Two 40-Year-Old Memos to LBJ - Prominent Historians' Appeal For Access
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Date: Jan 27, 2006 11:47 AM
Subject: [VSG] Two 40-Year-Old Memos to LBJ - Prominent Historians' Appeal For Access
National Security Archive Update, January 27, 2006
Prominent Historians, Political Scientists Urge Court to Reverse
Lower Court Decision Withholding Two 40-Year-Old Memos to LBJ
Scholars Remind Court That an Accurate Understanding of Political History is
Integral to a Democratic Society
For more information:
Matthew W.S. Estes 202/371-7000
Professor Larry Berman 530/752-3076
Thomas R. Burke, Duffy Carolan, Davis Wright Tremaine 415/276-6500
Meredith Fuchs, Thomas Blanton, National Security Archive 202/994-7000
http://www.nsarchive.org
Washington D.C., January 27, 2006 - The nation's leading history and
political science associations, along with a number of prominent scholars of
the Presidency and the Vietnam War, yesterday filed an amicus brief in a
lawsuit brought by University of California, Davis, Professor Larry Berman.
The case involves Berman's effort to obtain release under the Freedom of
Information Act of two almost 40-year-old CIA memos to President Johnson.
Represented by Matthew W.S. Estes, the scholars seek to alert the United
States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to the broad implications of
the lower court's ruling.
In the lower court, U.S. District Judge David Levi held that the CIA may
categorically refuse to review for release all President's Daily Briefs, in
perpetuity, regardless of their content, because the intelligence reports
are a protected intelligence method. Attorney Matthew Estes commented,
"Judge Levi's expansive ruling could reverse 40 years of access to
historical CIA intelligence products. The decision is not required by the
Freedom of Information Act or court precedents and, in fact, is in direct
conflict with applicable Supreme Court holdings and Congressional action. It
also represents poor public policy that runs counter to the principle that
historical presidential records should be made public that has been cited by
the Supreme Court, Congress and our past Presidents."
Further, Judge Levi held that the Briefs also could be categorically
withheld because they are protected by a limitless presidential privilege
for confidential communications with advisers. The scholars argue that this
holding contradicts the Supreme Court's decision in the Nixon tapes cases
that privilege erodes over time and Congress's clear finding in the 1978
Presidential Records Act that the privilege no longer applies 12 years after
the president leaves office. Moreover, the rationale for the privilege makes
no sense in light of the extensive public availability of President
Johnson's deliberations, including over 400 hours of tapes of his oval
office conversations.
The amici include: the American Historical Association
[http://www.historians.org/], the American Political Science Association
[http://www.apsanet.org/], the National Coalition for History
[http://www.h-net.org/~nch/], the Organization of American Historians
[http://www.oah.org/], the Presidency Research Group
[http://cstl-cla.semo.edu/Renka/prg/], the Society of American Archivists
[http://www.archivists.org/], and the Society for Historians of American
Foreign Relations [http://www.ohiou.edu/shafr/], along with noted scholars
including Barton J. Bernstein
[http://www.stanford.edu/dept/history/Faculty/bernstein.html], Robert Dallek
[http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/history/dallek/], Lloyd Gardner
[http://history.rutgers.edu/People/lgardner.htm], Fred I. Greenstein
[http://www.princeton.edu/politics/people/bios/index.xml?netid=fig], George
C. Herring [http://www.as.uky.edu/history/faculty/bios/herring.html],
Jeffrey P. Kimball [http://www.units.muohio.edu/history/pages/faculty11-15!
.html], Stanley I. Kutler
[http://www.law.wisc.edu/facstaff/biog.php?ID=335], Walter LaFeber
[http://falcon.arts.cornell.edu/History/faculty/lafeber.asp], Anna Nelson
[http://www.american.edu/cas/hist/faculty.html#nelson], and Robert D.
Schulzinger
[http://www.colorado.edu/history/faculty/schulzinger/schulzingercv.html].
The amicus brief, along with other court papers and supporting documents, is
available on the Archive Web site:
http://www.nsarchive.org
________________________________________________________
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research
institute and library located at The George Washington University in
Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents
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