WASHINGTON - Thousands of pages of Clinton-era White House documents will be released Friday in Little Rock, a spokesman for the National Archives said Tuesday.
Clintons
In late February, Politico reported that 33,000 pages of records, some of them detailing advice given to then-President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton by top aides, had not been made public in January 2013 when restrictions on their release expired. Under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, presidents can seal these records for 12 years after they leave office; Clinton’s last day in office was Jan. 20, 2001.
Under the terms of Executive Order 13489, signed by President Barack Obama on Jan. 21, 2009, the documents can be withheld even longer if the president invokes executive privilege.
The National Archives and Records Administration, which controls the records, released about 4,000 pages Feb. 28 and said it planned to release more within two weeks.
The Washington Post and Politico reported that the White House had approved the release of about 25,000 pages.
The White House told the archives it had until March 26 to review the remaining records.
Tens of millions more pages are still being processed; no timeline is in place for releasing the rest of them, according to National Archives spokesman Miriam Kleiman.
National conservative groups have pushed for the documents’ release, in large part to see how they affect Hillary Clinton, the former first lady, U.S. senator, secretary of state and 2008 presidential candidate who is thought to be weighing a 2016 White House bid.
Slightly more than 2 million pages of records from the Clinton administration have been released, Kleiman said. That equals about 4 percent of the collection, she said.
Among other things, archivists are sorting through roughly 78 million pages of records and 20 million emails, Politico reported.
The National Archives and Records Administration, created in 1934, manages the archives in Washington, which include the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Emancipation Proclamation, as well as 13 presidential libraries and 22 regional records facilities.
On Friday, the Republican National Committee filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Clinton Library asking for documents and correspondence regarding withholding, reviewing or considering the documents between members of the Clinton Library staff, the National Archives staff and Bill Clinton’s staff.
“Americans deserve to know who was responsible for keeping on lock-down documents that should have been released over a year ago,” committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement.
Kleiman stressed that the delay is not a “conspiracy,” but a result of the small number of archivists available to work on the documents.
Archivists are working to make the documents available both in paper form at the Clinton Library and online, she said. Kleiman did not know how many archivists were working on the Clinton papers.
The batch of documents released in February is separated into 18 groups on the Clinton Library website by topic, such as the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands; Hillary Rodham Clinton on Children’s Issues and Women’s Rights; and [Press Secretary] Lissa Muscatine, First Lady’s Press Office. Sprinkled throughout are doodles and handwritten notes.
They are available online at http://clintonlibrary.gov/formerlywithhelddocuments.html
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 03/12/2014