Disclosures Fought as Pres. Obama Undoes Secrecy Regulations
The day after becoming the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama issued two directives that encourage government agencies to release federal and presidential information to the public.
“In the face of doubt, openness prevails,” Obama declared January 21 in a memo on complying with the Freedom of Information Act. “The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.” He also issued an Executive Order on Presidential Records that makes final decisions about withholding information located in the records of the incumbent president or former presidents or vice-presidents subject to review by the U.S. attorney general, White House counsel, and the courts. “Information with not be withheld just because I say so,” President Obama said at the signing.
Obama’s actions undo a 2001 executive order (PDF file) by President George W. Bush that allowed current and former presidents and their heirs to deny access to any administration’s presidential records and a 2005 executive order (PDF file) that includes language encouraging federal agencies to “protect information that must be held in confidence for the Government to function effectively or for other purposes.”
Ironically, on the same day President Obama issued the order easing access to presidential and vice-presidential records, the Justice Department sought to dismiss (PDF file) a lawsuit seeking the recovery of millions of White House e-mails exchanged between 2003 and 2005. However, the policy change may facilitate the release of information sought by several congressional committees from former Vice President Dick Cheney’s records, whose handover to the National Archives was the subject of a lawsuit lost January 19 by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Tom Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, lauded the directives for reversing “two of the most dramatic secrecy moves of the Bush initiatives.” The NSA and 59 other organizations—including the American Association of Law Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries—had urged such actions to the Obama transition team in November regarding FOIA (PDF file) and presidential records (PDF file).
Posted on January 26, 2009. Discuss.