy; Richard Norman Perle; John M. Poindexter; Colin L. Powell; Elliot L. Richardson; Nelson A. Rockefeller; Bernard William Rogers; Donald Rumsfeld; Itzhak Shamir; Ariel Sharon; George Pratt Shultz; Giovanni Spadolini; David Alan Stockman; Margaret Thatcher; John G. Tower; John William Vessey; and Manfred Wörner.