The Washington Free Beacon's Alana Goodman discussed her efforts to access papers former president Bill Clinton donated to the Arkansas public library system on Fox & Friends Tuesday.
Goodman, who broke 'The Hillary Papers' story last week that shed new light on the former First Lady's time in the White House, said attempts to get the papers from Clinton's tenure as Governor of Arkansas have to be approved by the nonprofit Clinton Foundation. While they are technically open to public request, it's still a trial to actually look at them.
"You have to make the request to the foundation, tell them exactly what papers that you want to see," she said. "They send down lawyers to go to this library to go through the specific pages that you want to vet, and then decide whether or not they want to give you access to them."
Given the major speculation about Hillary Clinton's potential run for the presidency in 2016, the information in the documents pertaining to her could prove relevant. Hillary Clinton played an active role in her husband's gubernatorial administration, as she would later in the White House.
"She led two committees, one on health care reform and one on education reform," Goodman said. "So it's certainly possible that there is information on her in there and that it could shed new light on her past political career."
Goodman pointed out the Butler Center houses documents of six other governors, and none of them are subject to a rigorous screening process for journalists, academics and others to see. One historian at Mississippi State University told Goodman that his requests to look at those documents were stonewalled for nearly five years, and he finally gave up on the project he wanted to do.
Goodman reported Monday:
An extensive collection of papers related to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s years in the Arkansas governor’s mansion remains under tight control at a public library in Little Rock, with access restricted by the Clinton Foundation.
President Bill Clinton donated his papers from his tenure as Arkansas governor to the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) in 2003, and they are housed at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in Little Rock.
The documents could provide new insight into the early chapter of the Clintons’ political careers, as reporters take a second look at Hillary Clinton’s past in light of the information contained in the public materials of the Diane Blair collection.
Hillary Clinton played a key role in her husband’s health care and education initiatives during his time as governor, from 1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992.
There was also a contradiction between what the manager of the archive told Goodman and what the director of the library system said in 2007:
The manager of the archive told the Washington Free Beacon that there "really isn’t anything" related to Hillary Clinton in the collection.
"[T]here really isn’t anything by or about Hillary Clinton in the Clinton collection," said David Stricklin, in response to a request for access in January. "The files are mostly working papers from various staff members. There are no personal Clinton family files in this collection, and, because she was not a member of his staff, my colleague tells me, there are no files related to Hillary Clinton’s work."
However, CALS director Roberts told CBS in 2007 that there were at least 34 files related to Hillary Clinton in the collection.