Obama Order Could Lead To Release Of Bush Docs

[babylonsister]

Experts: Obama Order Could Let Us See US Attorneys Docs
By Zachary Roth - January 22, 2009, 12:04PM


The experts' verdicts on the potential impact of President Obama's executive order on presidential records are starting to come in. And they're bolstering our initial take that Obama's move could significantly boost efforts to release crucial records that the Bush administration has fought to keep secret.

Doug Kmiec, a constitutional law professor at Pepperdine law school and expert on executive privilege, told TPMmuckraker that the order makes it harder for former presidents to block the release of their documents.

And, crucially, he said it could impact current high-profile struggles over Bush's records, "whether it be the dismissal of US Attorneys, whether it be other assertions of executive privilege dealing with White House emails and the like."

Congress and the Bush White House have been struggling over a key memo that details the level of White House involvement in the US Attorney firings of 2006. And open-government groups have sued the Bush administration to gain access to White House emails on a range of subjects, including the Valerie Plame leak probe and the decision to invade Iraq.

Kmiec, a noted conservative legal scholar who nonetheless supported Obama's campaign, said he had done some work with the Obama transition team, and had offered his assistance to the new administration.

Kmiec said the order appears to shift power from former presidents to the current administration, and to the National Archivist. Under an order issued by President Bush, former presidents and vice presidents could compel the Archivist to keep documents secret. Under the new order, former presidents can still ask the Archives to do so. But the burden of proof is squarely on the former president to prove that secrecy is in the nation's interest, and the Obama administration can decline the request if it's not convinced. That approach reorients things toward the original intention of the Presidential Records Act, passed in the wake of Watergate.

more...

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/01/experts_obama_order_could_let_us_see_us_attorneys.php

[Gman]

1. Anything important was probably shredded in the last 2 months

I guarantee you there will be no smoking guns in Bush's papers.

[Virginia Dare]

3. From the looks of Cheney on Inauguration Day, don't bet on that..

he wasn't a man who injured his back, he was a man in the midst of a nervous breakdown. I suspect he was sweating bullets over whether he has managed to dot all his "i"s and cross all his "t"s. I suspect too many people out there know too much and they can't all be suicided. Shrubya will throw Dicky boy under the bus at the earliest opportunity.

I suspect a bomb will drop in the next 30 days, and then Dick Cheney will join Kenny-boy Lay in that great undisclosed location in the sky, or whereever it happens to be.

[rosesaylavee]

2. Thank you President Obama.

:patriot:

[BOSSHOG]

4. As a person with conservative values would say - If ya have nothing to hide