THE WHITE HOUSE [...]
Office of the Press SecretaryPress Availability with President Bush
November 2, 2001
PRESIDENT BUSH: Good morning.
Q: James Rosen, Fox News.
PRESIDENT BUSH: If that's the case, then I'll call on somebody else. (Laughter.)
Q: Now that you're a wartime president, sir, interest in your decision-making processes, and those that you involve your staff in, is going to be greater than even normal times. And yet, the executive order that you signed yesterday makes it harder for journalists, scholars, historians, to write anything about the decisions you're going to be making, and have made, even sympathetically. And I wonder why you took that action?
PRESIDENT BUSH: We were -- we responded to a new law written by Congress that lays out a procedure that I think is fair for past presidents. And it is a process that I think will enable historians to do their job, and at the same time protect state secrets. That's why I did what I did.
Q: They won't be able to get their hands on documents for many years --
PRESIDENT BUSH: There are some documents that are privileged and protected, and this is just to make sure those documents remain protected and privileged. I don't see this as anything other than setting a set of procedures that I believe is fair and reasonable.
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