This is the first of what I hope will be many monthly blog entries. My intention in starting this blog was to create a professional development venue that would force me to write in a serious way about issues in librarianship - especially those issues of interest to subject specialists in history or related fields in the humanities and social sciences. So, my goal is to select one issue each month to explore and comment upon. I don't anticipate that these will necessarily be elaborate commentaries, though some may be longer than others.
An issue that currently attracts my interest is that of the Presidential Records Act - specifically, the Bush administration's attempt to rewrite the law by executive fiat. For those who've lost track of this controversy, it revolves around Bush's 2001 Executive Order 13233, which, among other things, overturned the 1978 Presidential Records Act (PRA), and gave both former and current presidents (and vice-presidents !) the power to withhold presidential records, or even to block their release indefinitely.
The 1978 PRA gave former presidents the power to withhold the release of their records under FOIA requests for up to 12 years after leaving office. In response to Executive Order 13233, Public Citizen filed suit in US District Court in November 2001 on behalf of the AHA, OAH, the National Security Archive and others, to stop implementation of the order. This case has been working its way through the courts since that time, and in October 2007, a Federal judge struck down those portions of the executive order that broadened former presidents' rights to withhold or delay the release of records. The judge did not, however, rule on the constitutionality of the order, or on provisions giving the heirs of presidents and vice-presidents control over the release of records.
Earlier in 2007, legislation was drafted in Congress - HR 1255, the Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007 - that would: overturn Executive Order 13233, establish a deadline for the review of records, limit the authority of former presidents to withhold records, require the sitting President to make any claims to executive privilege for withholding records, and eliminate executive privilege for vice-presidents. HR 1255 passed the House, and then Democrats in the Senate introduced a companion bill, S 886. The latter bill was referred to the Senate committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The Bush administration has threatened to veto any final legislation Congress may pass, claiming encroachment on executive privilege.
In March of this year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid brought the Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007 (HR 1255 & S 886) to the floor for unanimous consent, but was blocked by Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. So, this vital piece of corrective legislation still languishes in committee.
For historians and librarians, this legislation cuts to the heart of what we do. Scholars of presidential history in particular are hampered by the restrictions of Bush's executive order. The trend of restricting access to information formerly available has become a disturbing one, particularly evident under the Bush administration. Taken together with actions such as the destruction of White House officials' emails on the servers of the Republican National Committee, Vice President Cheney's attempt to block access to the visitor's log at his official residence, and the reclassification of previously declassified documents from the National Archives and Records Administration, this represent a reversal of the trend towards more transparency in government begun in the 1970s. These are developments that scholars, public intellectuals, and civil libertarians should rightly view with alarm.
