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Re: Reagan records' release delayed by White House



Am I the  only one to think that a 20 year (or so)
embargo on relase of documents is awfully short?
Particularly for public figures, and those not elected
but appointed to provide confidential advice.
Polticians are always on the record--their advisors
not.

Matthew Gilmore

--- Maarja Krusten <Maarja@AOL.COM> wrote:
> 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
>
>


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