Lawsuit challenges Bush presidential-papers order
By The Associated Press
11.29.01
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WASHINGTON — Historians and public interest groups filed a federal lawsuit yesterday challenging President Bush’s executive order that controls the release of presidential records beginning with Ronald Reagan.
Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, filed the suit against the National Archives in U.S. District Court, saying that if U.S. Archivist John Carlin follows the order, he will violate the 1978 Presidential Records Act.
“Bush’s executive order violates not only the spirit but the letter of the law,” said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. “We will not stand by while the administration tramples on the people’s right to find out about their own government.”
The suit seeks to block implementation of the order.
It also seeks the immediate release of 68,000 pages of presidential papers left by Reagan and tens of thousands of vice presidential records left by former Vice President Bush. By law, the records were to be available to the public in January — 12 years after Reagan left office — but the White House postponed their release while it crafted the order Bush issued on Nov. 1.
The White House says the current Bush administration and Reagan representatives are still reviewing the sealed documents.
The White House has repeatedly defended Bush’s order, saying it establishes an orderly process for implementing the Presidential Records Act, which followed Watergate and Richard Nixon’s attempts to hold on to his papers and tape recordings. Papers left by the Reagan White House are the first governed by the act.
Under the law, former presidents and vice presidents can restrict access to some of their records, including confidential communications with advisers, for up to 12 years. After that, most documents, except those, for instance, that invade personal privacy or jeopardize national security, must be made public.
Bush’s order gives former presidents more authority to claim executive privilege to withhold certain papers because they contain military, diplomatic or national security secrets, communications among the president and his advisers or legal advice.
“The presidential executive order is sound law and sound policy,” said White House spokeswoman Anne Womack. “The lawsuit filed by Public Citizen, in reality, is an attack on the (1977) Supreme Court decision.”
Public Citizen attorney Scott L. Nelson disagreed.
He said the Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that former presidents can make a claim of privilege, but the archivist doesn’t have to honor that claim. Nelson says Bush’s order states that if a former president makes a claim of privilege, the archivist must obey it.
Nelson believes the order gives former presidents unfettered power to block the release of material simply by making a claim of privilege — even if it is unfounded.
He says it also hampers public access to vice presidential records because it provides — for the first time — that a vice president may claim executive privilege.
“It’s interesting that the first beneficiary of this new doctrine would be the father of the man who announced it,” Nelson said.
Public Citizen filed the suit on behalf of the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, the National Security Archive, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and historians Hugh Davis Graham and Stanley I. Kutler.
Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, which supports declassification of government documents, says the Presidential Records Act was designed to shift power over White House documents from former presidents to professional government archivists and ultimately to the public.
“The Bush order attempts to overturn the law, take the power back, and let presidents, past and present, delay public access indefinitely,” Blanton said.
Update
Some Reagan papers released
Still under wraps are 60,000 pages of former president's papers along with tens of thousands of records from his vice president, George Bush.
01.04.02
Previous
Lawmakers urge Bush to rescind presidential-papers order
Two U.S. representatives send letter saying plan for withholding records 'violates the intent of Congress and keeps the public in the dark.'
11.13.01
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