What Are They Hiding?

USA Today reports that the Clinton Library is holding on to hundreds of pages of documents requested by various parties, including the Obama and McCain campaigns about President Clinton's pardons.

What are the archivists hiding? Why do the Clintons not want their record to be in the public domain? This isn't the first time the Clintons have sought to limit the release of documents from Bill's presidency.

Federal archivists at the Clinton Presidential Library are blocking the release of hundreds of pages of White House papers on pardons that the former president approved, including clemency for fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich.

That archivists’ decision, based on guidance provided by Bill Clinton that restricts the disclosure of advice he received from aides, prevents public scrutiny of documents that would shed light on how he decided which pardons to approve from among hundreds of requests.

Clinton’s legal agent declined the option of reviewing and releasing the documents that were withheld, said the archivists, who work for the federal government, not the Clintons.

The decision to withhold much of the requested material could provide fodder for critics who say that the former president and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, now seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, have been unwilling to fully release documents to public scrutiny.

Officials with the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., criticized Sen. Clinton this week for not doing more to see that records from her husband’s administration are made public. “She’s been reluctant to disclose information,” Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod told reporters in a conference call where he specifically cited the slow release records from the Clinton library. “If she’s not willing to be open with (voters) on these issues now, why would she be open as president.”

From the way they're ducking and covering, you'd think that the Clintons had something to hide.

The fact is that the pardons are rich fodder for pundits and opponents, because so many of the pardons had a foul stench to them. Marc Rich got a pardon, despite the Department of Justice opposing one, all because Rich's wife was a big donor.

Others got pardons because Clinton family members benefited.