Title: How long for the FOIA?
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_secretgov.html
Excerpt:
....MOYERS: The year was 1974. President Ford’s chief of staff at the time was a young man named Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld’s deputy was another young man named Dick Cheney.
THOMAS BLANTON (EXEC. DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE): President Ford vetoed the Freedom of Information Act as we know it today. And he vetoed it because he and Rumsfeld and Cheney believed that it took away too much Presidential power. It allowed courts to order the release of documents even when the President said they shouldn’t be released. Then, these guys fought it tooth and nail and lost. Now - these guys are re-opening those battles, and with ninety percent approval ratings, they think they can win.
MOYERS: Back then, Congress overrode Ford's veto of the Freedom of Information Act.
Today, Dick Cheney is the Vice President of the United States, Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense.
KIRTLEY: President Bush, it’s hard to say what his personal views are, but he has included people in his administration who have indicated in the past their predilection towards secrecy and what I would characterize as their outright contempt for the public right to know.
MOYERS: Soon after he took office, George W. Bush made his own feelings known.
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE (PRESS CONFERENCE TAPE): Would you take this moment to articulate your own view of First Amendment freedoms and give us a sense of the fundamental message that you will send to your Administration as it makes decisions on whether to open or close access to government information?
President BUSH (FROM TAPE): Yeah. I – uh – heh – yes. There needs to be balance when it comes to freedom of information laws. There are some things that when I discuss in the privacy of the Oval Office – or national security matters – that should just not be in the national arena. I'll give you one area, though, where I'm very cautious and that's about e-mailing. I used to be an avid e-mailer. And I e-mailed to my daughters or e-mailed to my father. And I don't want those e-mails to be in the public domain. So I don't e-mail any more. Out of concern for freedom of information laws, but also concern for my privacy. And, uh, but we'll cooperate with the press unless we think it's a matter of national security or something that's entirely private.
SUSMAN: The President sets the tone for the executive branch. When the President says, "I’ve stopped using e-mail because of the Freedom of Information Act", you know, I think that that sends the wrong message to those government employees who generate documents on e-mail that constitute official public records. And so to somehow inhibit the generation of records that constitute our nation’s history, is setting the wrong tone.
MOYERS: Once the tone was set, the policy followed. On November 1st of last year, President Bush quietly issued a sweeping Executive Order that — despite its title — effectively repealed the Presidential Records Act. Even some of his strongest supporters were taken aback....
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