Behold some of the highlights, or low-lights, if you will, from the latest National Archives release “of previously unseen documents from the Clinton White House.”
Should Bill Clinton mention his soon to be campaign competitor Bob Dole in his 1996 State of the Union speech? Al Gore thought so – blah blah blah:
“When I presided over the Congress 50th commemoration, I really larded it on and said, ‘Anybody who knows the story of Bob Dole knows something about the meaning of true courage, and blah, blah, blah,” Gore said.
Meanwhile, surprise, surprise, look who was counseling Bill Clinton not to go too far too fast when it came to gun control.
Over the past few years, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) has been one of the most forceful proponents of stricter national gun laws. But in 1996, as a White House political aide, Emanuel wrote a memo to President Clinton warning him not to “over-reach” on gun control.
As to whether Ginsburg or Breyer would make a better first SCOTUS for Clinton, Ginsburg won out.
“Judge Ginsburg’s work has more of the humanity that the President highly values and fewer of the negative aspects that will cause concern among some constituencies,” Joel Klein wrote to Clinton’s counsel Bernard Nussbaum a week before Clinton nominated Ginsburg in a Rose Garden ceremony.
Klein thought Breyer was “brilliant,” but others were not as impressed. “Nothing in Judge Breyer’s opinions suggests that he would be a great Supreme Court justice,” wrote Tom Perrilli and Ian Gershengorn, who called him a “rather cold fish.”
Perrilli later served as deputy attorney general in the Obama administration and Gershengorn is currently Principal Deputy Solicitor General, arguing regularly before the Supreme Court.
As for whether or not some documents related to the assassination of JFK should be released, it appears the FBI still had some things it would have preferred to hide.
One of the reasons the FBI didn’t want to release a small number of documents was because they contained the names of confidential informants and showed how the U.S. cooperated with an unnamed foreign government and could injure their relationship.
Another reason the FBI didn’t want to release the records? They showed how the U.S. gathered intelligence in the 1960s – and despite the major advances in technology, the U.S. still used antiquated methods.
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