FAYETTEVILLE -- The diaries of former U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers will be permanently removed from the Bumpers Papers collection at the University of Arkansas library, where they have been available for public inspection for the past year, said Brent Bumpers, the former senator's son.
"Clearly, these papers were strictly for himself and family and should never have ended up with his Senate papers," Brent Bumpers said via email Thursday.
He said the diaries will be kept by the family and eventually passed down to Dale Bumpers' seven grandchildren.
Brent Bumpers questioned the authenticity of the diaries in mid-March when excerpts critical of Bill and Hillary Clinton were printed in Mother Jones magazine and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
"This is just bizarre to me," Brent Bumpers said on March 17. "I'm just not buying it."
But after reading the diaries, he changed his mind.
"The musings do appear to be authentic," Brent Bumpers said in the email. "The reason for my initial skepticism -- before seeing any of the documents -- was simply the idea of him being a 'diary keeper' and the complete lack of any prior reference to such documents by him or any staff member."
Brent Bumpers said it appears his father "dictated some thoughts sporadically during a few of his years in office." The diaries consist of about 200 typewritten pages in 10 manila folders covering parts of the years 1973, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1992 and 1993. Dale Bumpers was a U.S. senator from 1975-99. He served as Arkansas' governor from 1971-75.
Brent Bumpers said his father had probably forgotten about the diaries. Otherwise he would have used excerpts from them in his memoir, The Best Lawyer in a One-Lawyer Town, which was published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2004.
"He did not do that nor are there any references whatsoever to any such written recollections or the keeping of a diary in his book," said Brent Bumpers.
He said his father, who is 89 years old, doesn't remember keeping a diary. He said Dale Bumpers always admired the Clintons so some of the diary entries seemed suspicious.
In 1982 diary entries, Bumpers wrote that the Clintons were obsessed with political ambition and that Bill Clinton had problems "when character is required to make the right decision."
"I doubt that I've ever known anybody as manicly [sic] ambitious for political office, but who simply doesn't have the judgment or character to deal with it once he gets it," the diary says about Bill Clinton in an entry dated June 11, 1982.
"Everything centers around them and their ambitions," according to a Sept. 16, 1982, entry. "You can never do quite enough for him and Hillary."
Clinton was governor of Arkansas from 1979-81 and again from 1983-92, when he was elected president. Now, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is considering a run for the White House. Bumpers and the Clintons are Democrats.
An entry in the diary on June 11, 1982, refers to Bill Clinton as a "tragic figure" but says he was popular with Arkansas voters.
"They like him, but they know he'll do anything to get the office," the entry says. "He's bright, his heart's in the right place, he's energetic, he really wants to make a difference, and he cares deeply about his state. He just simply cannot sort it all out when character is required to make the right decision."
The diaries also contained remarks critical of other politicians, whether or not they were from Arkansas.
"Unquestionably, Ronald Reagan will go down in history as the worst, or close to the worst, president the United States has ever suffered," according to an April 29, 1982, entry.
The diaries were included with 1,142 boxes of materials Dale Bumpers donated to the university in 2000. The pages, which appear to have been transcribed by a secretary who worked in Bumpers' Washington office, had been available to the public at the library since March 2014.
The Bumpers Papers are housed in the UA library's special collections department. The collection includes biographical materials, correspondence, legislative and committee materials, personal and office records, speeches, photographs, audiovisual materials and collected artifacts.
Included in that last category are 12 of Bumpers' congressional license plates, a bust of Hubert H. Humphrey, two "vintage rotary dial" phones from Bumpers' law office/hardware store in Charleston, Ark., and a pair of size 12 saddle oxfords emblazoned with running Razorbacks.
The footwear had been displayed in Bumpers' Capitol Hill office.
"I'm still upset about your not selling me those wonderful red-and-white patent-leather Razorback shoes I'd try on in your reception area," President Clinton wrote to Bumpers in an April 30, 1997, letter.
The Bumpers collection is the second-largest in the UA libraries next to the papers of former Sen. J. William Fulbright, which consists of more than 1,200 boxes.
Brent Bumpers had the diaries temporarily pulled from the public collection on March 18.
On Wednesday, the diaries were still listed online as items in the very first box -- Series I, Subseries 1, Box 1 -- of the Bumpers Papers: libinfo.uark.edu/SpecialCollections/findingaids/mc1490/1.asp. Series I includes 12 boxes of "personal materials" with information dating from 1886 to 2010.
According to the website, "Series I consists of material pertaining to Dale Bumpers' personal and family life and his writing activities."
Laura Jacobs, UA's associate vice chancellor for university relations, said Wednesday that the university hadn't been notified by Bumpers family members that they wanted the diaries permanently removed from the collection.
According to the "deed of gift," Jacobs said, the Bumpers family has the right to remove items from the collection.
The agreement allows the university to restrict access to any papers that would constitute an unwarranted invasion of privacy or libel a living person. The university also can restrict Bumpers materials that relate to investigations or confidential business affairs, according to the document.
Beyond that, the donor "may choose to restrict ... any other records" in the collection, according to the deed.
Jacobs said library administrators knew of no other requests for donated documents to be removed, at least over the past 14 years.
Erika Dowell, associate director and head of Lilly Library Public Services at Indiana University Bloomington, said it's not unusual for donors to request documents to be returned.
"Returning material after a donation should be governed by the donor agreement between the donor and the institution," Dowell said in an email. "Realistically, there are exceptions made. Perhaps confidential medical records were mistakenly included. A library might seek to return those if someone runs across them in processing the collection. Or an influential donor could insist on the return of some items. It might be hard for a library to resist some types of requests, even if they contradict the donor agreement."
Bumpers is known as one of Bill Clinton's most eloquent defenders. He gave an impassioned speech on the Senate floor during Clinton's impeachment trial on Jan. 21, 1999.
Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, then was acquitted in the Senate on Feb. 12, 1999, three weeks after Bumpers' speech.
Bumpers, age 73 at the time, had retired early that January after 24 years in the Senate. Clinton's defense team asked Bumpers to return to the Capitol and give a closing argument.
Bumpers twice considered running for president, in 1984 and 1988. During his career, Bumpers defeated some of the giants in Arkansas politics: Democrat Orval Faubus and Republican Winthrop Rockefeller for governor in 1970, and Democrat Fulbright for the Senate in 1974.
This is the second time in the past year that the university has restricted media access to Clinton-related material in its archives.
In June, the Washington Free Beacon was denied access to UA's special collections after the publication copied and posted audio of a Hillary Clinton interview online without seeking permission to publish. Access was restored by August.
UA's policy requires a researcher to fill out a form asking for permission before publishing materials obtained from the library's special collections. The publication had refused to follow that policy.
The Free Beacon's lawyer, Kurt Wimmer, has called the suspension "a clear assault on the First Amendment principles that are fundamental to libraries and to journalism."
The Fayetteville archive doesn't include Bumpers' gubernatorial papers, which are held at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's Center for Arkansas History and Culture.
Metro on 04/03/2015