- The US president, George Bush, last night signed an
executive
order that allows either a past or sitting president to block access to
White House papers, a move that has angered historians, journalists and
former president Bill Clinton.
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- The order amends - and some argue, reverses - a 1978
law that allowed journalists, historians and other interested parties to
read presidential papers twelve years after the term of office
finished.
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- The law, known as the Presidential Records Act, was the
result of a lengthy legal battle over the papers of Watergate president
Richard Nixon.
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- Under the terms of Mr Bush's order, any sitting or former
president could veto the release of presidential papers.
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- The current president could not override a former
president's
veto, nor could a former president override the decision of sitting
president.
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- Anyone seeking access to the papers could appeal the
veto in court, but that would necessitate an expensive and potentially
lengthy legal challenge.
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- The immediate provocation for last night's order is
believed
to be an outstanding request for 68,000 pages of former president Ronald
Reagan's papers, which should have been opened to public scrutiny in
January.
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- The Bush administration has delayed that release three
times, and yesterday White House counsel Alberto Gonzales would not say
when or if the Reagan documents will be placed in the public domain.
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- Some historians have voiced suspicions that the Bush
administration is worried about what the Reagan papers might reveal about
officials now working for Mr Bush.
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- They include the secretary of state, Colin Powell, the
budget director, Mitch Daniels Jr, and the White House chief of staff,
Andrew Card. The White House defended the order as establishing a procedure
for implementing the 1978 Act.
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- A White House official said: "History has shown
that former presidents release virtually all of their documents and this
executive order won't stand in the way of that."
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- However the order would also mean that Mr Bush's personal
papers detailing the decision-making process in the current war on
terrorism
could remain secret in perpetuity.
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- Bruce Craig, the director of the National Coordinating
Committee for the Promotion of History, called the order "blatantly
unlawful top to bottom" and predicted a quick legal challenge.
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- "This is about confidential information -
communication
between a president and top people - that they would simply prefer not
to be released to the public," he said.
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- Vanderbilt University historian Hugh Graham said the
draft was a "real monster," and complained, "They [the
administration]
would reverse an act of Congress with an executive order."
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- According to a report in the Washington Post, a lawyer
for Mr Clinton wrote to the White House objecting to the order.
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- The paper quotes an aide to Mr Clinton as saying, "A
government's legitimacy is based on the trust of its people, and when
decisions
are made on behalf of the American people, citizens eventually have to
be able to see the process of how those decisions came to be."
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2001
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