Bush Declassifies 23,000 More Pages
from the Reagan Years
The Bush administration has released 23,653 pages documenting the White House years of President Ronald Reagan’s administration. The June 11 authorization was made under the president’s controversial executive order of November 1, whose constitutionality is being challenged in a suit filed by Public Citizen. ALA’s Freedom to Read Foundation is among the organizations that have filed amicus briefs on behalf of the plaintiffs in American Historical Association et al. v. National Archives and Records Administration, who contend that the executive order nullifies the 1978 Presidential Records Act.
Pointing to the Bush administration’s release of more than 90,000 pages altogether since the controversial executive order, White House spokesperson Anne Womack asserted that the declassifications proved that officials are expediting the release of presidential records, the Associated Press reported June 14.
Several months earlier, Public Citizen called for the release of almost 60,000 pages of Reagan-era presidential records, charging in a March 11 letter to NARA General Counsel Gary M. Stern that the agency was deliberately withholding documents from public scrutiny more than a month after White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales had told the court that the records had been released. Four days later, NARA announced the release of some 59,850 Reagan-era documents.
Posted June 24, 2002.
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