THE WASHINGTON TIMES EDITORIAL: MISPLACED WHITE HOUSE SECRECY
http://www.citizensforethics.org/node/3068026 Dec 2007 // The White House filed a challenge last week to a U.S. District Court ruling that Secret Service visitor logs for the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's residence are public documents. Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled that these records can be released to the public under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This was in response to a lawsuit brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a nonpartisan, liberal-leaning nonprofit organization, to obtain information about the visits of nine conservative leaders, including James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Gary Bauer of American Values and Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America. The original FOIA request was filed in October 2006.
It's likely that these worthies did nothing wrong in their communications with the Bush administration, so it's all the more puzzling that the White House would raise suspicions about the release of what appear to be innocuous public records. The Secret Service, which is subject to FOIA, maintains logs of all visits to the White House and the vice president's residence on the grounds of the Naval Observatory on Massachusetts Avenue NW. The White House sought to keep these records out of sight, claiming that they're presidential records that fall outside the realm of FOIA's legitimate reach.
But Judge Lamberth, noting that the meeting logs do not damage the confidentiality of presidential and vice presidential policy deliberations, ruled that they are indeed subject to FOIA requests, since the logs describe neither the nature nor purpose of the visits. The logs provide only evidence of who is visiting the administration's top officials. This gives ordinary Americans insight into who has access and influence.
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