They want him to win, they have the evidence and ability to squash Dean like the insect he is should he win the primary. The republican governor of Vermont will ok opening those records the day after the primary if we are unlucky enough to get stuck w/Dean as the nominee.
A conservative organization Juducial Watch, ispreparing to sue Dean and the State of Vermont to get Deans records opened:
Group presses candidate Dean to unseal papers
By The Associated Press
10.04.03
MONTPELIER, Vt. — A Washington legal group is trying to force former Gov. Howard Dean to open all of his gubernatorial papers to the public and vows to go to court if he continues to refuse.
Judicial Watch, which describes itself as a conservative government watchdog group, said Dean’s emergence as a leading Democratic presidential candidate prompted the effort to delve into the records of his nearly 12 years in office.
“I was intrigued by the governor’s comment ... that he didn’t want to release the documents because he didn’t want anything coming out during his future political life,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch.
A spokeswoman for Dean’s presidential campaign said sealing some records was consistent with Vermont law and with the practice of his predecessors.
“The vast majority of the records have been made public,” said Dean aide Tricia Enright. “The documents currently under seal will remain under seal until January 2013 as per the agreement with the secretary of state.”
Dean disclosed in the waning days of his gubernatorial career that he had negotiated with the state archives to keep secret for 10 years more than a third of his official records. The rest are available for public review at the secretary of state’s office.
When questioned at January a news conference why he had insisted on keeping so much closed, he replied: “Well, there are future political considerations. We didn’t want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time in any future endeavor.”
The records have been of keen interest to many groups as Dean has risen to the top of the field of 10 Democrats running for president. The Boston Globe also has requested disclosure of the closed records, state officials said.
“We have a million requests about Howard Dean all the time,” Secretary of State Deborah Markowitz said, only partly in jest.
The small state archives — it has just four full-time employees — has been overwhelmed by people who show up and spend days poring through what’s already available, a task that requires a staffer to be present all the time to preserve the integrity of the documents, said Archivist Gregory Sanford.
He estimates there are 600,000 individual documents, which the staff has struggled to catalog and organize even while there’s such heavy demand for them.
Judicial Watch has been exchanging letters with the secretary of state’s office about gaining access to both the open and the closed records and also to the correspondence between Dean’s outgoing administration and the secretary of state that led to the memorandum of understanding on the 10-year closure. The previous two governors agreed to keep some records secret for six years.
“We’re considering our legal options,” Fitton said. “A memorandum of understanding saying we don’t legally have to release these documents is obviously not the final word when it comes to these issues. A court might disagree with that analysis.”
State officials say they’re bound by the terms of the agreement negotiated with Dean to protect the documents until 2013.
They based the agreement on a 1990 state Supreme Court ruling that broadly permitted administrations to keep certain records secret under the concept of executive privilege.
“The judicial doctrine of executive privilege is still quite new in Vermont,” Markowitz said. “There haven’t been a lot of cases about what is executive privilege. The court (in 1990) felt as though it was important to allow the administration the ability to have frank advice from the people who work for them.”
The documents that currently are available for public review are largely correspondence Dean had with members of the public or with interest groups, executive orders he signed, appointments and pardons.
The closed records are assumed to include memos, e-mails and other correspondence among the governor’s staff and other agencies in state government, but Sanford said he wouldn’t know that for sure until he could look at the records himself in 10 years.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=12027This same group however was also the organization that brought suit against Cheney to get him to release his "Energy Task Force records":
Judicial Watch, noting that Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean has called on Vice President Dick Cheney to release the records from his Energy Task Force, is asking Mr. Dean to release his Vermont gubernatorial records to the public.
Judicial Watch, a legal group that has brought suit against Mr. Cheney over release of the Energy Task Force records, pointed out that Mr. Dean has said the reason for sealing his gubernatorial papers for 10 years was to avoid "anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time in any future endeavor."
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20030929-123109-9608r.htmDean feared a 'Horton' scenario
By Sarah Schweitzer, Globe Staff, 10/9/2003
In the course of negotiating an unprecedented 10-year period for keeping his official papers confidential, former Vermont governor Howard Dean through his legal counsel explored the possibility of making the privacy period contingent on whether he was running for president, according to newly released documents.
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Discussions between the counsel and the state archivist about a potentially longer sealing period centered around the possibility that a future political opponent of Dean's might seize on a document and use it as ammunition, according to the correspondence.
State archivist Gregory Sanford noted that in the talks a primary concern was "the `Willie Horton' example," referring to the furloughed Massachusetts prisoner whose crimes surfaced as an issue in the 1988 contest between Vice President George H.W. Bush and Michael S. Dukakis.
A seal longer than 10 years would have significantly eclipsed periods sought by previous Vermont governors, who traditionally received six-year seals for their official papers.
Dean, who left the governor's office in January 2003 and is now seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, agreed in the end to a decade-long seal -- with no extension -- for nearly half of his official correspondence, meaning the documents will be available for public viewing in 2013. Shortly before he left office, Dean told Vermont Public Radio, "Well, there are future political considerations. We didn't want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time in any future endeavor."
In an interview with the Globe in July, he said in response to a request that he waive the seal, "No, it's sealed for a reason."
The conservative Washington-based watchdog group Judicial Watch last week called on Dean to release the documents and said it is exploring possible legal action.
Dean's legal counsel, David Rocchio, said in an interview yesterday that the idea of extending the seal beyond 10 years was first suggested by the Vermont secretary of state's office and, "In the interest of brainstorming we put it on the table."
But, he said, the idea was quickly dismissed by both the governor's office and the state archivist.
Sanford could not be reached for comment yesterday.
The correspondence from 2002 between Rocchio and Sanford, released this week after review by the state attorney general's office, make clear that Sanford opposed the 10-year seal and argued against allowing the seal to be extended if Dean ran for president or won the office.
"The open records law . . . declares `it is in the public interest to enable any person to review and criticize
decisions even though such examination may cause inconvenience or embarrassment.' So the scenario we were discussing -- use of the gubernatorial records to embarrass a national campaign -- is one not recognized by Vermont law," Sanford wrote in an Aug. 21, 2002 letter to Dean's legal counsel. Rocchio responded in writing the next day, "We have a legitimate concern about early disclosure of privileged material given the misuse -- some of it mentioned in your letter -- and the systemic problems early release will create for the thoughtful carrying on of Government in the future.. . . We are not at all interested in setting new barriers to access."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/10/09/dean_feared_a_horton_scenario/
Dean is asked to release gubernatorial records
Documents sealed under 10-year deal
By Sarah Schweitzer, Globe Staff, 10/2/2003
A conservative, Washington-based group formally requested yesterday that Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean release papers he had accumulated as governor of Vermont, nearly half of which have been under seal since he left office in January.
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Dean, who served as governor for 11 years, negotiated an unprecedented 10-year seal on correspondence from his administration, saying at the time that he didn't want the documents made public because he feared embarrassing revelations in future endeavors.
In a letter to Dean, Thomas Fitton -- president of Judicial Watch, the group pushing for the document disclosure -- wrote, "Failure on your part to provide full disclosure of your records as governor raises disturbing questions concerning accountability and transparency."
Judicial Watch is exploring legal action, Fitton said in an interview. The group brought a legal challenge seeking the release of records detailing the activities of Vice President Cheney's energy policy task force. The public request for unsealing the documents was made as Dean attempts to craft an image as the plain-spoken candidate in the field of 10 Democrats.
In a written statement, the Dean campaign said: "The vast majority of his records have been made public, including all official correspondence, proclamations, declarations, pardons, extraditions, and appointments. Those documents currently under seal will remain under seal until January 2013 as per the agreement with the secretary of state."
It is not entirely clear which records Dean has sealed; he has not outlined their contents to the state. A review of documents that he did make available suggests that internal State House documents -- particularly those from him to his staff and vice versa -- have been withheld from public view.
Shortly before he left office in January, Dean told Vermont Public Radio: "Well, there are future political considerations. We didn't want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time in any future endeavor."
In an interview with the Globe in July, he said in response to a request that he waive the seal: "No, it's sealed for a reason. Every governor seals their papers, and it's protective of a lot of people who have something to do with the governor's office."
Dean has come under fire before for not releasing records. When he was traveling the country in exploration of a presidential bid, three Vermont newspapers sued him for access to his schedule. Dean argued that the schedule was not a matter of public record because it involved matters unrelated to his duties as governor.
"Dean was trying to conceal from the public who he was meeting with and why he was meeting with them," said Robert Hemley, a lawyer who represented the newspapers: the Rutland Herald, Times Argus, and Seven Days.
In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled against Dean, saying the portions of the schedule concerning a potential presidential candidacy were subject to disclosure.
In sealing his papers, Dean invoked the doctrine of executive privilege, which the Vermont Supreme Court ruled in 1990 extended to governor's papers.
Theoretically, a governor could indefinitely seal his or her papers under the ruling, said Gregory Sanford, Vermont's archivist. In practice, governors have sought six-year seals. Madeleine Kunin, a Democrat, requested a six-year seal on nearly half her papers. The sealing period starts at the time of her departure from office in 1991. The papers of Richard Snelling, a Republican who died in office in 1991, were also sealed for six years.
Representatives of Kunin and Snelling initially requested 20- to 30-year seals, as did Dean. Dean agreed to 10 years in the course of negotiations, Sanford said.
A request by the Globe for the correspondence between Sanford and Dean's legal counsel relating to the sealing has been referred to the state attorney general's office, which is reviewing the matter and is expected to issue a decision next week.
Rules on access to gubernatorial papers are a patchwork across the country. Last year, Charles Shultz, a professor at Texas A & M University, found that of 42 state respondents, 29 states required their governors to place records in the archives, but that only 20 always did so.
Controversy arose over President Bush's decision to place the papers from his period as governor of Texas at his father's presidential library at Texas A & M, out of the reach of state archivists. Under Texas law, the governor's papers are public records. Open-government groups cried foul, and the attorney general ruled that the documents had to be turned over the state archives, where they are now being prepared for research and later will be shipped back to the Bush library, said Tonya Wood, an archivist.
In Massachusetts, the status of governors' papers is an open debate. Alan Cote, supervisor of records for the state, said: "Governor's records are not theirs. If they are not destroyed, they are turned over to the next governor or to the archives."
But he said there have been recurring discussions about which documents are considered public and which are not. "There is wide-ranging disagreement," he said.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/10/02/dean_is_asked_to_release_gubernatorial_records/
What Is Gov. Dean Hiding?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Exclusive commentary by Jill S. Farrell
Oct 23, 2003
“It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.” How many times have we heard that line? And with a few notable rare exceptions - like the 900+ FBI files that seemed to walk themselves over to the White House during the Clinton Administration - that sentiment holds true. No matter what the infraction may be, the situation resolves itself faster and more painlessly when the accused puts everything on the table. Which brings us to Howard Dean’s gubernatorial records, which are currently sealed battleship-tight.
It’s very curious behavior. It seems to me, and to those with whom I have spoken, that the best strategy for Dean is not to hide his record accumulated over the last eight years as Governor of Vermont. Conversely, the best strategy would be to put it all out there, the good and the bad. Of course there will be a few understandable mistakes. Anyone who has held any job for eight years has made a few mistakes. A few sour notes never put the opera out of business. Dean could acknowledge the mistakes, brush them off and quickly point to eight generally successful years. Right?
Research from the public interest group, Judicial Watch, shows that in January 2003, Dean entered into a "Memorandum of Understanding Between the Governor and the Secretary of State of Vermont Regarding Archival Storage of Gubernatorial Papers," effectively sealing his record as Vermont's Governor for 10 years. A decade may seem to be a bit much, but it is a bargain basement deal compared to the 24-year seal Dean requested earlier! Vermont’s archivist, Gregory Sanford’s records show that the reason Dean sites for sealing his record from public inspection -- was for Dean’s personal political ambitions for the presidency.
It is precisely because Howard Dean is a Democratic Presidential candidate that he should come clean. But it seems that the former Governor would have the American public buy the proverbial pig in a poke.
Sealing the gubernatorial records for any period of time while in preparation for an even higher public office flies in the face of common sense. Whatever happened to the principals of transparency and accountability? Is the government not the servant of the people?
It is a sad state of affairs when so little attention is given to so obvious a problem. More people should be asking the obvious question: What is the former Governor hiding? Maybe there is no “there” there. Taking extraordinary measures to keep the records hidden only sparks the imagination, and not to the good.
Perhaps Gov. Dean is in need of new counsel. This is not rocket science. This is common sense politics…and then there is the small consideration of the law. After Dean’s request for a 24-year seal was negotiated down to a mere decade, Dean’s legal counsel, David Rocchio, sought an extension in case Dean becomes President or even a presidential candidate. Vermont law does not support this behavior. Embarrassment or inconvenience is not enough grounds to withhold records from public inspection.
This seems like an awful start for someone who wishes to hold the highest office in the land. We are to understand that Gov. Dean will uphold the Constitution -- defend it from enemies from within and without -- when he will not hold still for examination of his own record. How else are we to judge him? Oh yes, we can read his press releases. I am sure that his publicity people feel that they can tell us everything we need know.
http://www.washingtondispatch.com/article_6942.shtml
Deans demands that Cheney Energy Task force records be opened to the public in light of his own desire to seal his OWN records for 24 years and having to settle on ten are likely to bite him on the ass if he is the nominee.
However it is most likely that Judicial Watch would wait to see who gets the nomination and THEN if it is Dean go full tilt to go to court and get a fast track to do so, given that they will state that it is necessary given the nearness of the elctions.
Creates major problems if Dean continues to refuse to release these records.
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