30 Aug 2022 4:51 pm
That NARA is really finicky about what's theirsCedar » 30 Aug 2022, 1:29 pm » wrote: ↑ The ignorance seems to be yours...
https://casetext.com/case/judicial-watc ... ords-admin
According to plaintiff, President Clinton enlisted historian Taylor Branch to assist him in creating “an oral history of his eight years in office.” In 2009, Branch published a book entitled, “The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President,” based upon extensive conversations with President Clinton during his tenure in the White House and the events Branch observed when he was in the President's office. See Joe Klein, “Book Review: Bill Session,” N.Y. Times (Sept. 25, 2009) In 2010, plaintiff filed this action. Plaintiff avers that from January 20, 1993 to January 20, 2001, Branch recorded seventy-nine audiotapes that “preserved not only President Clinton's thoughts and commentary on contemporaneous events and issues he was facing as president, but, in some instances, recorded actual events such as presidential telephone conversations.”
Based on Branch's book, plaintiff contends that the recordings captured a verbatim record of President Clinton being President—performing his duties by engaging in conversations while Branch happened to be there with the tape recorder running—as opposed to simply reflecting about the ongoing Presidency with the writer. The gravamen of the complaint, then, is that the tapes should have been included among the Presidential records transferred to the Archivist of the United States at the end of the Clinton presidency, but President Clinton retained them in his personal possession when he left office, and defendant is unable to produce them now. Compl. The parties agree that the audiotapes are not currently in the government's possession. And the former President is not named as a party in this action