What Are They Hiding...?

Why Roberts’ Affirmative

Action File Is Missing
Link Here

Whatever happened to the Supreme Court nominee John Roberts’ file on affirmative action, it can be definitively stated that this is all President Bush’s fault. Sound a little extreme? Not really.

Back in 1978, Congress passed the Presidential Records Act out of fear that “President Richard Nixon would never allow public access to his papers.” The Act states that “a former president’s papers belong to the American people” and it is the duty of the National Archives to make the papers available to the public. The law also allowed “former presidents to prevent access to some records for up to 12 years.”

In his last two days in office, Reagan issued an executive order requiring “that both the current and former president be given 30 days’ notice before the release of any presidential papers. During that time, the current or former administration could demand further delays to check for any documents that might fall under executive privilege.” Reagan claimed the full 12 years before his papers were to be released.

In 2001, the deadline on the Reagan papers was up. The Archivist gave notice to the White House as well as the Office of President Reagan. According to the Stanford Law Review, the papers were ready and President Reagan’s representative gave the okay for release, stating “that Reagan’s Administration did not desire to claim privilege on any of the withheld records, and that it had no problem with all of them being released to the public.”

But the papers weren’t released. President Bush wouldn’t allow it.

The “[Bush] White House asked for three extensions to review these papers. According to John Carlin, the National Archivist, none of the…documents in question were ever examined by White House officials.” [Stanford Law Review, 11/1/02] That’s because Bush administration officials weren’t reviewing the papers, they were reviewing the law itself.

The White House filed for extension after extension until President Bush issued his own executive order, giving “the White House or former presidents veto powers on the release” of presidential papers.

It is that November 1st, 2001 Executive Order the White House has been using to justify “vetting thousands of pages of Roberts’ papers archived at the Reagan Library before deciding which ones it will provide the Senate in anticipation of Roberts’ confirmation hearings.”

In other words, the affirmative action file on Roberts would have been in the public domain – rather than lost somewhere in Neverland – as far back as 2001…if it weren’t for President Bush.

---Hmmmmm---