Archivist Gave Bush Control of Tapes, Will Run His Library

The archivist of the United States, who signed an Inauguration Day agreement that gives former President George Bush extensive control over White House computer tapes, announced Friday that he will run the Bush presidential library center.

Don W. Wilson said he will be leaving the National Archives on March 31 to become executive director of the George Bush Center at Texas A&M; University. He was hired by Bush’s son, George W. Bush, and William H. Mobley, president of Texas A&M;, said Rene A. Henry, executive director of university relations at the school.

On Jan. 20, Wilson and Bush signed an document that permits “Bush or his designee” to review all of the material on the computer tapes before anyone is allowed access to it. The tapes are in the custody of the National Archives.

The White House had sought to destroy the tapes before a private group filed suit to block the move.

“George Bush shall retain exclusive legal control of all presidential information, and all derivative information in whatever form, contained on the materials,” states the agreement, disclosed Friday by the National Security Archive. The non-profit organization filed the suit that led to a court order blocking destruction of the tapes.

The material on the tapes includes millions of electronic messages of the National Security Council on a host of subjects from the Ronald Reagan and Bush administrations--including the Iran-Contra affair.

The agreement Wilson and Bush signed “in effect overrides the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act” governing access to White House records of former presidencies, said Tom Blanton, the private group’s executive director.

Blanton said the agreement is “even worse” than Richard M. Nixon’s 1974 arrangement with the General Services Administration, in which Nixon attempted to set up personal control over records of his tenure. Nixon’s effort led to passage of the Presidential Records Act, which vested control of such material in the National Archives.

Regarding the Bush-Wilson agreement, “we see parallels with the Nixon agreement and we’re concerned about it,” said Page Miller, director of the National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History.

Wilson said the criticism is unfounded. He emphasized that under federal law, the President “must have a say” in who has access to the tapes, because some of that material is presidential records. There’s “a mixture” of National Security Council records and presidential records on the tapes and “nobody can say for sure; you have to determine what is there,” Wilson said in a telephone interview.