I've been using the Google and the Internets, but I can't find any news about whether the presidential records from the Bush administration, especially those of Vice President Cheney, were successfully transferred to safe public hands during the change in administrations.
There have been a string of legal challenges and lawsuits by CREW and by Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, among others. Cheney, in particular, did not want to turn over his records.
So does anybody know what finally was transferred to the public trust? I've been looking, and I can't seem to find out.
There was a good article in the New York Times on December 27 about the many problems that the experts were predicting in the process.
Under federal law, the government has "complete ownership, possession and control" of presidential and vice-presidential records. The moment Mr. Bush leaves office, the National Archives becomes legally responsible for "the custody, control and preservation" of the records.
Archives officials who disclosed the emergency plan said it would mean that the agency would initially take over parts of the White House storage system, freezing the contents on Jan. 20. Only later, after further study, will archivists try to move the records into the futuristic computer system they have devised as a repository for digital data.
Questions about the archives’ capacity have added a new element to the uneasiness felt by open-government advocates and historians, who already fear that departing White House officials, particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, may not turn over everything.
Link to article here:
Bush Data Threatens to Overload Archives
Among the other things that Cheney said about his records, this phrase is quoted in the article:
J. William Leonard, who stepped down in January as the top archives official overseeing classified records, said there was ample reason for skepticism.
Mr. Leonard, who clashed while in government with the vice president’s office, noted a remark that Mr. Cheney made in September 2007, at the presidential library of Gerald R. Ford, for whom Mr. Cheney once worked as White House chief of staff.
"I’m told researchers like to come and dig through my files, to see if anything interesting turns up," Mr. Cheney said. "I want to wish them luck, but the files are pretty thin. I learned early on that if you don’t want your memos to get you in trouble some day, just don’t write any."
The rest of the records are in question, too. There are still many days from a crucial period in 2003 when, if Bush's lawyers are to be believed, apparently nobody in the executive branch wrote any emails at all.
So I've been watching and waiting to see if the National Archives had released any early reports on what they got from the Bushies.
I haven't heard a peep. It's early days yet, I know. But if I were responsible for those records, I would at least lift the lid on the Cheney boxes to make sure they weren't full of bricks instead of paper.
Does anybody else know more than I do?