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Reporters should be asking to see Reagan's presidential papers

ASK THIS | June 09, 2004

The validity of Bush's executive order blocking the release of presidential and vice presidential documents is still unresolved.


By Susan Tifft
tifft@pps.duke.edu

Q. How about revisiting the issue of the disclosure of Reagan's presidential papers?

Although a lawsuit by journalists and historians was successful in forcing G.W. Bush to release 8,000 pages of Reagan Administration records in January, 2002, and another 59,000 pages in March of that year, the issue remains alive because the suit did not address the disclosure of records of other presidents or vice presidents, including Bush the Elder, whose presidential papers would ordinarily be up for release in 2005.

Under an Executive Order signed by G.W. Bush in November, 2001 — eleven months after Reagan's papers were to have opened to the public — the most revealing of those materials could remain sealed indefinitely.

Reagan's papers are the first to be governed by the Presidential Records Act of 1978, passed in reaction to Richard Nixon's attempt to withhold tapes and files. The Act requires all presidential and vice-presidential papers, with certain exceptions, to be made public 12 years after an Administration leaves office.  In Reagan's case, 4.5 million pages have been released out of the roughly 43.8 million at his Presidential Library, mostly in response to FOIA requests. The 68,000 pages at issue in the lawsuit concerned "confidential advice."

Bush's Executive Order, which allows a former president to keep specific documents secret even if a sitting president disagrees, and vice-versa, is a stark departure from tradition. Every president since Herbert Hoover, with the exception of Nixon, has donated his papers to the government with few restrictions. The secretive Bush Administration, invoking its usual Orwellian doublespeak,  said it was interested only in introducing "an orderly process" for releasing the Reagan documents.

What's a stake here is history, and who gets to tell it. As this week's national outpouring of grief and respect has shown, Reagan was a leader who connected with the American people. The full history of his presidency belongs to them, as does the history of the presidents and vice presidents who followed him  —including two men named Bush.



National Archives
Procedures for gaining access to presidential records

National Security Archive
Activist group pressing for release of records

Christian Science Monitor
A news story about the issue that appeared at the time of Bush's executive order

The Nation Magazine
An article by Russ Baker on what is being hidden under Bush's executive order

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