Sealed Hillary documents will go public after '08 primaries

A public disclosure effort that won't come until after the Democratic nomination is decided.

During Tuesday's debate, Hillary Clinton pledged that as president she would use her policy experience as First Lady to the nation's benefit.  But 3 million pages in the presidential archives about her "experience" are under lock and seal, and will not be released to the public.  Barack Obama confronted Hillary about her inability to level with voters:

We have just gone through one of the most secretive administrations inour history. And not releasing, I think, these records, at the sametime, Hillary, as you are making the claim this is the basis for yourexperience, I think is a problem.

So, responding to the pressure, Hillary Clinton's campaign has decided this weekend that they will make the records public after all -- but not at least until after the contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina:

The Clinton library is readying a trove of detail about Hillary RodhamClinton's eight years as first lady in the White House for release inlate January, government lawyers said in a court filing.

But Bill Clinton's lawyer will have the final say on whether 10,000pages of Hillary Clinton's private White House "daily schedules" willbe immediately released to the groups who requested her calendar underthe Freedom of Information Act.

Even so, the documents appear likely to become public within a month oftheir release by the archives, as the general election heats up inFebruary.

This way, Hillary can answer to her opposition and say, "Stop complaining, because they will be released."  Even though this is after the 2008 Democratic nomination will be decided.

Comments

[granny]

Can we smell a rat yet?

How twisted this is all becoming in the Hillary camp; so soon and so clearly. It has such a familiar stench to it.

If the papers can be released "later", why not now?

You can bet they'll be redacted up the kazoo ("national security", you know) and all that will become a cesspool of lawyers and arguements none of which will amount to clarity or the release of real information until long after the bells have tolled and the country and the world is stuck with outcomes built on scaffoldings of dirty money and lies.

[Ted K.]

.....and so goes the Clinton political machine.

[Angela Canterbury]

This post does a good job of pointing out how the timing of the release of Sen. Clinton’s documents does not fit in with her policy of openness in government, but it fails to mention another aspect of the battle to release presidential documents: Bush’s Executive Order. It is an unprecedented expansion of power of the presidents’ authority to control their records. This expansive executive order eviscerates the post-Watergate Presidential Records Act, which made presidential records the property of the government, and then the public. The order has established a veil of presidential secrecy as no explanation for the withholding of documents or records is required by the Executive Order and the records can be held INDEFINITELY. What’s more, in an unprecedented expansion of power, the presidents’ authority to control their records under the order is extended to presidential family members, and vice presidents.

Legislation to repeal the order passed the House, but is somehow stuck in the Senate, but Senator Clinton is not a cosponsor of the bill, the Presidential Records Act Amendments. Why not? If Senator Clinton is really serious about wanting less secrecy, she could demonstrate her interest in openness now by signing on to the bill to repeal the Bush Executive Order that allows records to be kept out of the public domain indefinitely.