In 1972, thousands of official and unofficial FBI records were destroyed, upon the death of J. Edgar Hoover. In fact, in the past it was common practice for high ranking officials to destroy their most important business documents. For this reason, in 1974 the US Congress passed the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act, placing the presidential records of Richard Nixon in federal custody to prevent their destruction. The Act was meant to reduce secrecy at the highest levels of government, and to give historians the materials they need to perform their duties. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 expanded such protection of historical records. This was accomplished by mandating that all records of former presidents automatically become the property of the federal government upon leaving the Oval Office.
The presidential papers of Ronald Reagan and Vice President George Bush were due to be made public when George W. Bush took office in January, 2001. However, George W. Bush first delayed the release for 90 days, and then repeated the action, pushing the date back into September, 2001. On November 1, 2001, Bush issued Executive Order 13233, limiting public access to the records of former U.S. presidents. The Bush executive order also includes the documents of former vice presidents. Many people were critical of this action, claiming that it violated both the “spirit and letter of existing US laws.” The order severely curtailed public access to presidential records and added to delays in obtaining materials from presidential libraries. On January 21, 2009, Executive Order 13233 was revoked, by executive order of President Barack Obama on his first day in office. Obama essentially restored the original Executive Order 12667.
During his presidency, George W. Bush was accused of acting in violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978. In 2007, the Bush White House e-mail controversy was revealed. The event started when George W. Bush initiated the, unprecedented, midterm dismissal of seven United States Attorneys on December 7, 2006. The U.S. attorneys were replaced with interim appointees, under provisions in the 2005 USA PATRIOT Act reauthorization. Following the action, a congressional request was called looking for documents indicating why the attorneys were fired. This caused the Bush administration to reveal the fact that not all internal White House emails were available, because they were sent via a non-government domain, that was hosted on an e-mail server not controlled by the federal government. In 2009, it was announced that as many as 22 million emails may have been deleted by the Bush administration.
