The purpose of The Fact Checker is to "truth squad" the national political debate in the period leading up to the 2008 presidential election. The goal is to shed as much light as possible on controversial claims and counter-claims involving important national issues.

THE CLAIMS

"Well, actually, Tim, the Archives is moving as rapidly as the Archives moves. There's about 20 million pieces of paper there."

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, in Tuesday's Democratic debate, in response to a question from Tim Russert about delays in the release of Clinton presidential papers

"Library Lockdown Continues. Clintons 'Tightly Control' Release Of Hillary's Records; Inaccurately Blame White House For Backlog"

-- Republican National Committee, in an Oct. 22 news release

THE FACTS

To hear Republicans talk, any delay in releasing Clinton presidential records is the fault of the Clintons. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, on the other hand, would have us believe that she and her husband have nothing to do with the release of their own records.

Both sides are being disingenuous and omitting facts that are inconvenient to their own argument. Because of cumbersome declassification procedures introduced by President Bush, there are now huge delays in processing Freedom of Information Act requests at all presidential libraries. But the Clintons are taking advantage of a clause in a November 2001 Bush order that permits former presidents to take virtually as much time as they want to review FOIA requests.

According to National Archives officials, 26,000 pages of Clinton presidential records are being held for release after being submitted to Clinton lawyer Bruce Lindsey for review. The records have been screened and processed by Archives officials under FOIA, but they cannot be released to the public until Lindsey, as President Clinton's designated representative, signs off on them.

Lindsey did not respond to telephone calls.

After Lindsey approves the release, the documents will go to the White House for a final review. White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the Bush administration has approved the release of all records received from Clinton's office.

Jay Carson, a Clinton campaign spokesman, said that the former president had "consistently been an advocate for releasing his presidential records as quickly as possible" and that he had opposed the Bush administration order that placed new restrictions on their release.

Just how much these documents will tell us is another matter. They represent a mere drop in an ocean of presidential memos, e-mail messages and telephone transcripts that will take decades to process. An additional 10 million documents have become the subject of nearly 300 recent FOIA requests still waiting to be processed by the National Archives.

According to Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a nonprofit group that monitors declassification procedures, delays in processing FOIA requests have mounted steadily during the seven years of the Bush presidency. In 2001, the Ronald Reagan presidential library was taking 16 to 18 months to process a FOIA request. It now takes 6 1/2 years. According to the National Archives, the current backlog for processing FOIA requests to the George H.W. Bush presidential library is 4 1/2 years.

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