The Clinton Presidential Library released a batch of roughly 4,000 pages of previously-secret White House documents Friday, fueling questions about how history could affect the presidential ambitions of former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Several topics covered in Friday’s release relate to Mrs. Clinton, including records from the Health Care Task Force she headed and from her press office in the White House.
The papers include internal musings by White House aides, including a warning that there was “great disquiet” on Capitol Hill about whether the Clintons understood the legislative process needed to enact the health care reform package known as the Health Security Act.
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In an unsigned memo from April 1993, an aide recommended that both Bill and Hillary Clinton hold three “working dinners” with Democratic leaders to hear their concerns.
“To restate the obvious: While the substance is obviously controversial, there is apparently great disquiet in the capitol over whether we understand the inter-activity between reconciliation and health, procedurally, and in terms of timing and counting votes for both measures,” the memo stated. “We need strategic agreement among ourselves and. between us and the Hill on timing and process. This can work, but it will come apart if we don’t get these pieces right.”
The memo also warned that “there is great concern that CBO is going to screw us on savings, etc. just as it did on the budget.” It asked, “Do we have a Reichauer [sic] strategy?” – an apparent reference to Robert Reischauer, then -director of the Congressional Budget Office.
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Another line in the memo warned that then-House Speaker Tom Foley’s “relations with the Democratic Caucus, especially the freshmen, are remarkably bad.”
The health care reform effort ultimately bogged down in Congress and was declared dead by Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell in September 1994.
POLITICO reported Tuesday that about 33,000 pages of records withheld as confidential advice given to President Clinton or exchanged among his top advisers, along with information about candidates for appointments to federal office, were still unavailable to the public even though the legal basis to withhold them under the Presidential Records Act ran out in January 2013 — 12 years after Clinton left office.
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A White House official said Tuesday that lawyers there had approved release of about 25,000 of the 33,000 previously-withheld pages.
The remainder of the roughly 25,000 pages are expected to be posted online in the next couple of weeks. The White House has extended the deadline on the additional 8,000 pages until March 26, the National Archives said earlier this week.
The larger body of records includes legal memoranda about the Whitewater investigation and other independent counsel investigations. Those files do not appear to be among those being released Friday.
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The list of files disclosed Friday suggested they would touch on how Clinton’s team dealt with foreign policy crises, as well as Al Qaeda strikes that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
However, the only new document released in the 9/11-related file pertained not to that event, but to a decision not to send an additional note or gift to King Hussein of Jordan when he was at the Mayo Clinic being treated for cancer that would claim his life a few months later.
“Sounds like too much crepe hanging,” a Clinton aide wrote, recommending against the step.
A variety of Al Qaeda-related documents remain withheld on grounds that they’re classified for national security reason.
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The roughly 33,000 pages of still-secret records accumulated through early last year as records from the Clinton Library were requested under the Freedom of Information Act or processed as part of systematic efforts to disclose records of most interest to historians and the public. Archvists reviewing the records marked the pages involved as exempt, but with an eye to releasing them after the 12-year waiting period ended.
It’s still unclear precisely why the records were tied up for more than 13 additional months. The process requires the National Archives, which runs the library, to give notice to the former president and current president. Their representatives ordinarily have 30 days to clear the records for release or declare an intention to withhold them under executive privilege. However, that period can be extended.
Aides to Obama and Clinton said this week that no assertion of executive privilege was made for records in the cleared batch of 25,000 pages. No final decision appears to have been made on the remaining 8,000 pages.
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A Clinton aide said that aides to the former president cleared the larger batch of documents for release immediately on Monday, just after getting word from Obama’s attorneys that the White House had signed off on disclosing the records.
Under an executive order Obama signed in 2009, a former president can object to disclosure by asserting executive privilege. Obama could then concur and block release of the records, or disagree and move towards release. Either way, such a dispute could end up in court.
That’s just what happened in 2001, when about 70,000 pages of records from President Ronald Reagan’s White House hit the same 12-year mark and were slated for disclosure. Ultimately, Reagan asserted executive privilege over just 74 pages. A judge upheld the assertion.
Obama’s White House vowed that his executive order would speed disclosure of even sensitive files at presidential libraries. However, with respect to the previously-withheld records now beginning to emerge, the pace is well behind that for comparable records of President George H.W. Bush. They started to come out days after the 12-year mark was hit in 2005.
David Nather contributed to this report.
Clinton files show worries over health care bill
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