Guest AuthorPresident Barack Obama promised that his administration would be the most open and transparent in history. With the nation coming out of the super-secretive Bush years, the news media and watchdog groups welcomed the change.
His Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, issued on Jan. 21,
2009, directed federal agencies to implement the principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration. Open government web pages were created and agencies were told to adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure in dealing with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
Sadly the actual practices of the Obama White House have proved that the openness was only a veneer.
U. S. Attorney General Eric Holder requested all departments and agencies to update their FOIA regulations to comply with the directive. It didn’t happen. A 2012 audit revealed that out of 99 federal agencies only 37 had updated their regulations.
And those open government websites? The Obama White House has used them to publish copious amounts of favorable information and images, while waging a war on leaks and efforts by the news media to investigate the administration.
This past May, the Obama administration secretly subpoenaed Associated Press phone records that included the seizure of data for five reporters’ cellphones and three home phones as well as two fax lines. The Department of Justice has gone after New York Times reporter and author James Risen — wanting his sources for a chapter in his 2006 book, “State of War,” about a botched CIA plan to trick Iranian nuclear scientists during the Clinton years.
Whistleblowers haven’t fared well either under Obama. Though he signed the Whistleblowers Protection Enhancement Act in November 2012 to clarify what disclosures are protected, his administration also created a loophole — “noncritical sensitive” job classification — that denied whistleblowing or discrimination appeals to the Merit Systems Protection Board for hundreds of federal employees.
The Obama administration has used the Espionage Act of 1917 seven times against employees exposing government waste, fraud and abuse — more than all previous administrations combined. Threats, intimidation and fear have been used to stifle watchdog efforts.
There was a time when this nation set the standard for freedom of the press and open government. Those days are gone, thanks to the Obama White House.
