The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0109/01092.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 4KB | 77 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01092}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Iran-Contra Affair: The Report
Chapter 27D  Iran:  The Presidential Records Act}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Various}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{care
president
clause
executive
laws

}
$Date{1987}
$Log{}
Title:       Iran-Contra Affair: The Report
Author:      Various
Date:        1987

Chapter 27D  Iran:  The Presidential Records Act

     Government employees do not have the discretion to destroy or alter
embarrassing or incriminating documents.  The Presidential Records Act was
enacted after Watergate for the very purpose of ensuring that official records
would be preserved.  The Act has no criminal penalties but it was willfully
violated by Poindexter in destroying the December 1985 Finding.

Conclusion

Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution directs that the President "shall
take care that the laws be faithfully executed."  The "take care" clause was
derived from the English Bill of Rights, which forbade the King from
suspending laws that he did not like.  As Justice Jackson stated, the "take
care" clause signifies "that ours is a government of laws, not of men."

     The "take care" clause embodies the principle of accountability.  As
Gouverneur Morris, one of the Constitutional Convention delegates, stated, the
Framers were quite cognizant that "without . . . ministers the Executive can
do nothing of consequence."  At the same time, however, they understood that a
government of the people could not function unless the elected chief executive
was responsible for the actions of his appointed subordinates.  In 1789,
Madison wrote that "[N]o principle is more clearly laid down in the
Constitution, than that of responsibility."  The "take care" clause so
unpretentious in its wording, made accountability compatible with delegation.
Although they recognized that executive power must be exercised by subordinate
departments, the Framers nevertheless required the President to superintend
the actions of those departments, thus correcting the tendency of "plurality
in the executive . . . to conceal faults and destroy responsibility."

     The President's responsibility to supervise his appointees was vigorously
debated in the first session of Congress when the President's power to remove
Cabinet officers was questioned.  Many of the members had been delegates to
the Constitutional convention or the ratifying conventions, and they had
firsthand knowledge of the Framers' intent.  One Member of Congress, Fisher
Ames, stated, "The executive powers are delegated to the President with a view
to have a responsible officer to superintend, control, inspect, and check the
officers necessarily employed in administering the laws." "If anything in its
nature" is executive, James Madison explained, "it must be that power which is
employed in superintending and seeing that the laws are faithfully executed."
Representative Lee answered his own rhetorical question, "Is not the President
responsible for the Administration?  He certainly is."

     In modern government, with its hundreds of thousands of employees, a
President obviously cannot personally supervise the acts of all who act in his
name.  But if the "take care" clause has any vitality, it invests in a
President the responsibility for cultivating a respect for the Constitution
and the law by his staff and closest associates.  When the President's
National Security Adviser, who had daily contact with the President, can
assume that he is carrying out the President's wishes and policy in
authorizing the diversion; when NSC staff members believe that the destruction
of official documents is appropriate and the deception of Congress is proper;
and when laws like the Boland Amendment can be treated as if they do not
exist, then clearly there has been a failure in the leadership and supervision
that the "take care" clause contemplated.