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Obama records requests prove fruitless
By: Mike Allen
Nov 11, 2007 09:22 PM EST
Candidate who criticizes Clinton failure to disclose papers has dodged questions about his Illinois records.
Photo: AP
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) dodged questions Sunday about releasing papers from his eight years as an Illinois state senator, and his campaign has not answered records requests from the state’s two largest newspapers.
Obama’s campaign has prodded Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) to make available additional records of her communications during her husband’s presidency.
In the Democratic presidential debate in Philadelphia on Oct. 30, Obama said to Clinton: "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, as you're making the claim that this is the basis for your experience, I think, is a problem."
On Nov. 3, the Obama campaign sent out a letter from two leaders of his Iowa campaign, pressing Clinton to release her White House schedules before the Iowa caucuses.
“Fully releasing these records is in keeping with the spirit of the process that makes the Iowa caucus so special,” the letter says.
But two Chicago newspapers have said the Obama campaign has not responded to their requests for comparable papers from his career.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, moderator Tim Russert asked Obama about the papers from his state legislative days, from 1997 to 2004.
Obama first said, “We did not keep those records.”
He then elaborated: “Well, let’s be clear.
“In the state Senate, every single piece of information, every document related to state government was kept by the state of Illinois and has been disclosed and is available and has been gone through with a fine-toothed comb by news outlets in Illinois.
“The stuff that I did not keep has to do with, for example, my schedule. I didn’t have a schedule. I was a state senator. I wasn’t intending to have the Barack Obama State Senate Library. I didn’t have 50 or 500 people to, to help me archive these issues.”
On Friday, Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times reported that she had asked Obama at a news conference: “Do your state senate papers still exist? If they do, just where are they? And would you ever intend to make them public to be responsive to some requests?”
Sweet wrote that he replied: "Nobody has requested specific documents.”
But the Chicago Tribune has reported that it “requested documents from his time in Springfield and never received a response.”
And Sweet wrote of her own paper, “The Chicago Sun-Times has also been asking about Obama's papers.”
Russert pressed Obama, who has touted his service in Springfield as proof of his experience, about his records of meetings with lobbyists.
“I did not have a scheduler, but, as I said, every document related to my interactions with government is available right now,” Obama said. “And, as I said, news outlets have already looked at them.”
Asked by Russert if he would commit to publishing his schedule each day, as his colleague Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), does, Obama said: “Well, you know, these days I have a public presidential schedule that I think everybody has access to.”
The Republican National Committee has kept up a near-daily drumbeat demanding release of the Clinton papers.
RNC spokesman Danny Diaz said of Obama’s reticence on records: “Barack Obama is a rookie senator with few accomplishments. Perhaps he’s reluctant to inform the public about his activities in Springfield because they demonstrate a lack of leadership at a state level as well.”
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