Bush Must OK Clinton's Document Release

Re: Bush Must OK Clinton's Document Release




Yawn. No President can sign an Executive order and create an "Act". The Presidential Records Act was passed by the Congress and put into law in 1978. Bush has zip to do with it's creation. The lengths you'll go to in your attempts to blame Bush for any/everything is amazing.

Have you any idea how government works these days.

Presidents can do what they like, hold people incommunicado or

November 7, 2001
The Presidential Records Act was passed in 1978 to make Presidential records the property of the
public and to assure that these records are released to the public in a timely manner. On
November 1, 2001, however, President Bush issued Executive Order 13233 which significantly
curtails the disclosure of Presidential records under the Presidential Records Act. Under the new
executive order, former Presidents are given virtually unlimited discretion to withhold their records indefinitely.

Former Presidents can withhold their own records but Bush decided he needed to be in on whether they get to release them as well.

Yeah, congressional deliberations can be changed with the flick of a pen.
But the Supreme Court is standing guard over our freedoms well.......
what's to worry?

Joe

Re: Bush Must OK Clinton's Document Release


Fishin, are you still amazed---at the truth?

Some of us know what we are talking about. Thanks, Joe Nation, for posting the Executive Order number.

BBB

John Dean: Hiding Past & Present Presidencies
HIDING PAST AND PRESENT PRESIDENCIES:
The Problems With Bush's Executive Order Burying Presidential Records

By JOHN DEAN
Friday, Nov. 09, 2001

On November 1, President George W. Bush signed his latest effort to govern by secrecy - Executive Order 13233. For good reason this Order has a lot of historians, journalists, and Congresspersons (both Republican and Democratic) upset.

The Order ends 27 years of Congressional and judicial efforts to make Presidential papers and records publicly available. In issuing the Order, the President has pushed his lawmaking powers beyond their limits.

The Secret Presidency

As President watchers know, we have a President who likes secrecy. He has hired only tested leak-proof and loyal staffers, effectively sealing the Bush White House. He has had his records as the Governor of Texas hidden, shipping them off to his father's Presidential library, where they are inaccessible. He has stiffed the Congressional requests for information about how he developed his energy policy - refusing to respond.

No President can govern in a fishbowl. But not since Richard Nixon went to work in the Oval Office has there been as concentrated an effort to keep the real work of a President hidden, showing the public only a scripted President, as now. While this effort was evident before the September 11th terrorist attacks, the events of that day have become the justification for even greater secrecy.

The mystical veil of "national security" has been cast over much of the Bush administration. There were the secret arrests of terror-related suspects (currently over 1000 publicly unknown people). There was the expansion of the wiretap granting powers of a secret federal court hidden within the Department of Justice. There was, and continues to be, an apparent policy of precluding news organizations and congressional leaders from access to anything other than managed and generic news about the war in Afghanistan.

With all these moves, President Bush is brushing aside one historical tradition of openness after another. It is in this context that the President's latest action must be viewed.

The Executive Order suggests that President Bush not only does not want Americans to know what he is doing, but he also does not want to worry that historians and others will someday find out. Certainly that is the implicit message in his new effort to preclude public access to Presidential papers - his, and those of all Presidents since the Reagan-Bush administration. There is, however, no justification whatsoever for this latest effort to hide the work of past, present, and future Presidents.

What Bush's Executive Action Means

There has been some confusion about the meaning of the President's actions in addressing Presidential papers. He has not repealed the existing law, as some have asserted, because he does not have that power. But he has sought to significantly modify the law, and made its procedures far more complex, cumbersome and restrictive. In doing so, he has exceeded his executive powers under the Presidential Records Act of 1978.

White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer has tried, unsuccessfully, to spin Executive Order 13233 as doing nothing more than implementing the existing law, but in fact, the Order does much more. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when pressed during his briefing, Mr. Fleischer dodged the tough questions, or said "that's a matter for the lawyers." Fleischer contention that the Order is innocuous would not hold up under close scrutiny, and so he avoided that scrutiny.

Attorney Scott Nelson's Testimony Against the Order

One lawyer who appreciates exactly what has been done is Washington attorney Scott L. Nelson, who represents Public Citizen, the public advocacy group that flushed out the Nixon papers during several decades of litigation. Mr. Nelson knows these laws well because Richard Nixon was his client for 15 years ironically, much of that time fighting Public Citizen. Indeed, Scott Nelson has been involved in the litigation that has shaped the body of law that President Bush has ignored in issuing his Executive Order.

On November 6, Nelson appeared before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Reform, chaired by Congressman Stephen Horn, to address the new Bush Order. He explained in detail its flaws - which I have only summarized below, by highlighting a few examples of how the Bush Order ignores, or seeks to change, the law.

The Presidential Records Act

Under the 1978 Presidential Records Act, virtually all of a former President's records are to be made publicly available by the Archivist twelve years after that President leaves office. There are narrow exceptions for papers that still must be withheld for national security reasons.

But the 1978 statute specifically states that among the material to be released by the Archives twelve years after a President leaves office are his confidential and private communications with his advisers (White House staff and Cabinet Departments). The existing law does not provide an exception for withholding "attorney-client" or "attorney work product" materials.

The New Executive Order: Adding Presidential Privileges to Those in the Act

Through Executive Order 13233, President Bush has sought to re-interpret the 1978 law. To put it briefly, the Order adds and enumerates privileges upon which a former or incumbent President can block release of a former President's materials.

In claiming that the Order does not contradict the Records Act, Bush relies on a clause in the Act that states that it does not "confirm, limit, or expand constitutionally-based privileges which may be available to an incumbent or former President."

Bush's lawyers read this clause as bringing into play all of the privileges the law has precluded. They cite specifically the Supreme Court's 1977 holding in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, which says that a former President can exert executive privilege.

The 1978 law only recognizes the enumerated privileges set forth in the Freedom Of Information Act. Nevertheless, Bush's Executive Order makes clear that he reads the law as entitling a former or incumbent President to assert a laundry list of privileges: the state secrets or national security privilege; the communications with advisors privilege, the attorney-client and attorney work product privileges, and the deliberative process privilege.

Shifting the Burden, and Adding Extra Procedures

President Bush has also shifted the burden from the former President to the person seeking the material. Under the Executive Order, the person seeking material must show that he should be given it; it is no longer necessary for the former President to show why material must not be disclosed.

Bush's Executive Order also takes the Archivist of the United States out of the role of deciding if a former President's invocation of privilege should or should not be honored. That role is now assigned to the incumbent President. And obviously, it is likely that Presidents - wanting successors to honor their own invocations of privilege - might tend to accept former President's claims.

The new Executive Order also creates an elaborate procedure for an incumbent President to block his predecessor from releasing documents. In addition, under Bush's order, a former President can indefinitely block release of his material, which is not possible under existing law.

Another added benefit for former Presidents is this: When the incumbent President agrees with the former President about his decision to not release records, the incumbent President (through the Department of Justice) will defend the privilege against attack. That saves the former President what can be significant legal expenses for attorney's fees to contest the case in court.

A New Power for Vice Presidents

While Scott Nelson did not mention it in his testimony, the most remarkable change the Executive Order effects is that it gives not just a President, but also a Vice President, the power to invoke executive privilege over his papers.

The Presidential Records Act includes Vice Presidential records. But it does not give a former Vice President the right to invoke executive privilege - for Congress does not have the power to do so.

Indeed, under the Constitution, the executive privilege is unique to the President. Bush's Order is nothing less than absurd in purporting to grant the power to invoke this privilege to the Vice President, (and may only feed suspicion that Dick Cheney's role is more Presidential than may be appropriate to his office).

The Effect of The New Executive Order

President Bush has not stated why he revoked the existing Executive Order (Number 12667) addressing Presidential Records. President Reagan issued the Order in 1989 after studying the law for almost eight years of his presidency. Many believed Reagan's Order went beyond the law. Yet President Clinton did not challenge or change it during his eight years in office.

Ironically, if President Clinton - not President Bush - had been the one who issued this new Executive Order, Republicans in Congress would no doubt have called for his impeachment for failure to execute the laws (that is, failure to abide by the Presidential Records Act.)

Just as Clinton's assertions of privilege in court were repeatedly questioned - and even argued by some to be abuse of process or even obstruction of justice - Clinton's extension of Presidential privileges through an Executive Order would have faced heavy criticism. But when Bush takes the same action - especially now, with his new popularity - the criticism is highly modulated in tone.

Why Bush Apparently Issued the New Executive Order

What appears to have provoked President Bush's action is the fact that some 68,000 documents from the Reagan presidency were waiting at the White House when Bush arrived, ready for release by the National Archives.

These documents passed the twelve-year deadline for public release on January 12, 2001, but their release has been stalled by the Bush White House until now. The documents are believed to contain records that Papa Bush, as Reagan's Vice President, is not happy to have made public. They also contain papers of others now working for Bush, who might be embarrassed by their release.

Look for either Papa Bush, or someone designated by former President Reagan, to object to any of these 68,000 documents' release pursuant to the new Executive Order. If that happens, it will confirm my guess as to why the Order was written at this time. The effect will be to tie the release of those records up for years.

The most certain effect of this new Order will be litigation. The Order will be tested in court, if the President does not withdraw it as requested by both Republicans and Democrats in the Congress. And should the Order not be overturned by the courts, I believe Congress will act. In fact, Congress could act even before the courts resolve these matters.

In short, the prospects for Bush's Executive Order 13233 remaining the law of the land is slim to none.

A Troubling Penchant For Secrecy

More troubling than the Order's throwing a monkey wrench into the process of releasing Presidential papers, however, is the President's penchant for secrecy. Secrecy provokes the question of what is being hidden and why.

If President Bush continues with his Nixon-style secrecy, I suspect voters will give him a Nixon-style vote of no confidence come 2004. While secrecy is necessary to fight a war, it is not necessary to run the country. I can assure you from firsthand experience that a President acting secretly usually does not have the best interest of Americans in mind. It is his own personal interest that is on his mind instead.

The Bush administration would do well to remember the admonition of former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in his report on government secrecy: "Behind closed doors, there is no guarantee that the most basic of individual freedoms will be preserved. And as we enter the 21st Century, the great fear we have for our democracy is the enveloping culture of government secrecy and the corresponding distrust of government that follows."
---------------------------

John Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former Counsel to the President of the United States. His most recent book, The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That Redefined the Supreme Court, was just published by the Free Press.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Re: Bush Must OK Clinton's Document Release


That "some of us" wouldn't include you. As both Joe's post and your own follow-up post state - the Presidetial Records Act was create in 1978. That's NOT what you claimed in your opening rant.

Re: Bush Must OK Clinton's Document Release


Fishin, you do need to clean your glasses so you can read more accurately.

I wrote: Bush's Executive Order in the months imediately following his taking office to create the Presidential Records Act is one of the most evil actions of his administration. And---the Media barely raised a stink about it. The action obviously was taken to protect the Bush dynasty from being discovered for what they are: the most corrupt politically powerful family in US history.

The news article I posted is also about Bush's Executive Order to change Reagan's law, which is entitled the FEDERAL RECORDS ACT.

Bush's Executive Order amended Reagan's law and created a new Act entitled the PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS ACT. Why the name change? Because now the decisions can only be made by the sitting president, not the "federal" government under the Freedom of Information Act and other avenues.

---BBB

lmao

I have perfect vision. It's your glasses that are a bit couldy it seems.



I think it's been proven very clearly that his EO created no such Act.

Fishin
Fishin, did you read my post directly above this one? I ssuggest you read the John Dean article, too.

I could have said Bush amended Reagan's law, but that is not really what he did. Bush's executive order not only changed Reagan's law, it turned it upside and reversed it's entire premise. It in no way resembles Reagan's law.

As an aside, it is widely believed that Bush took his action to protect his father, George the first, in his alleged illegal actions while vice president and many members of George the second's administration, including the Iran-Contra attempted coup against the congress.

BBB

Yes I did. And you, yourself cut and pasted your own false statement.

Your claim that "Bush's Executive Order amended Reagan's law and created a new Act entitled the PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS ACT." is also simply nonsense. The EO does no such thing - the original bill passed by the Congrees had the name "Presidential Records Act".

Fishin
Fishin, we are getting nowhere with anal retentive arguments over one word, and an unimportant word at that.

So, how did we get The Presidential Records Act as "signed" by George Bush and, most importantly, what is it's effect (good and bad) on the citizens of the U.S.?

BBB

Re: Fishin


You don't. There is no such thing.



The PRA of 1978 defines what records will be retained and when they can be released. The Act codified previous Supreme Court decisions into law and specified authorities of both the former Presidents, incumbent Presidents and the Director of the National Archives for both maintenance and release of the records. All records can be refused release during teh first five years and he original Act specifies that "the President" can invoke refusal to release records that are more then five but less than twelve years old for any of six specific reasons.

After the twelve years following the end of a president's final term in office, the PRA no longer applies. Papers are be released unless FOIA exemptions apply; however, the FOIA exemption concerning the confidentially of conversations between the president and his advisers wasn't automatically applied. Papers with these conversations weret released unless the former president or incumbent president exerts their constitutionally based privilege and forbids the opening of these papers

What the Bush EO DID change was to make that FOIA exemption apply by default and requires the sitting Adminsitration review all documents and determine, on a case by case basis, whether the exemption should be lifted of not.

[QUOTE="fishinSo according to what Bush did, it has nothing to do with his own administration, but the one before his. When it comes to the release of the papers from the Bush admin, it will be the president after Bush will make the decision on his admins papers.

Fishin
Fishin, after reading your response which, in effect, agreed with the articles I posted, except worded differently but meaning the same, I give up on a useless dialogue. If all you want to do is have a verbal fight, find someone else to play with. I have no interest in long drawn out pissing matches and I suspect other A2Kers have no interest in them either.

BBB

Baldimo
Baldimo, I think your short version of the act is probably correct. However, a new president could void Bush's executive order and restore Reagan's original act and its integrity and safeguards for the citizen's right to know. All the more reason Bush wants to win to protect his father's and the Bush family's reputation. But it won't help much because there are too many people who know what's in the Bush's corruption closet and with them out of power, they won't be afraid to write expose books and make tons of money. Political friends are friends only as long as it benefits them.

BBB

It wouldn't really make a difference. Didn't it say that the Order didn't have an effect after 12 years? If so then all docs under Bush Sr. would all be released by now, or well on their way in the next few years. I don't see an issue here. All will come to pass in the long run.

Are you this upset about the JFK assassination files being sealed for 75 years? Do you support the release of all records from all presidents? I can't wait till all of Clinton's records are released. It will be interesting to see his connections in China and it's theft of top-secret files for Los Alamos.

Never heard of this before... can you provide any links to articles/documents alleging a connection between Bill Clinton and chinese thievery?

Thanks a bunch if you can...

Re: John Dean: Hiding Past & Present Presidencies


I think the main reason this was overlooked by the press was its timing of being enacted post 9/11/01. It was just one of many changes made in the name of national security...

Sources of Clinton China ties.

Clinton China mob ties

China spys and Nukes

Tiananmen Square butcher is Clinton contact

Don't forget the campaign contributions from the Lippo group which has China connections.