Tags : obama, White House
White House Reverses Bush Administration Policy On Visitor Logs
Washington, D.C. (AHN) – The Obama administration on Friday announced that it would open White House visitor logs to the public, reversing a policy of the Bush administration that it had adopted. The decision is part of an agreement to settle four lawsuits filed by a watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, against both administrations.
In a statement, President Barack Obama said, “For the first time in history, records of White House visitors will be made available to the public on an ongoing basis. We will achieve our goal of making this administration the most open and transparent administration in history not only by opening the doors of the White House to more Americans, but by shining a light on the business conducted inside. Americans have a right to know whose voices are being heard in the policymaking process.”
Logs from the past 90 to 120 days will be released every month by the administration online. Exempted from the disclosure is “a small group of appointments that cannot be disclosed because of national security imperatives or their necessarily confidential nature (such as a visit by a possible Supreme Court nominee),” the White House said.
CREW had made Freedom of Information Act requests asking the Obama administration to release records of healthcare and coal executives to find out how much influence these officials had on the government. Before that, the non-profit group had sought from the Bush administration information about how frequent nine conservative religious leaders, including James Dobson and Jerry Falwell, went on visits to the White House.
The group had filed a lawsuit questioning the validity of a 2006 memorandum of agreement between then-President George W. Bush and the Secret Service, which creates the logs, that said visitors to the White House compound were not to be publicly disclosed.
A week before Bush left office this year, a federal judge ruled in favor of CREW, rejecting arguments that invoked executive privilege, and that declared the logs exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.
The Jan. 9 ruling also said the Secret Service had destroyed visitor records before 2004 upon orders of the Bush administration, in violation of the Federal Records Act.
The Obama administration has been pushing hard for Congress to pass healthcare reform and climate change legislation this year. It said it began reviewing the visitor log policy of previous administrations “during its first days in office,” and that CREW had participated in the development of the new policy.
CREW made clear that the current administration had “initially refused to turn over the records,” but added, “The Bush administration fought tooth and nail to keep secret the identities of those who visited the White House. In contrast, the Obama administration – by putting visitor records on the White House web site – will have the most open White House in history.”
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