Posted on 11/03/2001 7:03:54 AM PST by liberallarry
Fury as Bush keeps key to the archives He has signed an executive order allowing incumbent presidents to maintain the secrecy of past documents, even if the former president involved wanted them released. The order was made despite specific objections from his own predecessor, Bill Clinton. By statute, papers are supposed to be released 12 years after a president leaves office, and 68,000 pages from Ronald Reagan's term, which ended in 1989, were due to be available in January this year. But Mr Bush's administration stalled on the issue the moment it took office, and has now formalised its objections, turning the White House itself into the gatekeeper of history. The order is expected to be challenged in Congress and the courts. Ari Fleischer, the president's spokesman, insisted that the change was intended to be helpful. "More information will be forthcoming and it will be available through a much more orderly process," he said. This convinced no one. "I'm quite stunned by this decision," said the presidential scholar Stephen Hess, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Karen Hult, professor of political science at Virginia Tech, said: "It's difficult to tell what the exact effect will be, except that it will expand the time and effort required to get any documents at all. Using the Freedom of Information Act takes a long, long time but in comparison that will seem very easy indeed." This administration has far more reason than most to be worried about the shadow of the past. The blocked Reagan papers will include many records of confidential, and perhaps embarrassing, conversations between the then-president and Mr Bush's father who was his vice-president. The papers from President Bush Sr's own term of office were due to become public in 2005. Many current senior figures were around the White House then, including Vice-President Cheney and the secretary of state, Colin Powell. Writers who prefer to muse on the motives of past leaders were obliged yesterday to join journalists and try to fathom the thinking of the current president. The consensus was that it was a product of the country's first presidential dynasty of modern times, and that the current president was concerned above all to keep his father's name untainted. "I see it as the Family Protection Act myself," Mr Hess said. "Loyalty is a hallmark of the Bushes, and there's something quite attractive about it. "But there is an honourable case for historic record-tending, and that's clearly going to be inhibited by this. Twelve years is a decent enough interval to protect secrets, but you might have embarrassment longer than that." The 12-year rule was introduced in 1977, after the Watergate scandal; until then, each president had control of his own documents. In the years since then officials have become far more careful about what they commit to paper. "Since the Reagan administration, less and less material has been written down," Professor Hult said. "This is mainly because of concern about lawsuits, not only against presidents but against their staff. "We have some evidence that notes are not being taken in meetings, so that a whole range of things are not even being done even by email, but through talking over the phone or perhaps in corridors. Scholars are going to have to be more like investigative journalists."
Matthew Engel in Washington
Saturday November 3, 2001
The Guardian
In the sort of dispute normally more associated with secretive Britain than the open-minded US, American historians and political scientists reacted with outrage yesterday after President Bush acted to block automatic access to the archives of previous administrations.
I don't know why GW has done this, but I'm willing to give him a pass. I DO know that we still don't have Clintons records even his medical records. I'll pay more attention to this "outrage" when they take on Clinton first.
Regards, Jen. Thanks for the post.
DAMNED STRAIGHT!...(or in willies case probably bent left)
Many assumptions are being made about the why of this order by the President. I believe he's made it to protect the nation's security.
The Democrats and liberals in general haven't any sense of American security. They just want to do what they want to do when they want to do it.
I trust Bush's intentions with this order.
A: Slam previous administrations so that public opinion could be turned against the party with which those administrations are affiliated.
B: Pull a Jimmy Carter, ie: release classified military information about military hardware developed during his administration in a bid to get himself or Hillary or Al elected?
Just a hunch.
The president may think that anything embarassing about his Dad will have a political effect on him. He may be right. I also think he is correct in taking an unusuall step to deal with an unusual problem.
I looked on my book shelf and one of the thickest books I have is "Juran's Handbook" and it has 1700 pages. Makes one wonder...68,000 pages? That's 40 books of that size!
Just how much secret stuff do we do everyday...and why?
A right to be lied to.........
AHA!!
Looking forward to the new improved search abilities for dumpster divers like myself ... though, once they're back up, I'm assuming Google will again perform at optimum as in the past. =)
Yep ... just the tapes, Ma'am. Ask Nixon.
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