WORLD NEWS

• .Presidential records a time capsule of Bush years By JEFF CARLTON, Associated Press Writer Jeff Carlton, Associated Press Writer – Wed Jul 8, 6:31 am ET LEWISVILLE, Texas – Spread upon a table are a sampling of gifts to former President George W. Bush: a purse made of vines from the Thai queen, a Texas Rangers jersey autographed by pitcher Nolan Ryan and a framed mosaic of St. Peter’s Basilica from the pope. The gifts, documents and electronic records accumulated during Bush’s two terms have gone from the White House to a warehouse in suburban Dallas, just a few miles north of a turnpike named for his father. They will remain there until Bush’s $300 million presidential library — the nation’s 13th and the third in Texas — opens in 2013 on the Southern Methodist University campus near downtown Dallas. “It’s a wonderful eight-year time capsule,” said Jennifer M. Schulle, the registrar for the Bush library. “It’s everything that was going on — politically, personally and socially.” There are about 40,000 artifacts and 65 million documents stored in the facility. The 100 terabytes of electronic records is by far the largest of any presidential collection, as the Bush administration was the first that worked entirely during an era of e-mail. Also among the artifacts is the 9 mm pistol Saddam Hussein carried when U.S. soldiers captured him hiding in a spider hole in 2003. Inside two dozen unopened crates are the disassembled pieces of the White House Situation Room, which was renovated and upgraded during Bush’s first term. Not all of it can be found, however. “I think it’s like the Berlin Wall,” said Shannon Jarrett, the library’s supervisory archivist. “Everyone seemed to get little chunks of it.” The Air Force moved the materials from Washington to Texas, the first wartime transfer of presidential records. The move involved 16 18-wheelers and three planes. “It’s a colossal amount of material,” Jarrett said. “We won’t get to all of it in our lifetime.” The documents and records are filed in labeled boxes stacked neatly upon rows of shelves in different vaults within the warehouse. There are 79 boxes labeled presidential letters and correspondence. Other boxes contain records from the desk of political adviser Karl Rove and Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. It’s the kind of place where you might expect to stumble across the Ark of the Covenant. The warehouse has temperature and humidity controls, and around-the-clock security. A sealed room holds classified records. Under the 1981 Presidential Records Act, records can be withheld for at least five years and up to 12 years if they fall under any of six categories: national defense or foreign policy; appointments to federal office; records specifically exempt by law; trade secrets or financial information; records concerning advice given the president and his advisers; and personnel or medical files. Documents concerning national security issues can be withheld longer. “That’s when you get the good stuff,” Jarrett said. The National Archives and Records Administration has a legal mandate to preserve every presidential record, which covers anything produced by White House staff. A handwritten note scrawled on a cocktail napkin qualifies as a presidential record. So does a draft copy of a State of the Union address. Even Christmas decorations, including trees and holiday-themed paintings, wind up in the warehouse. There are boxes full of presidential cuff links, crayons and pens. No record or gift is too small or insignificant for archival. “Not when it deals with the president,” Jarrett said. “People will come look for the letter they wrote to the president in the 5th grade. Our goal is to find that for them.” Most of the records and items will never be seen by the public, stored off-limits in parts of Bush’s presidential center. Those that eventually are displayed will reflect the four broad themes on which Bush’s private foundation wants to focus the exhibits: freedom, opportunity, compassion and individual responsibility. “This was an administration of great consequence and there are a stunning array of issues we can educate about,” said Alan C. Lowe, the director of the Bush Library. “I’m a historian suddenly in the middle of history.” ___ SMU’s President George W. Bush Library site: http://smu.edu/bushlibrary/ TAMU’s President George H.W. Bush Library site: http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/ Dallas Police Scale Back Security for Home of Former President George W. Bush Dallas has scaled back some of the police protection it was providing at the home of former President George W. Bush — a cut some said was due to financial constraints. The city has been struggling with a $190 million budget deficit. Dallas-Fort Worth television station KTVT reports the three tactical officers assigned to rotating eight-hour shifts will no longer be on the street outside the former president’s north Dallas home. The city would save about $300,000 a year with the change. Officials said in early January that the cost of providing crowd and traffic control at Bush’s new home could reach $1 million a year, the Dallas Morning News reported. “We just had to cut it,” the newspaper quoted one unnamed police official as saying. “We’re about to layoff people.” But Police Chief David Kunkle told the Morning News that the department’s decision on how to deploy police for security issues doesn’t depend on the budget. “From the time the president got here, we’ve been working with the Secret Service to determine what level of protection was appropriate,” he said. “We always knew we would change and adapt.” A Secret Service statement said Dallas police will still be visible part of the former president’s security. Police officials told the Dallas Morning News that if the Secret Service needs their help, Dallas will supply additional police presence as needed. Cheney told CIA not to discuss programWASHINGTON – Former Vice President Dick Cheney directed the CIA eight years ago not to inform Congress about a nascent counterterrorism program that CIA Director Leon Panetta terminated in June, officials with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday. Subsequent CIA directors did not inform Congress because the intelligence-gathering effort had not developed to the point that they believed merited a congressional briefing, said a former intelligence official and another government official familiar with Panetta’s June 24 briefing to the House and Senate Intelligence committees. Panetta did not agree. Upon learning of the program June 23 from within the CIA, Panetta terminated it and the next day called an emergency meeting with the House and Senate Intelligence committees to inform them of the program and that it was canceled. Cheney played a central role in overseeing the Bush administration‘s surveillance program that was the subject of an inspectors general report this past week. That report noted that Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington, personally decided who in Bush’s inner circle could even know about the secret program. But revelations about Cheney’s role in making decisions for the CIA on whether to notify Congress came as a surprise to some on the committees, said another government official. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program publicly. An effort to reach Cheney was unsuccessful. A former intelligence official, who was familiar with former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden’s tenure at the CIA, said Hayden never communicated with the president or vice president about the now-canceled program and was under no restrictions from Cheney about congressional briefings. The official said Hayden was briefed only two or three times on the program. Exactly what the counterterrorism program was meant to do remains a mystery. The former intelligence official said it was not related to the CIA’s rendition, interrogation and detention program. Nor was it part of a wider classified electronic surveillance program that was the subject of a government report to Congress this past week. The official characterized it as an embryonic intelligence gathering effort, and only sporadically active. He said it was hoped to yield intelligence that would be used to conduct a secret mission or missions in another country — that is, a covert operation. But it never matured to that point. The government official with direct knowledge of the Panetta briefing and the former intelligence official said the CIA has numerous efforts ongoing under its existing authorities that have not yet been briefed to Congress. He said they are not yet known to be viable for intelligence gathering. The Cheney revelation comes as the House of Representatives is preparing to debate a bill that would require the White House to expand the number of members who are told about covert operations. The White House has threatened a veto over concerns that wider congressional notifications could compromise the secrecy of the operations. That provision, however, would have no effect on programs like this one. The former intelligence official familiar with Hayden said Congress has a right to contemporaneous information about all CIA activities. But he said there are so many in such early stages that briefing Congress on every one would be too time consuming for both the CIA and the congressional committees. The New York Times initially reported about Cheney’s direction not to tell Congress of the program on its Web site Saturday. .

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