Bush's executive-privilege two-step
His documents are too precious to give Congress, but those of the previous administration aren't worth protecting -- as long as they make Bill Clinton look bad.
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By Joshua Micah Marshall
Feb. 7, 2002 / For the last year President Bush's White House has pursued what amounts to a two-tiered policy on executive privilege and prerogative: Nixonian secrecy when it comes to the records of his own administration, and a let-it-all-hang-out openness when it comes to those of his reviled predecessor. Even the Bush administration's inconsistency is inconsistent: Clinton-era records that tarnish the former president's reputation are offered up with alacrity, while those that might cast him in a better light are hoarded as executive-branch secrets.
In the brewing battle over the release of Vice President Cheney's energy task force records, Cheney says he's taking a stand on principle. And he has a point: From its earliest days, the second Bush administration has demonstrated a deep ideological commitment to restoring the prerogatives of the executive branch. Right out of the box, the White House put a freeze on the release of Reagan-era records scheduled to be made public last year. Whether or not the White House has something to hide, Cheney's refusal to turn over the energy task force records is in line with this stance.
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The problem with this commitment to principle, however, is how ready the Bush White House is to abandon it for political convenience. Press reports have already noted the contrast between the White House's current stance on the Cheney records and the release last summer of transcripts of private conversations between former President Bill Clinton and then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. But to date none has detailed the tortured, even comical lengths to which the Bush White House has gone in violating its own stated principles to try to embarrass Clinton.
Last August, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff reported on excerpts of three conversations between Clinton and Barak that touched on the then-notorious, but now long-forgotten Marc Rich pardon. When congressional investigators led by Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., had requested the transcripts, the Bush White House provided them. "The two leaders had no reason to believe their confidential chat would ever become public," wrote Isikoff. And for good reason: The release of such transcripts of private conversations to a congressional investigating committee (let alone their subsequently leaking to the press) is all but unprecedented.
Administration officials argue that the release of the Clinton-Barak transcripts was simply part of their long-standing effort to make more information available to Congress. "The excerpts were not classified," a White House spokesperson told Salon last August. "The decision to make the documents available was entirely consistent with past practice. You don't just slap Top Secret on a whole document."
Perhaps not. But numerous knowledgeable observers in and out of government say that's not how the executive branch -- particularly this executive branch -- normally acts.
"Given the secrecy that the Bush-Cheney administration has pursued, it's inconceivable that they would turn this information over if it affected President Bush," says Phil Schiliro, Democratic staff director for the House Government Reform Committee, the committee now trying to gain access to the Cheney energy records.
Lynne Weil, press secretary for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the decision "highly unusual. People who have worked for the Foreign Relations Committee for years can't recall the last time such a thing happened."
Even open-government activists who cheer the decision, like the National Security Archives' Tom Blanton, can't help expressing a note of surprise. "This kind of disclosure is exactly what the law calls for. But the extraordinary, almost complete deference the courts give the executive branch on matters of national security [means this sort of thing almost never happens]. This disclosure was uncharacteristically helpful."
For his part, Blanton believes the White House's penchant for secrecy really is rooted in ideology. When I asked him why this same ideological concern for the prerogatives of the presidency didn't extend to the Clinton transcripts, he pointed out that I was ignoring "a rather more focused version of that ideology that's about hating Bill Clinton."
