Obama puts presidential records on ice for 12 years...

Obama taps longtime aide to oversee presidential records process

By Josh Gerstein

01/08/17 09:10 AM EST

Updated 01/08/17 09:50 AM EST

President Barack Obama has selected his close aide Anita Decker Breckenridge to act as his representative in the process that will lead to many of his White House records becoming public in future decades.
A letter Obama sent to the National Archives in July authorizes Breckenridge to convey Obama's wishes about which of his presidential files can be made public and which should be kept under wraps for a period of time.
The letter, released to POLITICO on Friday under the Freedom of Information Act, also indicates that Obama is exercising his rights to put many of those records off-limits for 12 years after he leaves the presidency later this month. While the move could be seen as at odds with Obama's frequently stated commitment to transparency, it's a step other recent presidents have also taken before leaving the White House.
Recent presidents have eventually eased some of those access restrictions after leaving office.
White House spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine did not comment directly on Obama's rationale for imposing the 12-year restrictions on his records, which will be sent in the coming years to his yet-to-be-built presidential library in Chicago.
However, she said Breckenridge is the point person on the White House staff managing transition-related issues, like the transfer of presidential records to federal archivists.
"In her role as deputy chief of staff for operations at the White House, Anita Decker Breckenridge is overseeing the White House's transition effort, and that includes working closely with White House Counsel's Office and the National Archives and Records Administration to ensure the president's papers are properly preserved and made available to the public," Hoffine said Sunday.
Breckenridge, currently deputy White House chief of staff for operations, started out as a driver and secretary for Obama in 2003, when he was a state senator. She helped with his 2004 U.S. Senate bid, managed many of his offices in Illinois after he won that job and aided in organizing his 2007 announcement of his campaign for the presidency.
After Obama won, Breckenridge served as chief of staff at the National Endowment for the Arts. Obama brought her to the White House in 2011 to serve as his personal secretary. In 2014, she was promoted to the deputy chief of staff post, which includes regularly traveling with the president and briefing him on natural and man-made disasters.
At the time, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough described Breckenridge as "someone who not only has the complete trust of the president but has given him candid counsel for years."
"She has impeccable judgment, extraordinary foresight, and the battle-tested resolve to help lead this White House for the next three years," McDonough said in 2014.
Obama's notice, dated July 26, 2016, means that if he were to die or become incapacitated before 2029, Breckenridge would retain discretion over which advice and appointment-related records should be made public.
A letter White House counsel Neil Eggleston sent to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) last month about demands for public release of the unabridged version of a Senate report on alleged abuse of prisoners in CIA custody revealed that Obama had moved to place the 12-year bar on access to some categories of presidential records. However, that letter did not make clear he had restricted all six categories described in the Presidential Records Act. The letter released Friday makes clear he has.
If a president were to die in office without signing a letter similar to the one Obama signed in July, much of that confidential advice could go public after five years. That could explain why Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush signed their restriction letters less than two years after taking office. It's unclear why Obama waited until year eight of his presidency to sign his.
Clinton's notice, signed in 1994, tapped then-first lady Hillary Clinton and close adviser Bruce Lindsey as official representatives under the Presidential Records Act.
Bush's designated Tobi Young, then an associate White House counsel, as his representative. She now serves as general counsel of the George W. Bush Foundation.
The two categories presidents sometimes ease access to after leaving office involve appointments to public office and confidential advice exchanged between presidents and their advisers, as well as among their advisers.
Without such easing, few records of any kind might be released between the five-year and 12-year marks after a president leaves office, archivists say. However, most newsworthy advice still appears to be held back until the 12-year mark.
Clinton's easing letter became a point of political controversy in 2007, when it was raised during Hillary Clinton's first bid for the presidency.
During a nationally televised debate, late NBC Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert brandished the directive and said it put any White House records of communications between the former first lady and her husband off limits until 2012. “Would you lift that ban?” Russert asked.
“We’ll move as quickly as our circumstances and the processes of the National Archives permits,” candidate Clinton responded.
Obama leapt on the political opening. He raised his hand to chime in, calling the secrecy “a problem” that made it hard for Democrats to criticize Bush for leading “one of the most secretive administrations in our history.”
Bill Clinton complained that his wife had been sandbagged and that Russert had mischaracterized the letter.
“She was incidental to the letter,” the former president insisted. “It was a letter to speed up presidential releases, not to slow them down.”
Many of those records wound up emerging from the Clinton Presidential Library as Hillary Clinton was ramping up her second presidential bid.
As president, Obama took a couple of steps to ease and speed the overall process for the release of presidential records.
On his first day in office, he rolled back a Bush executive order that historians complained gave the families of deceased presidents too much power to withhold presidential records. (A judge had blocked part of that order in 2007.)
And in 2014, Obama signed a law that capped the amount of time historical presidential records can remain under pre-release review by the White House Counsel's Office. That measure has dramatically reduced delays in disclosure of presidential records, which sometimes spent a year or more awaiting final White House clearance to be revealed to the public.
UPDATE (Sunday, 9:50 a.m): This post has been updated with comment from the White House.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2017/01/obama-presidential-records-process-233323