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WASHINGTON - The Bush administration blacked out almost all the information in
hundreds of documents before releasing them to a conservative organization looking
into President Clinton's controversial pardons four years ago on his last day
in office.
The only items not deleted from the material are the names of the person who
wrote the document and the person it was sent to.
The government accountability group Judicial Watch said Friday that it received
the Justice Department documents following a court battle that featured a Republican
administration fighting to keep secret documents generated by its Democratic
predecessor.
The Bush White House has argued that releasing pardon-related documents would
have a chilling effect on internal discussions leading up to presidential action
on such requests.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton called it an instance of the Bush administration
covering up a Clinton administration scandal.
The group plans to return to court to challenge the deletions, which cover
nearly everything that is written on a total of 915 pages.
A federal appeals court ruled a year ago in the case that the White House can't
claim Justice Department records are covered by a special exemption from the
law reserved for presidential communications.
Among the 140 people Clinton pardoned on Jan. 20, 2001 was fugitive financier
Marc Rich. Rich's wife, a Democratic fund-raiser, contributed $450,000 to Clinton's
presidential library foundation and more than $100,000 to Hillary Rodham Clinton's
U.S. Senate campaign.
Rich's name does not appear on any of the 915 pages.
The department invoked exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act that
allow deletions for reasons such as documents being part of internal deliberations
or containing personal information.