Senator blocks presidential-records bill

WASHINGTON — Senate officials have confirmed that a Republican senator is secretly blocking a bill that would reverse President Bush's 2001 executive order allowing former presidents to seal their records indefinitely.

"We need to smoke out whoever it is. Maybe somebody at the White House called a Republican senator and said put a hold on it," said Lee White, executive director of the National Coalition for History, a leading advocate of the legislation.

The anonymous hold adds an ironic chapter to a fight that has pitted an administration with a penchant for secrecy against historians, archivists and librarians.

The White House has threatened a veto to protect Bush's executive order, arguing that the bill to overturn it encroaches on executive authority.

Open-government advocates say the order will let Bush and other former presidents hide embarrassing or revealing documents that belong to the public without explanation.

They're especially outraged that the order lets heirs of a deceased former president retain control over White House papers, a step legal scholars view as unprecedented and as an unlawful delegation of executive power.

The House approved a bill to overturn the Bush order in March, on a 333-93 vote, far more than the two-thirds needed to override a veto. The Senate Government Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., agreed in June to a vote, and backers expected a floor vote before the August recess.

Suspicion for the hold initially focused on three senators: Ted Stevens of Alaska, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and George Voinovich of Ohio.

Aides to Stevens and Voinovich said Wednesday that their bosses are not blocking the bill. Coburn aides didn't respond.

Senate rules don't explicitly provide for a "hold," but the mechanism dates at least to Lyndon Johnson's days as majority leader. A hold is basically a way of signaling the intent to filibuster, and by tradition, it can be filed anonymously.

An ethics law Bush signed Friday tinkers with that tradition, although it may not unmask the senator blocking the bill. Among other things, the new law limits gifts from lobbyists, requires disclosure of lobbyists' donations to presidential libraries and requires lawmakers to attach their names to spending requests known as earmarks.

One obscure provision forces senators to identify themselves within six days when they place a hold. But senior Senate aides said the rule kicks in only if the majority leader or another senator tries to demand a vote on a particular bill.

Laws covering presidential records stem from Watergate. In 1974, Richard Nixon tried to seal some papers and destroy others. Congress intervened.

Congress four years later passed the Presidential Records Act, clarifying that the public owns White House records but creating a 12-year embargo for release, with privacy and national-security exemptions.

Bush signed his order seven weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. So far, it applies to three former presidents: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

A lawsuit by the watchdog group Public Citizen and groups representing political scientists, historians and journalists is pending.