White House Secrecy Starts to Give

[cal04]

As Congress Intensifies Efforts for Openness, Administration Accedes
Elizabeth Williamson
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/12/AR2008011202308.html


After years of hammering on the walls of secrecy surrounding the Bush White House, activists and Congress have begun, slowly, to open some cracks.

A federal magistrate on Tuesday ordered the administration to reveal by this week whether it has backup copies of millions of missing White House e-mails, which may describe decisions related to the Iraq war.

Last month, a federal judge ruled that lists of presidential visitors that President Bush has kept secret are in fact public records.

(snip)
"They're getting exactly the open government results they labored to prevent, and in part because they so overreached," said Thomas Blanton, who heads the National Security Archive at George Washington University. "They could have gotten 90 percent of the extra power they wanted if they went to Congress and the public, but by going for 100 percent and doing it in total secrecy, they undermined their own legitimacy and left the presidency weaker than when they started."

[99th_Monkey]

1. What's that giant sucking sound???

<a href="" target="_blank"><img src="" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

[Purveyor]

2. Sure the demands for info will start trickling out of the WH. They are short timers there

and little to fear once they are "ex's"...

Might I note and hope, War crimes have no international 'statue of limitation'.

Let these Bush Admin bastards be pursued to their final deathbed days.\

No...not a scant of mercy~

[unblock]

3. "left the presidency weaker" -- in other words, it only works when THEY do it.

isn't this typical! the republicans violate the rules when they're in office, and let the bureaucracy play tough guy on the NEXT president. who, of course, will be blamed for being weak and on whom scandals will befall due to the lessened secrecy.

republicans do something bad and the democrat gets punished.

so they might have to open up a wee bit during their last year, whatever. presidents don't accomplish squat during their last year anyway.

so very typical!