Andrew Cardargues that his BushAdministration notesbelong to him, notthe Americanpeople.
Former White House Chief Tries To Get Around Records LawBy Cliff MontgomeryThere is an old adage often used by con-men, but one could say it’s also nicely served the modern Neo-conservative movement. It in essence states that, “If you can’t argue the facts, argue the law; if you can’t argue the law, talk about morality; and if you lack even that, pound on the table and call your opponent every dirty name in the book.”It seems that former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, who left the White House last spring, sought to circumvent the Presidential Records Act, which has governed the ownership of presidential and vice presidential records since President Nixon‘s great battle over the White House tapes. Mr. Card couldn’t argue that his official writings are correctly records which belong to the American people; so he instead kept some work details in his own notebook, “so it wouldn’t be considered a government document or presidential record that might someday be opened to history,”Among the writings he stored there was a secret record of top government jobs, paired with running lists of possible replacements if a major change was needed.Card described his workbook to journalist Bob Woodward, who wrote about it in his latest book, State of Denial. Woodward reports that Card kept a roster of qualified candidates in a blue spiral notebook he purchased himself.Among the treasures which Card believes doesn’t belong to the American people, he revealed to Woodward that his list of possible replacements for controversial Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ran to 11 names.The National Journal consulted experts in presidential records law concerning Card’s attempt to keep public matters private. They frankly scoffed at Card’s flexible interpretation of the law, stating that such qualifiers were irrelevant to the document’s definition as a presidential record which must be preserved and archived for historical purposes.This is so whether Card used a dime-store notebook or cocktail napkins for these records, or convinced himself his notebook was personal rather than government property, they added.”In this case, it was a conscious effort to try to get around the statute,” said Scott Nelson, senior attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group. The idea that a notebook purchased privately might serve as a shield from the law “is just ridiculous,” Nelson added, because of Card’s own description of how he intended to use his personnel lists.”The definition of presidential records includes documents created by members of the president’s immediate staff for the purposes of carrying out their official duties.”Of course it doesn’t stand up to simple common sense, either. If someone records a favorite movie onto a personal DVD, that person cannot then say that the movie on that disk is now their private property, and belongs only to them. Ownership refers to those things which are kept, saved or stored by a particular media, and not just to the media itself.Although interpretations such as Card’s have never been tested in court and no independent policing exists in real time, the general legal guidance offered to White House staffers at the start of each administration (including by then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales early in 2001) is that if a document is drafted for use by the government–whether actually used or not–it would still be a presidential record based on its intended use.Card, realizing that his attempt to fall back on rhetorical interpretations of the law hasn’t quite worked, somewhat changed his tune on MSNBC last week, saying, “I felt very strongly that the president should be prepared to make changes in case somebody got hit by a bus. And so it included every senior staff position at the White House, including the chief of staff’s position and all of the positions in the Cabinet.”In other words, Mr. Card first tried to argue the law concerning the public’s right to know, and is now trying to argue the “morality” of his case because he discovered that he in fact can’t argue the law. He should be pounding on the table and calling us vile names any second now.
