The Clintons' Records

So it turns out that — in the middle of a desperate primary battle — the Clintons are withholding from the public documents from the William Jefferson Clinton presidential library. This was denied back in December, when our roving national correspondent, Josh Gerstein, reported that about 2,600 pages of documents were being withheld at Mr. Clinton's direction, despite assurances from the former president's office that he "has not blocked the release of a single document from his library." That story was met by derision from the Clinton camp, which claimed that the article contained unspecified errors and misstated how the process of releasing presidential records worked.

The essential accuracy of Mr. Gerstein's dispatch was borne out over the weekend when USA Today reported that the National Archives was withholding all or some of 1500 pages of pardon-related records the newspaper requested under the Freedom of Information Act. USA Today said about 300 of those pages consisted of internal White House documents. The paper did not indicate what portion of the documents were withheld for national security or privacy reasons, which Mr. Clinton has no role in assessing, and what portion were withheld as confidential advice, a designation which Mr. Clinton can waive or assert at will.

The news in the USA Today report is that the pardon-related records were made available to Mr. Clinton's representative, Bruce Lindsey, and that he declined to review them, according to the library's deputy director, Emily Robison. The Clinton camp has maintained that a letter Mr. Clinton wrote to the archives in 2002 would not cause automatic withholding of documents, but rather the referral of those documents to Mr. Lindsey. So it's another debate on what the meaning of "is" is.

Complicating the issue further are statements from the National Archives on Friday that it may have interpreted Mr. Clinton's 2002 letter and an earlier version in 1994 too conservatively. "It is for that reason there was more material withheld in this pardon material than we would have if we had been reviewing this stuff later," an archives spokeswoman, Susan Cooper, told the Associated Press. Yet, when given the chance to look over what the archives had done on pardons, Mr. Clinton's team took a pass.

The Clinton camp is also persisting in its claim that Mr. Clinton has no responsibility for any withholding of records since employees of the National Archives propose the actual deletions from individual records. Last November's version of this argument was a statement from Mr. Lindsey that "Bill Clinton has not blocked the release of a single document from his Library." This is pure sophistry. The Clinton camp's claims that it has nothing to do with withholding orders being carried out at its direction and with its consent are reminiscent of King Henry's musing about Thomas Becket: "Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?"

Once Mr. Clinton has given the order, it matters little whether Mr. Lindsey or an anonymous archivist wields the black marker. The secrecy is for Mr. Clinton and, in some instances Mrs. Clinton, to defend. It doesn't matter, as Mr. Clinton and his aides invariably point out, that the ex-president has urged a broader release of his records than has any previous president. Some fans of Mr. Clinton also point out that his administration had a far more pro-disclosure policy on Freedom of Information Act issues than has President Bush's White House. Mr. Clinton also vetoed legislation that would have amounted to an American version of the United Kingdom's Official Secrets Act. None of these things excuses Mr. Clinton from being called on to justify the secrecy enveloping a growing number of his historical records amid an election.

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This is an issue that won't be going away anytime soon. While the pardon records seem to have no direct connection to Senator Clinton, the roughly 11,000 pages of her White House schedules do. They are set to emerge from the archives by March 20. Mr. Lindsey and the archives have already declared that he proposed releasing more information from the schedules than the archivists, acting on Mr. Clinton's orders, initially proposed. However, it was notable that the longtime aide to Mr. Clinton did not say that he waived all of his rights under the Presidential Records Act with respect to the schedules. In November, Mr. Clinton said, "We will do our best to get all information out that's in our documents consistent with the rules of the Archives." As soon as Mrs. Clinton's schedules are out, the Clintons are likely to face another barrage of questions about whether they are offering all the transparency they have claimed.