The Wall Street Journal-20080202-Hot Topic- Who Was Hillary Clinton-

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Hot Topic: Who Was Hillary Clinton?

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Hillary Clinton is running for President based in large part on her experience, especially her eight years as first lady. So it is revealing that she and her husband don't want the media and others to have ready access to the records that might tell us a good deal more about that 1990s "experience."

We're referring to the controversy over records at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library, which opened in 2004. At the time, Mrs. Clinton promised that "everything's going to be available." More than three years later, the library that is partly funded by taxpayers has released less than 1% of its records, and the withheld documents include two million pages covering Mrs. Clinton's White House tenure. As usual with the Clintons, they've managed to make the controversy seem so complicated that everyone has lost interest.

The story isn't all that hard to understand. The National Archives supervises Presidential documents, and in November 2002 Bill Clinton sent a letter asking the Archives to "consider for withholding" any "communications directly between the President and First Lady, and their families, unless routine in nature." He requested similar limitations on documents involving investigations by Congress, the Justice Department and independent counsels.

Mr. Clinton and his surrogates insist that this letter doesn't "block" the release of anything, and the implicit suggestion is that the Archives has discretion to release what it wants. However, a spokeswoman for the Archives in December acknowledged that it had already withheld 2,600 documents in accordance with Mr. Clinton's directive. Adding to suspicions of stonewalling is the fact that the Clintons' liaison with the Archives is none other than Bruce Lindsey. Readers may remember Mr. Lindsey as the longtime Clinton consigliere and keeper of the secrets going back to Arkansas.

The controversy flared briefly last year, after a Los Angeles Times editorial calling for the records to be released. Mrs. Clinton has responded by claiming she has nothing to hide and referring all questions on the records to her husband. Mr. Clinton, in turn, claims the Bush White House has slowed things down with its own review of the records. But the Administration denies this and there is no evidence it has interfered with the Archives. As for Mr. Lindsey, his explanation is that the archivists vetting the documents are moving as quickly as they can. The Archives are currently plowing through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in order of receipt.

This is all so, well, Clintonian -- arguing over what the meaning of "consider for withholding" is, and suggesting that the Clintons are merely prisoners of procedure. Mrs. Clinton is running for the highest office in the land, and voters have a right to expect that both she and her husband release everything possible about her record, subject to national security and the privacy concerns of third parties. The Clinton White House records may well contain information that would give voters insight into both her political philosophy and character.

They could relate to her role (if any) in such scandals as Travelgate and the Marc Rich pardon, plus policy disputes over health care, welfare reform, and Social Security. The gadfly litigation outfit, Judicial Watch, has been filing FOIA requests and recently pried out a few documents related to Mrs. Clinton's 1993 health-care task force.

One memo, from a participant with the initials "P.S.," reads: "I can think of parallels in wartime, but I have trouble coming up with a precedent in our peacetime history for such broad and centralized control over a sector of the economy . . . Is the public really ready for this? . . . none of us knows whether we can make it work well or at all . . ." This is all relevant today given that health care is again her signature domestic policy.

This is also reminiscent of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, when he refused to release his tax records prior to 1980. That disclosure cutoff date was no accident. As we learned only after that election, 1978 and 1979 were the tax years when the Clintons reported income on her miraculous and highly embarrassing trades in cattle futures.

Democrats of all stripes have been discovering of late that they're finally tired of Clintonian mores, at least when applied against Barack Obama. The slow-rolling document release is more of the same. The Clintons should declare that they want the Archives to treat all document requests regarding Senator Clinton's White House days as a priority for release. She shouldn't be able to run on her White House experience and then hide the reality of her White House record from public view.