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Administration Trying To Lock Up History

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By CHARLES N. NELSON

Published: December 19, 2007

If your holiday shopping this season finds you in a bookstore, ask for the section on presidential history. You'll find literally hundreds of works of presidential history.

Now, imagine it's 2033, and you're looking for a nice e-book history of the Clinton or Bush presidency.

What you find is truly disappointing: Where is the background, the context provided by all of those once-classified memos detailing the West Wing intrigue that makes history truly come to life? Instead, we get the best guesses of historians working without their tools: the primary documents that make history, well, history.

Sounds like a nightmare, eh? It's reality, for the moment, and it will rob us of our nation's historical record unless "We The People" wake up and do something.

In November 2001, just as the National Archives was preparing to release a small portion of the records of the Reagan administration, President George W. Bush issued Executive Order 13233. The order gives former presidents and their assignees the right to prevent the release of presidential papers - forever.

Historians, most of Congress and Americans who know that our history begets our future, howled in protest. Our elected representatives slowly swung into action. The House passed The Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007 by a veto-proof margin (333-93) with 104 Republicans breaking ranks with the administration.

The bill would nullify the Bush executive order. The bill also has broad bipartisan support in the Senate.

Then on Sept. 24, 2007, Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., objected to floor consideration of the House bill, holding up a vote. Bunning has refused to state the reasons for his opposition. Recently, the White House reiterated its threat to veto the bill should it pass Congress.

Charles N. Davis is the executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

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