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Reagan records' release delayed by White House



George Lardner of the Washington Post has written an interesting account of
delays in the release of Reagan-era documents by the National Archives.  The
article, "Release of Reagan Documents Put on Hold," was published in the June
10, 2001 edition of the Post.  It is available on line at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45939-2001Jun9.html.

According to Larnder, "The Bush White House is blocking the release of 68,000
pages of confidential communications between President Ronald Reagan and his
advisers that officials at the National Archives had proposed to make public
months ago.

Relying on an obscure executive order that Reagan issued just before leaving
office, White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales  last week ordered another
10-week delay so Bush can decide whether to invoke 'a constitutionally based
privilege or take other appropriate action.'

The papers, some of them dealing with Reagan-era officials who have high
posts in the Bush administration, were to have been disclosed in January
under a federal law saying they could be restricted at the most 12 years
after Reagan left office."

Lardner notes that "Some historians who have been waiting for the first
official insights into the workings of the Reagan White House say Bush may be
reluctant to disclose what some of his top advisers committed to paper in the
strife of the Cold War and divisive domestic disputes."  Others point to
issues of precedent for future attempts to release documents.  "Vanderbilt
University historian Hugh Graham pointed out that the next ex-president's
papers to be made public, in 2005, will be those of George Bush, the
president's father. He said that may be another factor weighing on the White
House, because George W. Bush may not win a second term."

However, "White House officials denied claims that Bush is trying to protect
his aides, and they stressed that the long-secret records will be the first
to be released under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, a Watergate-era
reform making presidential papers public property for the first time. (The
records and tapes of President Richard M. Nixon, who had insisted they were
private property, were covered by a separate 1974 law that applied only to
him.)"

Lardner writes that "Alan Morrison, founder of the Public Citizen Litigation
Group, who has worked on many access-to-records cases, said constant
postponements under the executive order would at some point be unlawful
because they would be inconsistent with the 1978 statute. He also said
Archivist John W. Carlin "would have done a lot better to have sent some
documents through to the last administration and let them at least get
started."

A shorter account of the delays appeared in The New York Times on June 9,
2001.

Maarja Krusten
Maarja@aol.com