SAA SPEAKS OUT ON BUSH'S EXECUTIVE ORDER

EN: SOCIETY OF AMERICAN ARCHIVISTS
SITE: http://www.archivists.org/

SAA’s long-standing disagreement with President Bush’s Executive Order 13233 – which effectively reverses the intent of the 1978 Presidential Records Act by giving a sitting president (and even ex-presidents and their families) the authority to withhold release of a previous president’s records – has received media coverage recently in light of developing plans for the George W. Bush presidential library:

SMU PRESSED TO FIGHT BUSH'S SECRECY


EN: THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
SITE: http://www.dallasnews.com
FECHA: 05/02/2007
AUTOR: TODD J. GILLMAN

Historians ask school to reject presidential library unless Bush voids privacy order
WASHINGTON – Archivists and historians are urging Southern Methodist University to reject the Bush presidential library unless the administration reverses an executive order that gives former presidents and their heirs the right to keep White House papers secret in perpetuity.

"If the Bush folks are going to play games with the records, no self-respecting academic institution should cooperate," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

The policy triggered outrage and a still-pending lawsuit when President Bush issued it about seven weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Now, as SMU officials try to complete a deal for a Bush library, museum and policy institute, the Society of American Archivists plans a public relations offensive meant to pressure Congress and the university to force a change.

"Whether they like it or not, they have become a player in that discussion," said Mark Greene, president-elect of the archivists and director of the University of Wyoming's American Heritage Center. "There's been no indication from the Bush administration that they have in any way rethought the executive order, and it is our hope that these negotiations provide a possible pivot point."

SMU Vice President Brad Cheves said the university is well aware of the debate but is mindful that rules regarding release of presidential papers have evolved in the last 30 years. He said SMU is taking the long view as it tries to land a facility that will stand "for generations to come as a storehouse of history."

"It's not realistic to expect one university to get an executive order signed. ... Public policy should be debated in the public square and the halls of Congress," he said.

Bush spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore noted that the National Archives has released more than 2 million pages since the new policy went into effect. "President Bush issued this executive order to ensure that we have an orderly system in place that encourages public disclosure while also respecting constitutionally granted executive authorities," she said.

A LITTLE HISTORY
The Bush order is part of a string of laws and directives governing presidential records.

In 1974, Richard Nixon tried to seal and even destroy some of his papers. Congress blocked that and, four years later, it passed the Presidential Records Act to clarify that administration records belong to the public. It struck a balance by allowing a 12-year embargo and exemptions for national security and privacy.

In November 2001, a little more than a month after terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and two months before the 12-year clock would have run out for Reagan-era records, Mr. Bush changed the rules. Former chief executives, starting with President Reagan, could block release of any records for any reason and any length of time.

Watchdog groups and scholars called it an effort to nullify the records act and other open-records statutes, and they were especially aghast at the provision allowing a president's heirs to assert claims of executive privilege after his death, with no time limit.

Jenna and Barbara Bush calling the shots on memos from Colin Powell to their dad? Chelsea Clinton withholding Whitewater documents?

"It's really outlandish," Mr. Aftergood said. "Presidential authority cannot be inherited in this country."

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer defended the order when it was issued, saying it was possible a current set of officials might not recognize the danger in releasing a 12-year-old document. But critics noted that Mr. Bush had been delaying release of 68,000 pages of Reagan records, some involving aides who were back in the White House, holding top posts in the new administration.

Within a month, watchdog group Public Citizen had gone to federal court in Washington. The American Historical Association joined the lawsuit, along with the Organization of American Historians, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the American Political Science Association.

In spring 2004, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly – no stranger to issues of secrecy as head of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court – ruled that the case was moot because there were no pending assertions of privilege under the order. She reinstated the lawsuit at the urging of both sides, and a ruling has been pending for a year.

At Public Citizen, attorney Scott Nelson called Mr. Bush's order a "distortion of the constitutional principles that govern claims of executive privilege."

"You can view it in isolation or you can view it as another manifestation of a presidency that places a very high value on secrecy of government information and presidential control of access to information," he said.

Reagan uses order

So far, the executive order affects three former presidents: Ronald Reagan, the president's father and Bill Clinton.

Mr. Reagan is the only one known to have invoked the order. In response to a 2002 records request at his library in Simi Valley, Calif., he asked the National Archives to withhold 11 documents.

Court records show that those include a four-page memo on international economic issues, a two-page memo from the White House counsel regarding pardons for Iran-Contra figures Oliver North and John Poindexter, and a three-page memo titled "Executive Privilege."

Two of the 11 documents were later released: a six-page memo prepared for the White House director of public affairs, titled "Talking Points on Iran/Contra Affairs," and a four-page memo from Fred Fielding – a deputy counsel to Mr. Reagan whom Mr. Bush has just hired as the new White House counsel – regarding first lady Nancy Reagan's use of military aircraft.

Mr. Bush concurred in the withholding of these records, and critics suspect he will resist full disclosure of his own records when the time comes.

Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the American Library Association's office in Washington, said the spirit of the executive order "completely goes against the spirit of the essence of a library."

"It would seem to me that an institution of higher learning, as SMU is, if they're associated with a library, would want to maintain the principles of a library. And one of the core values of a library is making information available, in a usable way, as transparently as possible," she said.

She noted that some of the finest scholarship in recent years – Robert Caro's work on Lyndon Johnson and David McCullough's book on Harry Truman – depended on access to presidential papers that let them "understand much more deeply and report much more thoroughly how decisions were made."

Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University – another plaintiff in the lawsuit – noted that although the Reagan library released more than 4 million pages in the 1990s, it declassified fewer than 4,000 pages since Mr. Bush signed the order.

"The net effect of the Bush order has been to throw sand in the already rusty gears of the presidential libraries," Mr. Blanton said by e-mail. "It's not just our history at stake, it's how and whether we will ever be able to hold our presidents accountable."

PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS ACT

Congress passed the Presidential Records Act in 1978 after the Watergate scandal so that former presidents couldn't keep full control of their papers, as Richard Nixon had tried to do in 1974. Its provisions:

•Presidential records were formally declared government property, not private property.

•The National Archives was assigned to make those records available to the public as soon as practicable.

•To balance the public right to know and the legitimate need for secrecy, records involving confidential policy advice would be withheld for 12 years.

•Records involving national security, trade secrets and personal privacy could remain sealed longer.

What Bush changed

President Bush signed an executive order Nov. 1, 2001, that limited the 1978 law. The order treats presidential privilege as a property right that legally can be bequeathed to heirs – a concept legal scholars deem extraordinary, since privilege attaches to the office, not the individual occupying it. The order includes:

•Former presidents, starting with Ronald Reagan, would have the authority to block access to their records, in any policy area, for as long as they wished.

•A current president could block release of a former president's records.

•A former president could "designate a representative" who could continue to assert a presidential privilege after the former president dies, with no time limit.

•"In the absence of any designated representative after the former president's death or disability, the family of the former president may designate a representative."

Todd J. Gillman


BROADENING THE BUSH LIBRARY DEBATE

EN: INSIDEHIGHERED.COM
SITE: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/02/06/library
FECHA: 06/02/2007
AUTOR: Scott Jaschik

As professors at Southern Methodist University have mobilized against the plans to build President Bush’s library there, their focus has not been the library, but a policy institute to be affiliated with it that would have as its mission promoting the Bush philosophy.

Such an institute, with an explicitly ideological identity and reporting to the president’s foundation instead of to the university, runs counter to academic values, the critics have said. Many times they have attempted to contrast their dislike of the institute with the library itself, which could be a valuable source of documents on the Bush administration — open to scholars with a range of views. And SMU officials, in defending the library plans, have stressed the scholarly value of the archive.

But with opposition to the SMU plans growing, national groups of archivists and historians are trying to broaden the debate. Weeks after 9/11, President Bush signed an executive order giving presidents and former presidents much more control over their records — and extended that right to a family member when a former president dies. While there have been periodic disputes over how much control presidents should have over their papers, the Bush order goes beyond the control asserted by any president since Nixon (whose efforts to control his papers led to various laws to promote access).

Archivists and historians have tried a variety of approaches to challenging the Bush executive order — to date, without much success. The administration has said that the order was needed to protect national security. Now scholars are hoping to use the SMU debate to start a new campaign against the executive order — and they are asking SMU to turn down the library as long as the executive order stays in place.

“I think this is very significant,” said Benjamin Hufbauer, an associate professor of art history at the University of Louisville and author of Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory (University Press of Kansas). “They are raising the profile of an issue that gets to the heart of the profession.”

With the executive order in place, Hufbauer said, it isn’t fair for SMU to argue that a great scholarly resource will be placed on its campus. “People say that the archive is the most valuable part of it. That’s where you can hopefully get to historical truth,” Hufbauer. “But if you don’t have all the papers, instead you have just a museum of political propaganda.”

Mark Allen Greene, president-elect of the Society of American Archivists and director of the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming, said “we need to raise the visibility of the issue” — with Congress, the public and universities.

“We’re concerned that the presidential library itself is going to be in effect an empty shell. If the executive order stands, his wife and children could embargo the release of materials,” Greene said.

The archivists are also asking SMU to take a stand: “We would love for the SMU administration to say: ‘No, we won’t accept the library unless you reverse the executive order.’ It would be our hope that any other universities would have the same response, to put some additional pressure on the administration.”

The Project on Government Secrecy, of the Federation of American Scientists, is also joining the push, with lobbying of Congress and SMU. Steven Aftergood, director of the project, said, “I think the decision about where to locate the library has the potential to merge with a larger debate regarding Bush administration information policy.”

He expects the battle to be decided in Congress and the courts, but agrees that the SMU fight creates an opening for archivists and historians to use.

While the SMU dispute may help the archivists gain attention, there are no signs that these discussions are prompting the university to rethink its position.

“We will continue to follow dialogue on this important issue; however, it is not realistic to expect that one university has the capability of getting an executive order rescinded, as has been suggested of SMU,” said a statement from the university. “This is a matter for the public policy arena that transcends one institution and one particular moment in time. As we have stated, SMU is considering more than the immediate impact of this project. A presidential library must be considered for the long-term benefits and opportunities it can provide.”

Tags: BUSH'S EXECUTIVE ORDER