Where The Sun Don’t Shine<\/a> by Paul D Thacker in Slate.<\/p>\nThe Text:<\/strong> President Obama has failed to deliver on few promises as miserably as his vow to create a more transparent and open government. Shortly after being sworn into office, he sent a memo to federal agencies promising, \u201cWe will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration.\u201d
\nAt the time, I was a staffer on the Senate Finance Committee for Republican Charles Grassley and couldn\u2019t help but laugh.<\/p>\nBefore I worked on Capitol Hill, I was a reporter and broke a story about how Bush administration officials had silenced federal scientists who had tried to speak up about climate change after Hurricane Katrina. I based the article on documents and email messages I had uncovered through the Freedom of Information Act. Even though the Department of Commerce handed over the emails, I was disappointed to discover that portions of them had been illegally redacted to hide the involvement of specific political appointees.<\/p>\n
After seeing years of heavy-handed secrecy and incessant White House claims of national security to hide the ball from Congress, I supported President Obama\u2019s efforts to clean things up and restore some balance. But like most reporters, I am suspicious of these types of promises, especially from politicians. Regardless of who occupies the White House, I understand that power wants power. Scrutiny just gets in the way.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
President Obama is no different. Whether it\u2019s responding to Congress, media questions, or FOIA requests, this administration is no better than its predecessor. The big difference: Obama is a Democrat. And because he is a Democrat, he\u2019s gotten a pass from many of the civil liberty and good-government groups who spent years watching President Bush\u2019s every move like a hawk.<\/p>\n
No one knows this better than John Kiriakou, the CIA agent who reported to federal prison two weeks ago for blowing the whistle on the agency\u2019s use of torture. During an interview at an Arlington, Va., coffee shop, Kiriakou said the time has come for Washington watchdog groups\u2014organizations like Public Citizen, Project on Government Oversight, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and others\u2014to admit that President Obama hasn\u2019t come close to making good on his promise to make government more transparent and accountable.<\/p>\n
\u201cDan Ellsberg. He called me again last night,\u201d said Kiriakou, referring to the man who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers and opened the world\u2019s eyes to the United States\u2019 long involvement in Vietnam. \u201cWe talk about this all the time. He keeps asking me, \u2018Where is the outrage? If this were a Republican administration, people would be in the streets, right? We would be marching in the streets. But people cut Obama a break to the point of irrationality.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed. Soon after he was sworn into office, Obama appointed an \u201cethics czar\u201d named Norm Eisen, a successful attorney, who had been one of the president\u2019s classmates at Harvard Law School and later became a major fundraiser to his campaign. Eisen was likely handed the ethics portfolio for a specific reason: He was steeped in the world of Washington watchdogs. (Eisen is one of the co-founders of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW.) With Eisen on board, the administration was able to make cosmetic changes and neutralize harsh disapproval with a classic Washington maneuver\u2014inviting potential critics to the White House for meetings. The administration understood that many of these groups would be satisfied by getting meetings with the ethics czar, and would calculate that if they became too critical of the president that their newfound \u201caccess\u201d would be in peril. So the watchdogs have scampered up to the White House time and again, hopeful that maybe with the next election, the next initiative, maybe even the next meeting, something would change.<\/p>\n
The most absurd example came a couple years ago when a group of Washington watchdogs went to the White House to give the president a \u201ctransparency\u201d award, and the president refused to accept the award in public. The meeting wasn\u2019t even listed on the president\u2019s public schedule.
\nThe watchdogs shouldn\u2019t be fooled so easily. In March 2010, the Associated Press found that, under Obama, 17 major agencies were 50 percent more likely to deny FOIA requests than under Bush. The following year, the presidents of two journalism societies\u2014 Association of Health Care Journalists and Society of Professional Journalists\u2014called out President Obama for muzzling scientists in much the same way President Bush had. Last September, Bloomberg News tested Obama\u2019s pledge by filing FOIA requests for the 2011 travel records of top officials at 57 agencies. Only about half responded. In fact, this president has prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all prior administrations combined. And an analysis released Monday by the Associated Press found that the administration censored more FOIA requests on national security grounds last year than in any other year since President Obama took office.<\/p>\n
Even when members of his own party ask questions, the Obama White House throws down an iron curtain. After demanding answers about the government response to the BP oil spill, Democratic Arizona Rep. Ra\u00fal M. Grijalva sent a long letter to Obama expressing disappointment with the \u201cunjustifiable\u201d redactions he received, \u201cincluding entire pages blacked out in the middle of pertinent e-mail conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the most glaring examples of Obama\u2019s failure on transparency is his response to the \u201cFast and Furious\u201d fiasco\u2014the botched attempt by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to find Mexican drug lords by tracking guns smuggled from the United States into Mexico. The debacle came to light when ATF whistleblowers met with investigators working for Sen. Grassley. Grassley sent a letter to the Department of Justice demanding answers; not realizing Grassley already had documents that laid out the operation, officials at Justice responded with false and misleading information that violated federal law. When Grassley pressed the issue, the Justice Department retracted its initial response but refused to say anything more, which has resulted in multiple hearings and subpoenas.<\/p>\n
The storyline is classic Washington: Whistleblowers run to Congress about bad behavior; Congress demands answers; the White House throws up a wall. But where is the outrage, especially from the very groups who are supposed to be holding the government accountable? It doesn\u2019t exist. Writing about Fast and Furious for the Huffington Post, Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight mused whether the entire inquiry being led by Republicans was merely \u201cpartisanship\u201d run amok. Wouldn\u2019t it have been more logical for her to ask why Democrats hadn\u2019t joined Republicans in demanding that the White House respond?<\/p>\n
Such a poor grasp of the facts could be caused by the involvement of Rep. Darrell Issa, who was ordered years ago by the Republican leadership to turn the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform into a war machine against the White House. However, in this case, Issa was in the right.<\/p>\n
As the administration continued to insist they had no involvement or knowledge of the ATF program, Issa released several Fast and Furious wiretap applications with signatures of top Justice Department officials. Rather than attacking the administration\u2019s stonewalling, Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, attacked Rep. Issa for releasing the sealed documents.<\/p>\n
Never mind that every investigative committee releases sealed documents. (I cannot tell you how many times my Senate Finance Committee colleagues and I released documents that were under seal.) It\u2019s how Congress functions and does its job. However, CREW\u2019s close ties to ethics czar Eisen might explain why Sloan was so quick to go on the partisan attack.<\/p>\n
Tired of stonewalling, House Republicans threatened Attorney General Eric Holder with contempt, forcing Obama\u2019s hand. In 2007, presidential candidate Obama told the Boston Globe, \u201cMy view is that executive privilege generally depends on the involvement of the president and the White House.\u201d He must take a different view of it now, as Obama declared executive privilege to protect the Department of Justice as well, compelling the House to vote for contempt.<\/p>\n
Most Americans don\u2019t care about arcane legal battles over separation of powers between the White House and Congress. On election night, it was obvious that the issue had not resonated outside right-wing media circles. When it became clear that Obama was going to win, an employee with one of Washington\u2019s watchdogs tweeted, \u201cNow am I allowed to criticize Obama on drones & assassination & military commissions & secret memos expanding secret surveillance powers??\u201d Maybe it\u2019s a bad joke, but the implication is that she and her cohort had been withholding criticism of the president until it became clear that he had beaten Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n
The ATF whistleblowers who brought the issue to Congress faced years of harassment from their agency but were ignored by Washington\u2019s collection of good-government groups, who typically rally around whistleblowers. Only the Washington Times reported that Agent Peter Forcelli later resolved his disputes with the agency. After the election, Agent John Dodson was also cleared of any wrongdoings and was even praised by the ATF for taking the \u201ccourageous step of going to Congress to ensure that the public learned of the flawed tactics used in Operation Fast and Furious.\u201d<\/p>\n
Only Fox News covered the matter.<\/p>\n
Kiriakou says that it\u2019s time for people to acknowledge the facts about the Obama administration\u2019s attitude toward whistleblowers and transparency in general:<\/p>\n
\u201cI think these groups are stuck in a 2008 mentality where, \u2018Oh my gosh, we have President Obama. He is a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and he\u2019s promised greater transparency, and he really wants to do that but he just can\u2019t yet. It will come. It will come. We should trust him.\u2019 \u201d
\nThe occasion is not yet ripe for many in Washington to admit that the Obama administration is no different from those who have come before it. But time will come when the cognitive dissonance between what Obama says and what he does will be too much.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should judge him by his actions,\u201d Kiriakou says. Hopefully, it won\u2019t take another four years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Article: Where The Sun Don’t Shine by Paul D Thacker in Slate. The Text: President Obama has failed to deliver on few promises as miserably as his vow to create a more transparent and open government. Shortly after being sworn into office, he sent a memo to federal agencies promising, \u201cWe will work together […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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