The public-interest group Public Citizen has filed a lawsuit to block an executive order signed by President Bush that restricts access to the records of incumbent or former presidents. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., claims that the order violates the 1978 Presidential Records Act making former presidents’ records public 12 years after they leave office.
“Bush’s executive order violates not only the spirit but the letter of the law,” said Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook. “We will not stand by while the administration tramples on the people’s right to find out about their own government.” The National Archives, which as keeper of the records was named as a defendant, had no immediate comment, the Associated Press reported November 28.
The suit also seeks the release of 68,000 pages of President Reagan’s papers whose release was delayed by the Bush administration in January while it was crafting the order. The papers include confidential communications with Bush’s father, who was then vice president.
Public Citizen filed the suit on behalf of the American Historical Association, the National Security Archive, presidential historians Hugh Davis Graham and Stanley I. Kutler, and others.
Posted December 3, 2001.