President Bush is ready to sign an executive order that would allow a sitting president to deny access to a former president’s papers even if the former president wishes them released. At present papers not covered by constitutionally based privileges are open to review twelve years after the president leaves office.
Why would President Bush want this authority? It can’t be to protect actions he may take because no one knows who will be in office twelve years after he leaves. What is in question is the Bush administration’s attempt to block 68,000 pages of communications between President Reagan and his advisers, many of which now hold high office in the Bush administration, even though the Reagan library wants to make them public. The order states the archivist “must withhold” them if possible. This is not about national security because those papers are not reviewable. This is about politics.
Further, in a couple of years his father’s papers will fall into this category and it must be remembered that the Iran-Contra scandal was never resolved because the former President Bush pardoned the key players before they could be brought to testify. In fact one of those, Elliot Abrams, has been hired by this administration. If this order is signed it will allow the former president to say he wishes to release his papers, and the son to say no. This smells worse than a fish market garbage can.
Snohomish
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