Docs suggest Bill keeping Hillary's papers under wraps at presidential library
Obama campaign pays a visit
For those hoping to illuminate Hillary Clinton's role in her husband's administration, a visit to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark., may be a wasted one.
Although the library has been open since 2004 and its records have been subject to public-records requests for nearly two years, just one-half of 1 percent of the library's 78 million documents and 20 million e-mails have been made public, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff reports. Among the documents hidden from public view are memos detailing Hillary Clinton's advice to the then-president on healthcare reform and Bill Clinton's advice to his wife in the run-up to her 2000 Senate campaign.
The former president said the Bush administration has "slowed down the opening of my own records," although a White House spokesman told Isikoff that the administration has not blocked any documents' release and is not reviewing any.
A Clinton spokesman told the magazine that Clinton's criticism was a "general" reference to a controversial executive order Bush issued in 2001 that established more layers of review from current and former presidents. (The order was recently overturned.)
"But documents NEWSWEEK obtained under a [Freedom of Information Act] request (made to the Archives in Washington, not the Clinton library) suggest that, while publicly saying he wants to ease restrictions on his records, Clinton has given the Archives private instructions to tightly control the disclosure of chunks of his archive," Isikoff writes. "Among the document categories Clinton asked the Archives to 'consider for withholding' in a November 2002 letter: 'confidential communications' involving foreign-policy issues, 'sensitive policy, personal or political' matters and 'legal issues and advice' including all matters involving investigations by Congress, the Justice Department and independent counsels (a category that would cover, among other matters, Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky and the pardons of Marc Rich and others). Another restriction: 'communications directly between the President and First Lady, and their families, unless routine in nature.'"
The recommended seal on Hillary Clinton's papers goes beyond restrictions by Bill Clinton's successors Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, neither of whom imposed any controls over their wives' papers.
"It does sound pretty expansive. You start to wonder what's not included," Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, told the magazine.
A Clinton-appointed former archives chief, John Carlin, said the restrictions were "not surprising" considering "all they went through in office," and he noted in an interview that there's no telling how Clinton's opponents would use the records.
Indeed, at least one campaign already has paid a visit to the Clinton library. As Time's Ana Marie Cox notes, Obama's most recent campaign filing shows a $9.30 charge for "printing" at the presidential library.
"In case you were wondering, copies at the Clinton library are $.15 a page," Cox writes, "so that's 62 pages of oppo gold that Obama's people got their hands on."
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