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Clinton denies delaying release of husband’s documents

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Sen. Hillary Clinton’s rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination are accusing her of delaying the release of records from her husband’s administration, something the front-runner and President Clinton have denied.

We have just gone through one of the most secretive administrations in our history. And not releasing, I think, these records at the same time, Hillary, that you’re making the claim that this is the basis for your experience, I think, is a problem, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, charged during a presidential debate Tuesday.

But Clinton, who represents New York, said the release of the records are not up to her or former President Clinton but the archivists at the National Archives

The archives is moving as rapidly as the archives moves, Clinton said when asked about the documents by the debate moderator, NBC’s Tim Russert. They are releasing as they do their process. And I am fully in favor of that.

The Clinton Library in Little Rock, Arkansas, contains 78 million pages of documents and 20 million e-mail messages, said spokeswoman Susan Cooper.

The library has about 300 outstanding Freedom of Information Act requests for Clinton documents, totaling 10 million pages, and has six archivists to handle them, Cooper said. Watch Clinton answer critics about release of papers

Each request requires thousands of pages to look through to see if they’re responsive. Cooper said. Those that are may be classified and may deal with personal privacy, so we’re up against an enormous task.

The first request was on UFOs, and we can’t decide which one to handle first, Cooper added.

Newsweek magazine reported that one-half of 1 percent of the documents have been released to the public so far.

President Clinton also plays a role in the process. An executive order signed by President Bush in 2001 allows Clinton and other former presidents to review material before it is released by the archive.

According to Newsweek, the Clintons asked in a 2002 letter that confidential communications involving legal issues and advice and communications directly between the president and the first lady be withheld.

Longtime aide Bruce Lindsey is in charge of document reviews for the Clintons. According to the Clinton Library, his reviews take, on average, eight months.

About 26,000 pages are awaiting review by Clinton’s aides, according to the archives.

Obama is a co-sponsor of a bill before the Senate that would revoke the right of former presidents to review documents before they are released. Clinton is not a sponsor.

Whatever the reason documents are not being released, political observers said Clinton’s opponents could use the issue to raise doubts about the former first lady.

Candidates who conceal things run into the problem of people believing ‘where there’s smoke there’s fire,’ said Roger Simon of the Politico. People ask, logically, ‘Why are you hiding this stuff if it isn’t important? Why not just release everything?’
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Venezuelan troops use tear gas on Chavez protesters

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan troops used tear gas and water cannons Thursday disperse demonstrators who turned out by the tens of thousands to protest constitutional reforms that would permit President Hugo Chavez to run for re-election indefinitely.

Led by university students, demonstrators chanted, Freedom! Freedom! and warned that 69 amendments drafted by Venezuela’s Chavista-dominated National Assembly would violate civil liberties and derail democracy.

Authorities broke up the protest outside the electoral agency’s office.

There were no reports from authorities of arrests or serious injuries, but the local Globovision television channel showed footage of several students who suffered minor injuries.

Students also hurled rocks and bottles. A few lifted up sections of metal barricades and thrusted them against police holding riot shields. Students retreated later as police fired plastic bullets.

Chavez wants to remain in power his entire life, and that’s not democracy, said Gonzalo Rommer, a university student who joined protesters as they marched to the National Elections Council.

Deputy Justice Minister Tarek El Aissami blamed students for the violence, saying they forced their way through police barricades. But Vicente Diaz, one of the National Election Council’s five directors, criticized National Guardsmen and police for using excessive force to disperse protesters.

The amendments would give the government control over the Central Bank, create new types of cooperative property, allow authorities to detain citizens without charges during a state of emergency and extend presidential terms from six to seven years while allowing Chavez to run again in 2012.

Opposition parties, human rights groups and representatives of the Roman Catholic Church fear civil liberties would be severely weakened under the constitutional changes.

Chavez — a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro — denies the reforms threaten civil liberties. He and his supporters say the changes will help move the country toward socialism, while giving neighborhood-based assemblies more decision-making power in using government funds for local projects such as paving streets and building public housing.
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American Airlines leads airfare hike

NEW YORK (AP) — American Airlines sparked a new round of widespread airfare increases Thursday by raising U.S. round-trip prices $20, the biggest in a recent series of hikes carriers have pushed through as oil prices surged.

The nation’s biggest carrier said Thursday it raised fares in an attempt to recover some of the costs associated with the rising price of crude oil and jet fuel.

Delta Air Lines and Alaska Airlines followed with their own increases Thursday, according to data provided by airline price tracking Web site FareCompare.com. Representatives for the two airlines did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

AirTran Airways spokeswoman Judy Graham-Weaver said the low-cost carrier raised its fares Wednesday and did not have immediate plans to raise them further. She said the move was purely because of such record-high fuel costs.

The latest round of fare hikes is the industry’s seventh since Labor Day, and the largest of those in dollar terms, said Rick Seaney, chief executive of FareCompare.com.

This last two months have been unprecedented, and a lot of it has to do with the unprecedented price of fuel, he said.

Recent fare increases, such as one launched by Continental Airlines last week, had raised most ticket prices by only half as much. Major carriers typically follow their competitors in raising prices within a matter of days, if not hours.

Airlines have consistently cited increasing fuel prices as justification for higher fares, and industrywide efforts to trim capacity have helped those fare hikes stick. Fuel is one of the industry’s biggest costs.

The Air Transport Association, the industry’s main trade group, said Thursday that higher fuel prices drove second-quarter costs 5.6 percent higher — more than twice the rate during the same period a year earlier.

Soaring fuel prices, among other pressures, leave little room for error in maintaining today’s modest profit margins, said ATA Chief Economist John Heimlich.

Crude oil futures have risen by about 25 percent since Labor Day. American estimated the change in the spot price of oil since the summer translates into more than $1 billion in annual costs.

Crude oil prices hit a record overnight Thursday after the U.S. reported a surprisingly large drop in crude inventories. Light, sweet crude for December delivery rose as high as $96.24 a barrel in electronic trading before dropping to $93.29 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Shares of Fort Worth, Texas-based AMR Corp., American’s parent company, fell 46 cents to $23.54. Other airline shares also fell.
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Bush: Mukasey’s approval crucial to U.S. security

(CNN) — President Bush on Thursday urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to move quickly to approve his nominee for attorney general, saying it’s crucial to national security to fill the position.

In a time of war, it’s vital for the president to have a full national security team in place, the president said in a speech at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank. A vital part of that is the attorney general.

Bush has nominated retired federal Judge Michael Mukasey for the job. The Senate Judiciary Committee has held up approval, in part over Mukasey’s reluctance to state his categorical opposition to the use of waterboarding as a coercion tactic in questioning terror suspects.

Human rights groups consider waterboarding — a technique in which prisoners are made to feel as if they were drowning — a form of torture.

Mukasey told senators that while he found the practice personally repugnant, he could not answer hypothetical questions about whether the technique violates a U.S. ban on the use of torture.

The Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on the nomination Tuesday.

Several leading Democratic senators have said they will oppose Mukasey because of the waterboarding issue and questions about his views on the president’s power to order electronic surveillance.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, who on Thursday said he opposes Mukasey’s nomination, accused Bush of misleading the public about what is at stake.

We did not ask Judge Mukasey to pass judgment on any classified program. We asked him to provide his legal judgment on the question of whether waterboarding is illegal, the Massachusetts Democrat said in a statement. This is a straightforward question, and one that has been answered in the affirmative by countless legal experts from across the political spectrum. … Judge Mukasey’s failure to agree with this widely held view demonstrates that he lacks either the judgment or the independence that the Department of Justice desperately needs.

Others remain undecided, including Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, a Judiciary Committee member and the leading Democratic advocate for Mukasey when his nomination was first announced.

Senate leaders must move this nomination out of committee, bring it to the Senate floor and confirm this good man, the president said.

Bush also blasted Congress for failing to act on intelligence legislation that is vital to protect the American people in this war on terror.

He said passage of the Protect America Act, which supporters say would strengthen the ability of U.S. agents to collect foreign intelligence on terrorists overseas, is necessary to prevent a gap in intelligence collection.

Bush also called on Congress to pass spending bills for the military that include provisions for troops in the war zone, saying they should spend more time listening to the threats of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and less time responding to the demands of MoveOn.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters.

Congress should not go home for the holidays while our men and women in uniform are waiting the funds they need, he said.

Earlier Thursday, Democrats said Bush and other GOP leaders were keeping them from implementing some of their top priorities, including a new policy for the Iraq war and an expansion of a popular federally funded children’s health insurance program.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland said those measures were blocked far too often by a do-nothing president and his Republican accomplices.

The president has consistently refused to follow Congress’ lead to change flawed and failing policies in Iraq, he said.

Earlier this week, Hoyer called Bush the biggest obstacle to extending health coverage and said his comments on appropriations bills and fiscal responsibility ring hollow.

The fact is, this administration has pursued the most fiscally irresponsible policies in American history, turning record surpluses into record deficits and adding more than $3 trillion to the national debt, Hoyer said in a statement.

Bush sought to dispel illusions that his presidency is already in lame-duck mode, 14 months ahead of the end of his term.

Bush told Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner that he should put on his running shoes, because my spirits are high and my energy level is good, and I’m sprinting to the finish line.
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A-bomb pilot Paul Tibbets dies

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Paul Tibbets, the pilot and commander of the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, died Thursday. He was 92.

Tibbets died at his Columbus, Ohio, home, said Gerry Newhouse, a longtime friend. Tibbets suffered from a variety of health problems and had been in decline for two months.

Tibbets had requested no funeral and no headstone, fearing it would provide his detractors with a place to protest, Newhouse said.

Tibbets’ historic mission in the plane Enola Gay, named for his mother, marked the beginning of the end of World War II. It was the first use of an atomic weapon in wartime.

The plane and its crew of 14 dropped the 5-ton Little Boy bomb on Hiroshima on the morning of August 6, 1945. The blast killed 70,000 to 100,000 people and wounded countless others.

Three days later, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Tibbets did not fly in that mission. The Japanese surrendered a few days later, ending the war.

I knew when I got the assignment it was going to be an emotional thing, Tibbets told The Columbus Dispatch for a story on August 6, 2005, the 60th anniversary of the bomb. We had feelings, but we had to put them in the background. We knew it was going to kill people right and left. But my one driving interest was to do the best job I could so that we could end the killing as quickly as possible.

Tibbets, then a 30-year-old colonel, never expressed regret over his role. It was, he said, his patriotic duty — the right thing to do.

I’m not proud that I killed 80,000 people, but I’m proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it and have it work as perfectly as it did, he said in a 1975 interview.

You’ve got to take stock and assess the situation at that time. We were at war. … You use anything at your disposal.

He added: I sleep clearly every night.

Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr. was born February 23, 1915, in Quincy, Illinois, and spent most of his boyhood in Miami, Florida.

He was a student at the University of Cincinnati medical school in Ohio when he decided to withdraw in 1937 to enlist in the Army Air Corps.

After the war, Tibbets said in 2005, he was dogged by rumors claiming he was in prison or had committed suicide.

They said I was crazy, said I was a drunkard, in and out of institutions, he said. At the time, I was running the National Crisis Center at the Pentagon.

Tibbets retired from the Air Force as a brigadier general in 1966. He later moved to Columbus, where he ran an air taxi service until he retired in 1985.

But his role in the bombing brought him fame — and infamy — throughout his life.

In 1976, he was criticized for re-enacting the bombing during an appearance at a Harlingen, Texas, air show. As he flew a B-29 Superfortress over the show, a bomb set off on the runway below created a mushroom cloud.

He said the display was not intended to insult anybody, but the Japanese were outraged. The U.S. government later issued a formal apology.

Tibbets again defended the bombing in 1995, when an outcry erupted over a planned 50th anniversary exhibit of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian Institution.

The museum had planned to mount an exhibit that would have examined the context of the bombing, including the discussion within the Truman administration of whether to use the bomb, the rejection of a demonstration bombing and the selection of the target.

Veterans groups objected, saying the proposed display paid too much attention to Japan’s suffering and too little to Japan’s brutality during and before World War II, and that it underestimated the number of Americans who would have perished in an invasion.

They said the bombing of Japan was an unmitigated blessing for the United States and the exhibit should say so.

Tibbets denounced it as a damn big insult.

The museum changed its plan and agreed to display the fuselage of the Enola Gay without commentary, context or analysis.

He told the Dispatch in 2005 that he wanted his ashes scattered over the English Channel, where he loved to fly during the war.

Newhouse, Tibbets’ longtime friend, confirmed that Tibbets wanted to be cremated, but he said relatives had not yet determined how he would be laid to rest.
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