After Bush Healing America Should Start with Release of Reagan Records
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Date: 2008-04-22, 4:51PM CDT
After Bush: Healing America Should Start with Release of Reagan Records on Iran-Contra and Saddam That Bush Suppressed in 2001
Writing in Artvoice, Michael I. Niman says that in order to begin healing the nation in the the aftermath of the Worst Presidency Ever, America will need to undergo a process of truth-telling next year not unlike the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in South Africa after Apartheid ended a decade ago.
“George W. Bush spent most of 2001 using legal maneuvers to delay the release of records that would likely have incriminated key members of his administration as well as his father in crimes that took place two decades earlier.”
– Niman
The place to start, Niman suggests, is with the release of tens of thousands of documents from the Reagan-Bush presidency that George W. Bush suppressed by fiat during his first year in office.
Until Bush countermanded it, the Presidential Records Act required that the records of every administration be made public after 12 years, which meant that the Reagan-Bush documents were due for release after January 2001. In the same executive order, Bush also included the records from his father’s two terms as vice president — which was undoubtedly Bush Jr.’s true purpose all along.
First some background on the Reagan-Bush records from Niman:
There were two big unfolding stories pre-9/11 that just sort of disappeared. One was the completion of the first full recount of the disputed 2000 Florida presidential election—which Al Gore won, albeit by a hair…
The second, possibly larger story, was the scheduled declassification of the first batch of sealed records from the Reagan/Bush White House. Those records promised to further document massive crimes against both humanity and the Constitution, as well as treason committed by our leader’s father and the now revered Ronald Reagan.
Historians expected that among the 68,000 documents scheduled for release in 2001 would be further evidence of Reagan administration support for and coordination of terrorist attacks aimed at destabilizing the economy and democratically elected popular government of Nicaragua, not to mention support for death squads in El Salvador, Columbia and Honduras (Battalion 316), and genocide in Guatemala.
Juicier still, given the current situation in Iraq, would be additional data about Reagan/Bush support for Saddam Hussein’s government at a time when it was gassing its own citizens (allegedly with US supplied materials), and support for the mullahs in Iran, who, it turns out, the Reagan administration covertly supplied with arms (remember Ollie North?), allegedly in exchange for the continued imprisonment of the American embassy staff in the run-up to the 1980 presidential election. The incident left US President Jimmy Carter appearing impotent, leading to the Reagan/Bush victory, which was immediately followed by the release of the hostages and US arms shipments to Iran’s criminal regime. Throw in a draconian domestic agenda and we would have been looking at an interesting read.
George W. Bush spent most of 2001 using legal maneuvers to delay the release of records that would likely have incriminated key members of his administration as well as his father in crimes that took place two decades earlier. Once the nation moved into the post-9/11 era, the political opening emerged for W. to issue an unquestioned executive order (Exec. Order 13233) on November 1, 2001, quietly thwarting the release of the Reagan/Bush papers in the name of “national security.”
To restore America after the disastrous Bush presidency, Niman says that these and other truths must be revealed:
The first step is to recognize where we are. Then we have to look at what other nations in similar positions have done to recover. We have to abandon the notion that we are somehow better than any other nation that lost control of its sensibilities for a generation. And we need to examine the established paths these nations have moved as they struggled in recovery.
The first step is to restore the reign of truth—to return meaning to language and return credibility to government. This is done with a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. More than 30 countries have convened various forms of such commissions in places ranging from South Africa and Rwanda to East Timor. The idea is that first comes truth, even sometimes at the cost of immunity from prosecution. Only with truth reestablished can a nation have reconciliation, and with its history in order, move forward into the future.
In the case of the Bush administration, there will be many questions to be answered. These will probably need to start with well documented electoral irregularities and widespread conspiracies to suppress voting in both the 2000 and 2004 elections, the latter of which has already resulted in criminal prosecutions in the election-deciding state of Ohio. If it turns out that one or both elections were corrupted, then we’ll have difficult questions to face regarding the legitimacy of enduring institutions such as the Supreme Court, which may have been affected by appointments put in place by an illegal government. Or maybe not. These are the kind of questions such a commission needs to sort out.
Chances that there will be a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or anything like it, in the wake of the Bush era are slim, to say the least. For one thing, if polls that give him a 30 percent approval rating are accurate, almost a third of us remain in complete denial that Bush has done anything wrong.
However, assuming the next president is a Democrat, the least he or she can do is revoke Exec. Order 13233 and release the Reagan-Bush records so that at least those 20 year old truths can be told.
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