Clinton Hostage Situation - Releasing of First Lady Records

Releasing of First Lady Records

In July 2007, watchdog group Judicial Watch sued the National Archives over the slow release of documents covering her career as First Lady. Almost 2 million pages of documents held at the Clinton Library had yet to be released from those years, with less than 1 percent having been released. Federal archivists stated that the process is slow due to the need to perform redactions due to the law, and likely would extend past the 2008 presidential election. Clinton had said at the time of the library's opening in 2004 that "everything's going to be available." Political consultants said that the unreleased documents might be a rich source for opposition research against Clinton.

This issue intensified with the October 30, 2007 Democratic debate at Drexel University, where Hillary Clinton came under fire about it from MSNBC moderator Tim Russert and from Democratic opponents. Russert displayed a document signed by President Clinton that specifically requested that certain records and communications involving her not be made public until 2012. When Russert asked Hillary Clinton whether she would lift the presidential order, Hillary Clinton responded by saying, "That's not my decision to make." A concurrent Newsweek investigation stated that Bill Clinton had requested the archivists hold back a large variety of documents. A few days later, Bill Clinton vigorously defended his wife's responses, saying that Russert's question was "breathtakingly misleading" and that Newsweek's article was off the mark, saying, "She was incidental to the letter, it was done five years ago, it was a letter to speed up presidential releases, not to slow them down." Factcheck.org subsequently concluded that Russert's claim was incorrect, that Bill Clinton had released White House records earlier and in greater numbers than his two immediate predecessors, and that there was not much Hillary Clinton could do to speed up the release of records involving her.
However on March 6, 2008, Federal archivists at the Clinton Presidential Library blocked the release of hundreds of pages of White House papers on pardons that the former president approved, including clemency for fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich, based on guidance provided by Bill Clinton.