Editorial: Bush should drop culture of secrecy

8 Jan 2008 // President Bush’s culture of secrecy belies his administration’s emphasis on accountability.

The principle of open government bolsters America’s representative democracy by ensuring that the people have access to public affairs conducted in their behalf.

Transparency in government goes hand in hand with accountability, a fact that gives the Bush administration extremely low marks in its promise to be accountable to the people.

In the latest example, Bush’s disposition for secrecy led to a challenge to U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth’s ruling that the administration cannot hide the White House visitor logs.

White House visitor logs have long been open for public inspection. They reveal nothing of what people do while visiting the White House, only that they have been cleared through Secret Service before they visit the White House complex.

Even though these records have always been considered innocuous, the Bush administration ordered the Secret Service to turn the visitor logs over to the White House so the administration could deny public requests to see the logs based on the argument that the White House is not subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for public records.

In 2006, The Washington Post, Judicial Watch and the non-partisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed FOIA requests for White House visitor logs.

To everyone’s surprise, the White House denied these routine requests by claiming the records no longer were open to the public since they were now in the control of the White House.

The requests were made in an effort to determine how often visitors, including conservative religious leaders like James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Gary Bauer of American Values and Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America, had visited the White House.

There also was interest in how often now-felon lobbyist Jack Abramoff had visited the White House. These records have long been used to gauge who might be trying to influence the administration.

In his 40-page ruling, Judge Lamberth said the visitor records at the White House complex and vice president’s residence are created and controlled by the Secret Service and cannot be re-classified as White House records. He also ruled that there was no merit to the argument that visitor logs would disclose presidential communications or reveal policy deliberations.

The Bush administration is challenging the order.

By constantly fighting to deny public access to public business, Bush gives the unavoidable impression that he has a lot to hide.