Executive Order 13233

Executive Order 13233

Further Implementation of the Presidential Records Act
The Executive Order limited access to records of former U.S. Presidents (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library pictured)
Type	Executive order
Executive Order number	13233
Signed by	George W. Bush on 1 November 2001
Federal Register details
Federal Register document number	01-27917
Publication date	5 November 2001
Document citation	66 FR 56025
Summary
Limited access to the records of former Presidents of the United States.

Executive Order 13233 limited access to the records of former United States Presidents to a higher degree than the previous Order 12667, which it superseded. It was drafted by then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and issued by George W. Bush on November 1, 2001. Section 13 of Order 13233 revoked Executive Order which was issued by Ronald Reagan on January 18, 1989.

Executive Order was partially struck down in October 2007. The order was revoked on January 21, 2009 by Barack Obama's Executive Order , which essentially restored most of the wording of Order 12667 with some modifications.

In 1974, Congress passed the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act of 1974, placing the presidential records of Richard Nixon in federal custody to prevent their destruction. The legislative action was intended to reduce secrecy, while allowing historians to perform their responsibilities. In 1972, decades worth of official and unofficial Federal Bureau of Investigation records had been destroyed, upon the death of J. Edgar Hoover, by his longtime secretary, Helen Gandy. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 expanded such protection of historical records, by mandating that the records of former presidents would automatically become the property of the federal government upon their departures from the Oval Office, and then transferred to the Archivist of the United States, thereafter to be made available to the public after no more than 12 years.