05/27/02
The Baltimore Sun
by Jules Witcover
WASHINGTON -- The fight between the Bush administration and Congress
over executive privilege and presidential secrecy, most prominently seen
in the congressional demand for more information on White House contacts
with Enron officials, is also underway on another front.
The White House is making strong efforts to block a bipartisan House
bill that would repeal President Bush's executive order in November imposing
serious restrictions on the release of presidential papers and records.
The bill, backed strongly by the academic community, would nullify the
Bush order that expands presidential executive privilege and extends it
to incumbent and former vice presidents and even, after the death of a
sitting president, to designated surviving relatives and others.
At the request of the White House, a panel of the House Government Reform
Committee has three times postponed action on the bill, which would be
a conspicuous slap at the president. Its chief sponsor is a Republican,
Rep. Steve Horn of California, and it is also backed by the full committee's
Republican chairman, Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, the nemesis of former
President Bill Clinton in the Whitewater and other investigations during
his presidency.
The White House is so concerned that in recent days it successfully
pressured one of the Republican heroes of campaign finance reform, Rep.
Christopher Shays of Connecticut, to withdraw his co-sponsorship of the
legislation that would repeal the more restrictive Bush executive order.
Mr. Shays' action took the chief sponsors of the bill by surprise because
he is regarded as among the more independent Republicans in the House.
He showed no reluctance to buck the president as co-sponsor of the House
version of the finance reform legislation barring "soft money" contributions
to national parties, first opposed and then reluctantly signed by Mr. Bush.
With Mr. Shays taking his name off the bill, another Republican on the
full committee, Rep. Connie Morella of Maryland, signed on.
Repeal of the Bush order would roll back the release of presidential
papers to more open guidelines last set by an executive order of President
Ronald Reagan on Jan. 16, 1989, just before he left office.
The original Presidential Records Act was passed in 1978 in the aftermath
of the controversy over the papers and Oval Office tape recordings of former
President Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal.
It provided custody of such materials by the National Archives and access
to most of them under the Freedom of Information Act five years after a
president leaves office.
Certain "deliberative documents," however, would be kept closed to the
public for 12 years.
Mr. Reagan's order spelled out how incumbent and former presidents could
invoke further executive privilege regarding such internal documents, subject
to agreement of the archivist and attorney general.
The Bush order as of now removes that condition and enables the vice
president to invoke it, an extension vigorously opposed by those who say
only a president with executive powers qualifies for the privilege.
Presidential scholars testifying before the subcommittee argued against
the Bush order on grounds it would impede important historical research.
But Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, ranking Democrat on the subcommittee,
has flatly impugned the president's political motives.
"What is he trying to hide?" she asked at one point.
"Is there something in his father's papers about the Iran-contra scandal
that would embarrass the family?"
The White House effort to block the congressional repeal of the Bush
executive order comes at a time of increasing claims of national security
connected with the war on terrorism as grounds to withhold information.
But it smacks more of the White House penchant for using executive privilege
as a catch-all to justify administration secrecy.
Jules Witcover's column from The Sun's Washington bureau appears Mondays,
Wednesdays and Fridays.
|