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To: FreeperDoll; ArchAngel1983
“33, On January 21, 2009, his first day in office, Barack Obama implemented and signed into law Executive Order 13489, denying any release of anything about him...OMG did he really do that?”

No, he did not. Any assertion to the contrary is based on a complete misunderstanding of the legislative and executive branch history involved. The quoted statement is a demonstrably false assertion that has been debunked multiple times and yet still keeps circulating back.

This all begins in 1974 when Congress passed the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act of 1974, placing the presidential records of Richard Nixon in federal custody to prevent their destruction. The legislative action was intended to reduce secrecy, while allowing historians to perform their responsibilities. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 expanded such protection of historical records, by mandating that the records of former presidents would automatically become the property of the federal government upon his leaving the Oval Office, and then transferred to the Archivist of the United States, thereafter to be made available to the public after no more than 12 years.

Got that? It's Presidential Records, not personal records. Presidential records are defined by statute: “The term “Presidential records” means documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion thereof, created or received by the President, his immediate staff, or a unit or individual of the Executive Office of the President whose function is to advise and assist the President, in the course of conducting activities which relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.” The original law, as amended, and the Executive Orders related to it subsequently promulgated by Reagan, Bush and Obama deal only with those records generated in their official capacity as President while they were President. It has absolutely nothing to do with anyone’s kindergarden, baptism, school or other career records. That is a fact.

In January of 1989, Ronald Reagan issued Executive Order 12667 to clarify how the Executive Office would manage its obligations under the Presidential Records Act. It's stated purpose was as follows: “By virtue of the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, and in order to establish policies and procedures governing the assertion of Executive privilege by incumbent and former Presidents in connection with the release of Presidential records by the National Archives and Records Administration pursuant to the Presidential Records Act of 1978, it is hereby ordered as follows...”

Got that? Reagan issued the first Executive Order on this subject. Obama’s later Executive Order on the same subject is very similar to Reagan's.

Now George W. Bush comes along. Rightly or wrongly, he believes Reagan's Executive Order is too generous in allowing records to be accessed. The presidential papers of Ronald Reagan were due to be made public when George W. Bush took office in January 2001. However, in a White House memo dated March 23, 2001, the Counsel to the President conveyed the following to U.S Archivist John W. Carlin:

“Section 2(b) of Executive Order 12667, issued by former President Ronald Reagan on January 16, 1989, requires the Archivist of the United States to delay release of Presidential records at the instruction of the current President. On behalf of the President, I instruct you to extend for 90 days (until June 21, 2001) the time in which President Bush may claim a constitutionally based privilege over the Presidential records that former President Reagan, acting under Section 2204(a) of Title 4, has protected from disclosure for the 12 years since the end of his Presidency. This directive applies as well to the Vice Presidential records of former Vice President George H.W. Bush.”

This instruction to the archivist was repeated on June 6, 2001,before the 90 days had elapsed, giving a new deadline of August 31, 2001. On the day of this deadline, Alberto Gonzales instructed the Archivist to wait a few additional weeks.On November 1, 2001, Bush got around to issuing Executive Order 13233, which revoked Reagan's Executive Order 12667 to replace it with one more restrictive int he access it allowed to the records of former U.S. Presidents:

Got that? Bush replaced Reagan's Executive Order on how the Executive Office would manage its responsibilities under the Presidential Records Act with more restrictive rules. A lot of historians were annoyed, but no one else really cared. The historians sued, parts of Bush's Executive Order were overturned by a court in 2007, and still no one else really cared.

Now along comes Obama. Rightly or wrongly, he believes Bush's Executive Order is too restrictive. He cancels it and releases Executive Order 13489 which substantially restores the status quo to that of Reagan's Executive Order 12667. Note the similarity in stated purpose to Reagan's Order: “By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to establish policies and procedures governing the assertion of executive privilege by incumbent and former Presidents in connection with the release of Presidential records by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) pursuant to the Presidential Records Act of 1978, it is hereby ordered as follows...”

Again, it's about managing Presidential Records, which are the records one generates while actually President, and has nothing whatsoever to do with any President's personal records before or after he became President. That is a fact. Conservatives are supposed to acknowledge and respect facts.

27 posted on 05/23/2010 12:53:08 PM PDT by tired_old_conservative
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To: tired_old_conservative; FreeperDoll
Tired_Old_Conservative

How in the world do you explain how we know everything about President Bush from conception to present day, yet know nothing more about Obama then we did 2 1/2 years ago.

I think Obama is using this law and other legal (or maybe not so legal) tactics to conceal his private life pre and post election. Except for his stupid autobiography what do we actually know about this man?

Thanks for the history lesson, but Obama is a man not to be trusted. Got That?

30 posted on 05/23/2010 2:12:11 PM PDT by ArchAngel1983 (Arch Angel- on guard / I'm not anti-government, I'm anti-democrat!)
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