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Banned
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
....What I don't know is - can I trust the judgment of a National Archivist.
Sorry, but I voted for Bush, he is my elected President and I want him to make the decision on what information gets released. When Obama or Clinton gets elected, they can do whatever they determine to be correct.
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ace, congress determined how it should be done....all president since the law was passed in 1978....followed it's provisions, until Bush came along and politicized the process. The purpose of the 1978 law was to depoliticize it:
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http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...gewanted=print
February 1, 2002
ENRON'S MANY STRANDS: THE WHITE HOUSE; Bush Policy on Releasing Records Differs in Case of Clinton Ones
By DON VAN NATTA JR.
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have said their refusal to give Congress information about the administration's contacts with energy industry executives is based on the executive branch's fundamental right to receive ''unvarnished'' advice from people outside the government.
But two months ago, the Bush administration authorized the release to Congress of thousands of e-mail communications by senior White House officials in the Clinton administration, including messages sent by outside advisers and senior aides to Vice President Al Gore.
With the approval of the Bush administration, the National Archives and Records Administration turned over to the House Committee on Government Reform 2,000 pages of Clinton White House e-mail messages. The committee is headed by Representative Dan Burton, the Indiana Republican who requested the records in September.
The Bush administration also allowed the release to Congress of White House notes of conversations on some of President Bill Clinton's 11th-hour pardon decisions.
The electronic messages, dating to 1995, deal with a wide variety of campaign finance issues. They include e-mail messages to Mr. Gore from senior aides, including his general counsel and chief of staff. They also include e-mail from people outside the government to senior White House officials, including Mr. Gore. Lawyers for Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore did not raise objections to their release.
Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the ranking Democrat on the Government Reform Committee, however, said the White House policy on confidentiality of executive branch records was inconsistent.
''When the administration claims it is acting out of principle, it needs to be consistent,'' Mr. Waxman said. ''But here there's no consistency.''
The release of those messages on Nov. 28 and Dec. 24 was not the first time last year that the Bush administration raised no objections to the release to Congress of documents or e-mail messages from the Clinton administration.
On five previous occasions, the archives released records of contacts with outside parties seeking to influence Mr. Clinton's last-minute pardon decisions, including a transcript of a conversation between Mr. Clinton and Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel relating to the pardon application of the billionaire fugitive Marc Rich. Again, the Bush administration raised no objections.
In a letter to the committee, the archives said the Bush administration had waived any state-secret privilege to allow the notes of the conversations with Mr. Barak to be released.
On Nov. 1 last year, Mr. Bush signed an executive order that permitted a sitting president to grant or block any request for a previous administration's documents. Later that month, he permitted the Clinton administration e-mail messages to be turned over to Congress.
Anne Womack, a White House spokeswoman, said today that the Clinton administration documents were released to Congress because Mr. Clinton had not objected to their release.
''Former administration officials had an opportunity to review the requested documents,'' Ms. Womack said. ''As our presidential records executive order states, we will generally defer to the wishes of the past president. And therefore they were released as requested.''
Ms. Womack said it was unfair to compare the release of the Clinton administration documents and the Bush administration's stance on the energy task force records.
''These are totally different situations,'' she said. ''These Clinton documents were requested as part of a Congressional subpoena, and this is a situation where we believe the G.A.O. has overstepped its authority.''
Earlier this month, Mr. Bush agreed to release 8,000 pages of documents from the Reagan administration, but blocked the release of about 60,000 other Reagan-era documents, citing national security concerns. There was no objection to the documents' release by former Reagan administration officials. ....
......The release of the Clinton White House documents raises legal and political questions for the Bush White House, which has repeatedly argued that an important principle is at stake in its refusal to turn over the energy task force documents. It also could emerge as an issue in the lawsuit to be filed by the General Accounting Office against Mr. Cheney in an effort to get access to documents related to the administration's energy task force.
On Monday, Mr. Bush said: ''We're not going to let the ability for us to discuss matters between ourselves to become eroded. It's not only important for us, for this administration, it's an important principle for future administrations.''
The documents that the Bush administration refuses to turn over are lists of executives who met with Mr. Cheney's energy task force. The accounting office also seeks the subjects of the discussions.
The information from the Clinton administration includes internal discussions between Mr. Gore and his staff members, as well as a National Security Council transcript of a conversation Mr. Clinton had with Mr. Barak.
Associates of Mr. Clinton said it was the first time in history that a transcript of a president's conversation with a head of state was released. An associate said today that Mr. Clinton was not consulted about releasing the Barak conversation.
''That was not our decision to make,'' the associate said. ....
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Quote:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-...e_for_the.html
Candidate Watch
Is Hillary Responsible for the 'Library Lockdown'?
...According to Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, <A HREF="http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20070312155007-75763.pdf">a non-profit group that monitors declassification procedures</A>, delays in processing FOIA requests have mounted steadily during the seven years of the Bush presidency. Back in 2001, it was taking the Reagan library between 16 and 18 months to process a FOIA request. It now takes six and a half years. According to the National Archives, the current backlog for processing FOIA requests to the George H.W. Bush presidential library is four and a half years.
Some of these delays are the result of staffing shortages. But some are caused by the need to submit documents to former presidents for review. <A HREF="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20070301/weinstein_stmt.pdf">According to Allen Weinstein</A>, the archivist of the United States, an average of 90 days was spent on such reviews in 2004. By April 2007, the average time devoted to such reviews had increased to 210 days.
Blanton praised former President Clinton for releasing "more historically valuable documents and more secret documents than all previous presidents put together." He said across-the-board declassification orders during the Clinton administration and new restrictions on declassification under Bush had overwhelmed the system. Prior to the 2001 Bush order, the National Archives could automatically release records on its own initiative after 30 days, provided that no objection was received from a former president or government agency.
"The process is really daunting," said Susan Cooper, spokeswoman for the National Archives. "Every FOIA requests requires a huge amount of work. A lot of these requests are fishing expeditions, requiring us to look at millions and millions of pages. Once we have vetted everything for classified material, it then goes to the former president's representative, and then the current president. It is really cumbersome."
Some news organizations have made an issue out of <A HREF="http://www.newsweek.com/id/57351">a letter President Clinton wrote to the Archivist in 2002</A> exempting all-but-routine "communications" with the First Lady from the general release of records until 12 years after the end of his presidency, i.e. 2012. We find this less of a problem than the delays in processing FOIA requests. Bill Clinton can reasonably claim to be following precedent in this particular instance. His predecessors, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, requested similar exemptions for communications with their "advisers."
On the other hand, neither Nancy Reagan or Barbara Bush ever ran for the presidency of the United States.
The Pinocchio Test
Nobody comes off particularly well on this one. Republicans lack credibility when they criticize the Clintons for dragging their feet on the release of presidential records. The 2001 Bush executive order reversed many of the gains made during the Clinton years on access to government archives and release of secret information. But Hillary Clinton should not pretend she is an entirely innocent bystander. It is clear that former presidents have considerable say in deciding which of their records get released, and that influence has increased greatly under Bush II.
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Last edited by host; 04-14-2008 at 07:30 AM..
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