Presidency: Is Bush Protecting His Dad?

The Reagan papers were to have been the first released under the 1978 Presidential Records Act. It came after Watergate and former President Richard Nixon's attempts to keep his papers and tape recordings to himself. Passage made presidental records the property of government, not those who held the office.

When the current presidential order was announced, prominent historians immediately complained that it violates the spirit of the 1978 Act. The director of the National Committee for Promotion of History, Bruce Craig, called the order"blatantly unlawful." Response from the White House was evasion with doubletalk:"It's a process that will enable historians to do their jobs" while allowing state secrets to be protected.

This order is no altruistic effort to protect Reagan from embarrassing revelations. It is instead a reverse nepotism, an effort by Bush the 2d to protect Bush the lst from revelations about the latter's eight years as Reagan's vice-president. The Reagan papers might verify suspicions the elder Bush lied when he claimed not to know about the Iran/Contra scandal that still stains the Reagan presidency.

Vice-president Bush deflected charges that he was in on the scam by claiming he was"out of the loop." Still, some believe it was not Reagan, but Bush, previously head of the CIA, who orchestrated the illegal Iran/Contra actions. Perhaps not. One way to find out is to overturn the arbitrary order on keeping the papers secret. Maybe that would clear the air of any suspicions about the elder Bush.

Maybe.