George W Bush
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On November 1, President George W. Bush signed Executive
Order 13233, which ends 27 years of Congressional and
judicial efforts to make Presidential papers and records
publicly available.
This Executive Order suggests that Bush not only doesn?t
want Americans to know what he?s doing, he also doesn?t
want to worry that historians will someday find out. That is
the message in this effort to prevent public access to
Presidential papers ? not only his, but those of all Presidents
since the Reagan-Bush administration.
Secrecy is important to Bush. He has hired only loyal, leak-
proof staffers. He has had his records as the Governor of
Texas hidden, shipping them off to his father?s Presidential
library, where they are inaccessible. Not since Richard Nixon
has there been such an effort to keep the real work of a
President hidden.
While this effort started before September 11th, the events
of that day have become the justification for even greater
secrecy. There were the secret arrests of terror-related
suspects (currently over 1,000 publicly unknown people).
There has been the expansion of the wiretap granting powers
of a secret federal court hidden within the Department of
Justice. There is a policy of preventing news organizations
and congressional leaders from obtaining access to anything
other than official news about the war in Afghanistan.
There has been some confusion about the meaning of the
President's actions in addressing Presidential papers. He has
not repealed the existing law, because he does not have that
power. But he has modified the law, and made its procedures
far more complex and restrictive. In doing so, he has
exceeded his executive powers under the Presidential Records
Act of 1978, which recognizes the Freedom of Information
Act.
Bush has shifted the burden to the person seeking the
material. Under the Executive Order, the person seeking
material must show that he should be given it; it is no longer
necessary for the former President to show why material
must not be disclosed. It also creates an elaborate procedure
for an incumbent President to block his predecessor from
releasing documents. Under Bush?s order, a former President
can indefinitely block release of his material, which is not
possible under existing law.
What appears to have provoked President Bush?s action is the
fact that 68,000 documents from the Reagan presidency
were waiting at the White House when Bush arrived, ready
for release by the National Archives. These documents
passed the twelve-year deadline for public release on January
12, 2001, but their release has been stalled by the Bush
White House until now. The documents are believed to
contain records that George Bush Sr., as Reagan?s Vice
President, does not want made public. They also contain the
papers of others who are now working for George Bush Jr.,
who might be embarrassed by their release.
While secrecy is necessary to fight a war, this Nixon-style
secrecy is not necessary to run the country. As former
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said in his report on
government secrecy, ?Behind closed doors, there is no
guarantee that the most basic of individual freedoms will be
preserved. And as we enter the 21st Century, the great fear
we have for our democracy is the enveloping culture of
government secrecy and the corresponding distrust of
government that follows.?
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