Just what are they up to?

I remembered after reading Terry Cook’s article – “Archival Appraisal and Collection: Issues, Challenges, New Approaches” in which he discusses illegal records destruction – that I had read articles last week about Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney attempting to keep (what arguably should be) public records private.

First, Sarah Palin: The hacker group ‘Anonymous’ reportedly cracked into the VP candidate’s Yahoo email after reports that she had been using this email account for governmental business. Under law, however, any email relating to the “official functions of governor must be archived and not destroyed.” This same law allows that personal messages can be deleted.
One would think then that the Yahoo email was set-up to allow personal emails to be sent and that this account would not be used for governmental business, as it is a personal account, inaccessible through the Freedom of Information Act. It would seem, however, that this assumption may be wrong and Governor Palin may in fact be skirting the FOIA. One has to wonder what sort of business she is attending to…

The other attempt to skirt the FOIA comes from VC Dick Cheney. He has been known to argue for secrecy concerning the President’s energy policy and in the use of torture in terrorist interrogations, and now he is attempting to prevent access to the records created during his tenure in office. A group of historians have sued, arguing that “the records were valuable for future generations to study and understand the events and policies of the Bush administration since 2001.”
Cheney contends that the vice presidency is not covered in the Presidential Records Act, created in the aftermath of Watergate, to ensure presidential AND vice presidential records are saved.
Again, one has to wonder just what Cheney has been up to… The only benefit is that at present, the historians seem to be winning the case.