Former Presidents Can't Withhold Records

President Bush has always had a bizarre obsession with privacy and preventing the public from knowing what is being done on their behalf.

One of the most bizarre things he did when he first came to office was to insist that former Presidents could have a veto over when their Presidential records could be released. I have no way of knowing why Bush would want to give former Presidents such a veto, and assumed that it must have been done to protect his father from embarrassment. Perhaps there was something in the records of Reagan or Bush 41 that he did not want to become public.

Anyway, a judge has ruled that former Presidents do not have such an indefinite veto:

In a narrowly crafted ruling, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly invalidated part of President Bush's 2001 executive order, which allowed former presidents and vice presidents to review executive records before they are released under the Freedom of Information Act.

By law, the National Archives has the final say over the release of presidential records and Kollar-Kotelly ruled that Bush's executive order "effectively eliminates" that discretion. It allows former presidents to delay the release of records "presumably indefinitely," she said.

The judge ordered the National Archives not to withhold any more documents based on that section of the executive order.

The ruling was made in a lawsuit filed by the American Historical Association and other organizations, which argued that Bush's Executive Order 13,233 was an "impermissible exercise of the executive power."

It's no wonder that this administration try to avoid courts as much as they possibly can. It appears that whenever Bush and Cheney's extraordinary claims of executive power are actually tested before a court of law that they are found to be excessive.

Harry Truman once said, "Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix." Bush appears to believe the opposite. From his earliest days in office he and Cheney have sought to expand executive power and keep what he is doing away from the public's gaze. Nor was any of this a reaction to 9-11, this frame of mind was only made worse by the events of that day, but it is a mindset which was evident long before any attack.

There is even a Republican senator anonymously blocking a bill that would reverse President Bush's 2001 executive order allowing ex-presidents to seal their records indefinitely. The Dallas News reports:

"We need to smoke out whoever it is. Maybe somebody at the White House called a Republican senator and said put a hold on it," said Lee White, executive director of the National Coalition for History, a leading advocate of the legislation.

The anonymous hold adds an ironic chapter to a fight that has pitted an administration with a penchant for secrecy against historians, archivists and librarians.

Hopefully, this court ruling will end this practice. No-one has the right to control history.

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Tags: Bush, presidential records, secrecy, privacy, executive powers