Bush’s Crusade for Smaller Government
Bush Seeks Smaller Presidential Library
President Bush is learning from Hillary Clinton.
Apparently anxious to avoid future controversies over Presidential documents at Bush’s Library-To-Be, the White House is reducing it’s document mountain unilaterally. They have told a federal court that the as many as five million lost Executive Branch emails are nobody’s business.
And screw off:
“It is clearly established law, however, that the President’s recordkeeping practices are not
judicially reviewable…This Court may not, as plaintiffs request, order the restoration and retrieval of any
allegedly missing federal records. The D.C. Circuit has held that such relief must be achieved, if
at all, through the administrative and legislative scheme set forth by Congress. Plaintiffs’
broader claims under the FRA[Federal Records Act], therefore, must be dismissed…. under the FRA such relief can be sought, if at all, only by the government through the FRA’s detailed and exclusive
administrative enforcement system.”
The National Security Archive had sued, and got a federal court order blocking the Administration from destroying documents or foreclosing their recovery. Bush is seeking to overturn this court order.
Bush killed automatic archiving of emails in 2002, allowing White House functionaries to manually delete their work. Nothing has been done by the White House or National Archives to fix this, prevent other losses, or find the lost documents since the problem was discovered.
NSA’s rebuttal argues that private parties like themselves have standing to sue for document preservation, and that the Archivist of th e United States has take no action to recover documents which even the White Press Secretary acknowledged disappeared. As the NSA says, the Bush Administration is inviting them to rely on the care of those who “lost” the emails, or who have not pursued them.
