I agree with Richard Cox's call for more active involvement by SAA and its
membership on the reclassification controversy. And the SAA may want to form
committees around this and other select issues to determine how to respond to
them (particularly the current status of the PRA). But the reclassification
issue is one of numerous initiatives that have targeted key congressional post-
Watergate open government statutes:
1) The narrowing of the Freedom of Information Act on numerous fronts
2) The rewriting of the Presidential Records Act
3) The defeat of the GAO's judicial enforcement powers vis a vis White House
4) The defeat of the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act
5) The circumvention of FISA
Not to mention the administration's reluctance to turn over information to the
9/11 Commission and to Congress on a wide range of issues, the clamping down on
leaks to the press (a time honored tradition), giving fewer press conferences,
removing hundreds of thousands of documents once considered public from
government websites--together with the expanded mandates of the federal
government's intelligence agencies. While the White House has vigorously sought
to reassert presidential powers that it perceives to have eroded since the
Nixon years, Congress has willingly--until more recently--abdicated its
authority. The reclassification controversy has occured within this much larger
context.
Peter Hirtle wonders at the reasons why NARA might have signed the secret MOU's:
"You can't help wonder why good, decent, well-meaning archivists such as
Michael Kurtz found themselves in a situation where they signed classified
memoranda of understanding. My guess is that they were doing the same sort of
balancing act that all archivists must do when it comes to donations..."
But the more plausible reason is that NARA likely was pressured by powerful
executive agencies operating under the wider initiative to shut off information
across the federal government in the wake of 9/11 and because of the
administration's larger agenda of reasserting executive powers. You have to
remember that NARA is a relatively weak executive agency vis a vis the others,
that the U.S. archivist serves at the pleasure of the White House, and that it
has no viable political support in Congress to resist executive branch
pressure. Weinstein is in a much better position now than Carlin was in the
immediate aftermath of 9/11 to resist such secrecy. After all, he also was hand
picked by the current administration, and so far, has acted on principal and
with integrity.
Bruce Montgomery
Univ. of Colorado
Quoting Richard Cox <[log in to unmask]>:
> Bruce Montgomery writes, “Although some believe we should not recall the
> events surrounding Nixon and his presidential materials, they have everything
> to do with how NARA has been transformed into an essentially political (more
> than cultural) executive branch agency. It's a complicated story, but one
> that explains how presidential administrations see the Archives as a
> repository of executive branch evidence that may have a profound influence on
> how history judges their actions. As others know, the Archives has often been
> subject to political pressures from the White House to serve its own
> interests in strengthening the presidential prerogatives of executive
> privilege. It has sometimes been caught in the wider struggle over the
> separation of powers as the executive branch battles to circumvent or nullify
> much of the post-Watergate legislation that was designed to establish a more
> accountable and open government.”
>
> Montgomery provides a pretty good assessment of what has occurred with NARA,
> but in my opinion it suggests all the more reason why archivists need to
> speak up, with or without SAA leadership. It is all the more reason why we
> should be fighting for a strong NARA, not just understanding the situation.
> If we just sit back and allow our government to create a more and more secret
> regime, is there any point at all in trying to function as archivists? Are
> we going to sit back and allow the FBI, and other intelligence agencies, come
> into our archives to shut down our collections in the name of national
> security and state secrets, such as is happening with the Jack Anderson
> papers being offered to the George Washington University? I hope not. (And I
> am appreciative of the small group of individuals posting messages about this
> case – but it could be a lot more!).
>
> Why is it that the Smithsonian-Showtime agreement has generated such a quick
> response, according to Jacqueline Trescott in the April 18th Washington Post,
> when “More than 200 filmmakers and historians asked the Smithsonian
> Institution yesterday to abandon its production deal with Showtime Networks
> and reconsider a recently imposed policy that limits access to Smithsonian
> archives and experts”? It seems to me that the government secrecy issues
> represented in the reclassification controversy possess far greater
> implications for us as a nation and profession than the intellectual property
> concerns that we see in the Smithsonian controversy. Are archivists just too
> uninterested in the National Archives? Do they merely think that this is
> business as usual, for both NARA and the Bush administration, so why bother?
> Or are archivists just too willing to accept, at face value, any explanation
> coming from Archivist Weinstein and NARA leadership?
>
> BTW, there are an increasing number of books appearing about disturbing
> aspects of government secrecy or government records policy that archivists
> ought to read for both background for this case and, perhaps, to gain
> appreciation for why we need to be vigilant about such matters and desire to
> have a stronger National Archives. Here are some to get people started –
> read up!
>
> Richard J. Cox, Ethics, Accountability, and Recordkeeping in Troubled Times
> (London: Facet, forthcoming in late 2006)
>
> Mark Danner, The Secret Way to War: The Downing Street Memo and the Iraq
> War’s Buried History (New York: NYRB, 2006).
>
> Verne Harris, Archives and Justice: A South African Perspective (Chicago:
> Society of American Archivists, forthcoming in 2006).
>
> [Verne Harris and others], The Nelson Mandela Foundation, A Prisoner in the
> Garden (New York: Viking Studio, 2006).
>
> Benjamin Hufbauer, Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape
> Public Memory (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005).
>
> Bruce Montgomery, Subverting Open Government: White House Materials and
> Executive Branch Politics (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 2005) [Thanks
> Bruce]
>
> Margaret Proctor, et al, Political Pressure and the Archival Record (Chicago:
> Society of American Archivists, 2006).
>
> Alasdair Roberts, Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in the Information Age (New
> York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
>
> And, oh, in one of my previous postings I made a comment that it is good that
> we have the National Security Agency watching NARA; I might, of course, the
> National Security Archives – perhaps this was a Freudian slip?
>
> --
> Richard J. Cox
> Professor
> Department of Library and Information Sciences
> School of Information Sciences
> University of Pittsburgh
> Editor, Records & Information Management Report
> Pittsburgh, PA 15260
> Voice: 412-624-3245
> FAX: 412-648-7001
> e-mail: [log in to unmask]
> homepage: http://www2.sis.pitt.edu/%7Ercox/
>
> "What we would like to do is change the world - to make it a little simpler
> for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended for them
> to do. And we can change the world: we can work for the oasis, the little
> cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the
> pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the
> world." - Dorothy Day
>
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A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List sponsored by the Society of American Archivists, www.archivists.org.
For the terms of participation, please refer to http://www.archivists.org/listservs/arch_listserv_terms.asp.
To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to [log in to unmask]
In body of message: SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname
*or*: UNSUB ARCHIVES
To post a message, send e-mail to [log in to unmask]
Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html
Problems? Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>