(U-WIRE) AUSTIN, Texas — An executive order from President Bush blocking the release of presidential documents since the Reagan administration will be challenged in court by a group of several organizations and individuals, including University of Texas professor William Roger Louis.
The order, issued Nov. 1, allows incumbent and former presidents an unlimited amount of time to make the records public. It supersedes the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which provided for the release of all documents — except for those concerning matters of national security — 12 years after the president’s term ends.
Louis, a history professor, said the executive order is unlawful because it violates the Presidential Records Act of 1978. Louis is also president of the American Historical Association, one of the groups expected to be involved in the lawsuit.
“The executive order is imposing unnecessary barricades to the public access to public documents,” Louis said. “The AHA stands in principle against unnecessary governmental secrecy and the restriction of access to federal documents.”
Bush has not said why he issued the order.
The Organization of American Historians, The National Security Archives and the Public Citizen Litigation Group, as well as Hugh Graham, a history professor at Vanderbilt University, and Stanley Kutler, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin, are also expected to participate in the suit.
Scott Nelson, an attorney for Public Citizen, said the groups hope to accomplish two things with the suit.
“One, we want to get a court to declare that the executive order is unlawful,” he said. “And the other is to spring the documents of Reagan that have been held and been in limbo.”
He said he expects the lawsuit to be filed this week.
Arnita Jones, executive director of AHA, said one provision of the order allows the family of a deceased president to decide whether certain documents should be disclosed.
“You get into the situation of people who have never been elected into anything making decisions about when and how and whether the American people can look at their own records,” Jones said.
Nelson said he believes the order stems from several factors, one of which is the relationship of the Bush administration to previous administrations.
“There are very close ties between this administration and the administration that was there before,” Nelson said. “The view is that they really don’t know what might be there, but just in case there is something embarrassing there, they want to make sure somebody has the ability to block it from coming out.”