During his two terms as president, George W. Bush took extraordinary measures to limit the press’ knowledge about the inner workings of his administration. The Centre for Research on Globalization says Bush broke the momentum toward having an open and transparent federal government and transformed Washington into a system of “pervasive secrecy.”
“Through executive agency opinions, executive orders, statutory changes, and aggressive litigation, the Bush Administration has effectively limited the power of FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) and reversed the presumption that government records should be available to the public absent demonstrable proof showing that secrecy is needed,” wrote Susan Dente Ross in The Long Term View, a journal of opinion published by the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover.
“The administration’s sweeping expansion of the power of federal government to classify records, and also hide them from public view, increases the range of information that may be classified and extends the lifetime of such secrecy,” the associate professor in the Edward R. Murrow School of Communications at Washington State University at Pullman continued in 2008.
In a previously unreleased “easing letter,” or publication directive, to the archivist of the United States — signed two years after Bush left office — Bush made a seeming aboutface by ordering the release of many of his presidential public records faster than his predecessor, Bill Clinton — who, 13 years after leaving office, is only beginning to release the majority of the documents.
According to the 2010 directive, Bush cleared nine categories of “routine confidential” communications for release. The list includes daily schedules, including drafts and background materials; preparatory material for presidential proclamations, declarations, special messages and executive orders; press release drafts; drafts, background material, talking points and fact sheets on policy decisions; and routine White House staffing memoranda and comments.
Also slated for release are informational memoranda and reports to the White House staff, requests and referrals from the White House staff seeking guidance and input in the preparation of routine response to inquiries, routine memoranda and recommendations analyzing the administration’s position on legislation, and speech drafts with only grammatical or clerical changes.
Protecting the record
While the sheer volume of what Bush has offered to release suggests a change in his philosophy about secrecy, a closer look at what Bush is withholding reflects an insistence on protecting the administration’s secrets. On Friday, the Clinton Library released about 7,300 pages of Clinton administration records, which detailed, for example, the effort to find a scapegoat for the failure of the Clinton call for universal health care and advice on how the president could dodge questions about his avoidance of the Vietnam War draft while in Vietnam.
As the Bush directive indicates what should be released, the Clinton directive to the National Archives states that all of the presidential papers should be marked for release unless they fall into a few specific categories — such papers providing information on why a potential appointee was not selected, confidential communications regarding a sensitive issue, confidential legal or foreign policy communications, and communications from the president, between the president and the vice president, or between the president and the first lady.
While this lack of restrictions made it possible for documents critical to the Clinton White House to be released as part of the public record, the ambiguity of the restrictions has frustrated those seeking to research the Clinton presidency. “In general, I would say that the Bush letter is more helpful and concrete than the Clinton one,” said Scott Nelson of Public Citizen, an attorney who has argued for improved access under the Presidential Records Act.
“On its face, the Bush letter appears to do more to ‘ease’ the restrictions than the Clinton one did, and to empower the Archives to make its own decisions about releasing materials as to which the restrictions have been ‘eased.’”
Controlling history
While it can be argued that Bush’s approach of stating what is available for disclosure and what is not immediately simplifies the clearance process for the presidential papers faster that the Clinton “judge-as-it-is-requested” method — which excluded about 33,000 pages from release and delayed the disclosure process by nearly a decade — the Bush methodology is more likely to prevent the disclosure of the administration’s secrets, such as the negotiations and maneuverings of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force, planning for the Second Iraq War and the Afghan War and conversations with Wall Street managers prior to the 2008 banking crisis.
Meanwhile, Bush’s directive takes special care to protect his “inner circle.” “I further request that the NARA staff pay particular attention to, and appropriately consult with, my designated representatives regarding confidential communication, including electronic communications, containing substantive advice or recommendations involving White House staff serving as Assistants to the President,” Bush wrote.
As Freedom of Information Act requests concerning presidential papers become serviceable five years after the president leaves office, the test of whether the George W. Bush White House will be more forthcoming than the Clinton White House has just started, as more than 200 FOIA requests flowed into the Bush Library in the first week of availability.
Many presidential watchers, though, believe that Bush has little to hide.
“He left the presidency very comfortable with his record. I think that’ll carry through into the release of information from it,” said Martha Kumar, a political science professor at Towson University. “I think he believes his actions were justified and that the records will demonstrate that.”
Backlogs and workflow jams
Bush’s directive will be valid for only 12 years after the end of his presidency. In 2021, all of the Bush presidential papers will become part of the public record, unless Bush explicitly claims executive privilege to keep them sealed.
Of the four former presidents affected by the Presidential Records Act of 1978, only Ronald Reagan asserted his executive privilege, withholding 74 pages that became public only after his death. While Clinton’s directive expired last year, records previously withheld did not re-emerge until February of this year, with about half having been released so far.
No public explanation for the delay has been given, although it has been asserted that the delays were due to the fact that presidential papers must be reviewed by the National Archives and Records Administration by hand, causing a workload jam that may take decades to clear. There were also perceived misunderstandings on how Clinton’s directive was to be understood.
“We had been interpreting the easing letter President Clinton wrote in a particular way and were interpreting it very conservatively,” National Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper told The Associated Press in 2008. “We then discovered in the course of conversations with [Clinton adviser Bruce Lindsey] that the president’s desire was to interpret the easing letter less conservatively and more openly.”