Executive Order on Presidential Records
Draws Fire
President Bush signed an executive order November 1 that allows incumbent or former presidents to withhold the release of their presidential papers, an action critics say reverses the premise of the Presidential Records Act of 1978. That act called for the release of presidential papers 12 years after a president leaves office.
The new order would work “like a one-way ratchet,” explained Scott Nelson, an attorney for the Public Citizen Litigation Group, in the November 1 Washington Post. “If the former president says the records are privileged, they will remain secret even if the sitting president disagrees. If the sitting president says they should be privileged, they remain secret even if the former president disagrees.“
The order came after the administration had delayed three times since January the release of 68,000 pages of Ronald Reagan’s records, which critics charge was done in an attempt to protect former Reagan administration officials who now hold high posts in the Bush administration.
Bush’s Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said in a November 1 press briefing that the executive order was necessary because a previous administration might be unaware of national security concerns that still exist over information in certain documents.
Bruce Craig, director of the National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History, predicted a quick legal challenge to the order, which he called “blatantly unlawful top to bottom,” the Associated Press reported November 2. A House Government Reform subcommittee will hold a hearing on the dispute November 6.
Posted November 5, 2001.
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