You may never know!

["Ken Hanly" <khanly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From the Guardian (UK)

3.45pm update

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Bush blocks public access to White House papers

Sarah Left
Friday November 2, 2001

The US president, George Bush, last night signed an executive order that
allows either a past or sitting president to block access to White House
papers, a move that has angered historians, journalists and former president
Bill Clinton.
The order amends - and some argue, reverses - a 1978 law that allowed
journalists, historians and other interested parties to read presidential
papers twelve years after the term of office finished.

The law, known as the Presidential Records Act, was the result of a lengthy
legal battle over the papers of Watergate president Richard Nixon.

Under the terms of Mr Bush's order, any sitting or former president could
veto the release of presidential papers.

The current president could not override a former president's veto, nor
could a former president override the decision of sitting president.

Anyone seeking access to the papers could appeal the veto in court, but that
would necessitate an expensive and potentially lengthy legal challenge.

The immediate provocation for last night's order is believed to be an
outstanding request for 68,000 pages of former president Ronald Reagan's
papers, which should have been opened to public scrutiny in January.

The Bush administration has delayed that release three times, and yesterday
White House counsel Alberto Gonzales would not say when or if the Reagan
documents will be placed in the public domain.

Some historians have voiced suspicions that the Bush administration is
worried about what the Reagan papers might reveal about officials now
working for Mr Bush.

They include the secretary of state, Colin Powell, the budget director,
Mitch Daniels Jr, and the White House chief of staff, Andrew Card.

The White House defended the order as establishing a procedure for
implementing the 1978 Act.

A White House official said: "History has shown that former presidents
release virtually all of their documents and this executive order won't
stand in the way of that."

However the order would also mean that Mr Bush's personal papers detailing
the decision-making process in the current war on terrorism could remain
secret in perpetuity.

Bruce Craig, the director of the National Coordinating Committee for the
Promotion of History, called the order "blatantly unlawful top to bottom"
and predicted a quick legal challenge.

"This is about confidential information - communication between a president
and top people - that they would simply prefer not to be released to the
public," he said.

Vanderbilt University historian Hugh Graham said the draft was a "real
monster," and complained, "They [the administration] would reverse an act of
Congress with an executive order."

According to a report in the Washington Post, a lawyer for Mr Clinton wrote
to the White House objecting to the order.

The paper quotes an aide to Mr Clinton as saying, "A government's legitimacy
is based on the trust of its people, and when decisions are made on behalf
of the American people, citizens eventually have to be able to see the
process of how those decisions came to be."