Is the Obama Administration the Most Secretive and Opaque Yet?By Paul D. Thacker | Posted Tuesday, March 12, 2013, at 5:23 AM
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Slate.com
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Where the Sun Don’t Shine
President Obama promised transparency and open government. He failed miserably. So why do Washington watchdog groups look the other way?
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, “We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration.”
At the time, I was a staffer on the Senate Finance Committee for Republican Charles Grassley and couldn’t help but laugh.
Before 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.
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’s 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.
President Obama is no different. Whether it’s 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’s gotten a pass from many of the civil liberty and good-government groups who spent years watching President Bush’s every move like a hawk.
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’s use of torture. During an interview at an Arlington, Va., coffee shop, Kiriakou said the time has come for Washington watchdog groups—organizations like Public Citizen, Project on Government Oversight, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and others—to admit that President Obama hasn’t come close to making good on his promise to make government more transparent and accountable.
“Dan Ellsberg. He called me again last night,” said Kiriakou, referring to the man who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers and opened the world’s eyes to the United States’ long involvement in Vietnam. “We talk about this all the time. He keeps asking me, ‘Where 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.’ ”
Indeed. Soon after he was sworn into office, Obama appointed an “ethics czar” named Norm Eisen, a successful attorney, who had been one of the president’s 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—inviting 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 “access” 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.
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 “transparency” award, and the president refused to accept the award in public. The meeting wasn’t even listed on the president’s public schedule.
The watchdogs shouldn’t 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— Association of Health Care Journalists and Society of Professional Journalists—called out President Obama for muzzling scientists in much the same way President Bush had. Last September, Bloomberg News tested Obama’s 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.
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. Raúl M. Grijalva sent a long letter to Obama expressing disappointment with the “unjustifiable” redactions he received, “including entire pages blacked out in the middle of pertinent e-mail conversations.”
One of the most glaring examples of Obama’s failure on transparency is his response to the “Fast and Furious” fiasco—the 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.
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’t 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 “partisanship” run amok. Wouldn’t it have been more logical for her to ask why Democrats hadn’t joined Republicans in demanding that the White House respond?
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.
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’s stonewalling, Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, attacked Rep. Issa for releasing the sealed documents.
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’s how Congress functions and does its job. However, CREW’s close ties to ethics czar Eisen might explain why Sloan was so quick to go on the partisan attack.
Tired of stonewalling, House Republicans threatened Attorney General Eric Holder with contempt, forcing Obama’s hand. In 2007, presidential candidate Obama told the Boston Globe, “My view is that executive privilege generally depends on the involvement of the president and the White House.” 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.
Most Americans don’t 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’s watchdogs tweeted, “Now am I allowed to criticize Obama on drones & assassination & military commissions & secret memos expanding secret surveillance powers??” Maybe it’s 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.
The ATF whistleblowers who brought the issue to Congress faced years of harassment from their agency but were ignored by Washington’s 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 “courageous step of going to Congress to ensure that the public learned of the flawed tactics used in Operation Fast and Furious.”
Only Fox News covered the matter.
Kiriakou says that it’s time for people to acknowledge the facts about the Obama administration’s attitude toward whistleblowers and transparency in general:
“I think these groups are stuck in a 2008 mentality where, ‘Oh my gosh, we have President Obama. He is a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and he’s promised greater transparency, and he really wants to do that but he just can’t yet. It will come. It will come. We should trust him.’ ”
The 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.
“We should judge him by his actions,” Kiriakou says. Hopefully, it won’t take another four years.
Dorkus Maximus says:
Like I just commented on the other article – they’re nothing but filthy whores.
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13th March 2013 at 12:05 pm
DaveL says:
“The most transparent President in History.”
That’s true. I saw right through this fucker five years ago.
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13th March 2013 at 12:31 pm
TeresaE says:
Same with the war. The man campaigned on ENDING foreign involvement.
Once elected, he EXTENDED it.
The “watchdogs” and anti-war groups went dark.
So, I’ve learned, killing foreigners under Republican administrations is bad, killing them under Democratic administrations is only out of necessity.
Hypocrisy and human nature are a sight to see.
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13th March 2013 at 1:29 pm
Stucky says:
If by “transparency” one means you can look in Obama’s right ear and see clear to the other side, well, yes.
Good article. Obama lies. Obama cheats. Obama breaks promises. Obama breaks laws. (You might wanna read that again.).
Sad thing is ….. not a fuckin’ thing can be done. We’re stuck with this oreo piece of shit for another four years. God only knows what this country will devolve into. Prepare, that’s the only thing left to do.
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13th March 2013 at 1:48 pm
AWD says:
I could sure go for an HZK Obama is a psychopath/sociopath rant.
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13th March 2013 at 1:56 pm
KaD says:
When I saw the title I though; I can think of many things I’d call Obama, but transparent would NOT be one of them.
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13th March 2013 at 2:01 pm
Zarathustra says:
Negative critiques of Obama simply bore me. Who would you rather have, Romney, McCain, Kerry, Gore or W? They are all mediocrities, criminals and scum. They just have their own special brands of scuminess.
As a footnote, I would simply add that at least Obama was legally elected (for the most part). The GoP hasn’t accomplished that since Eisenhower. Cases in point:
1) 1968, Nixon sabotaged Vietnam peace talks.
2) 1980. Reagan strikes a deal with Khomeini to provide arms and spare military jet parts to Iran if the release of the hostages is delayed until after the election. Khomeini agrees.
3) 1984 No rigging but as a two time loser, Reagan would never have been a candidate.
4) 1988 No blantant election rigging, but HW would never have been in a position to run for POTUS without being appointed as VP by Reagan
5) 2000. W uses courts to steal the election from Gore
6) 2004. Same as above, this time Ohio instead of Florida.
Of course it needs to be said that it is unlikely any GOP candidates either 1984 or 1988 would have been better.
Conclusion: The GOP simply sucks ass and has for many decades.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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13th March 2013 at 3:15 pm
FT says:
That’s half my conclusion as well. The other half: the Democratic party *also* sucks ass and has for many decades.
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13th March 2013 at 3:48 pm
Novista says:
Transparent Obama: an empty suit.
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13th March 2013 at 9:09 pm
Leobeer says:
More transparency:
AF removes RPA airstrike number from summary
By Brian Everstine and Aaron Mehta – Staff writers
Posted : Friday Mar 8, 2013 12:34:50 EST
As scrutiny and debate over the use of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) by the American military increased last month, the Air Force reversed a policy of sharing the number of airstrikes launched from RPAs in Afghanistan and quietly scrubbed those statistics from previous releases kept on their website.
Last October, Air Force Central Command started tallying weapons releases from RPAs, broken down into monthly updates. At the time, AFCENT spokeswoman Capt. Kim Bender said the numbers would be put out every month as part of a service effort to “provide more detailed information on RPA ops in Afghanistan.”
The Air Force maintained that policy for the statistics reports for November, December and January. But the February numbers, released March 7, contained empty space where the box of RPA statistics had previously been.
Additionally, monthly reports hosted on the Air Force website have had the RPA data removed — and recently.
Those files still contained the RPA data as of Feb. 16, according to archived web pages accessed via Archive.org. Metadata included in the new, RPA-less versions of the reports show the files were all created Feb. 22.
Defense Department spokesman Cmdr. Bill Speaks said the department was not involved in the decision to remove the statistics. AFCENT did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
On Sunday, U.S. Central Command said in a statement that the decision was made to remove the statistics because the data disproportionately places emphasis on the airstrikes. The majority of the RPA missions are for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, with a small percent involving airstrikes.
“A determination found the data disproportionately focused on RPA kinetic events,” CENTCOM said in the statement. “A variety of multi-role platforms provide ground commanders in Afghanistan with close air support capabilities, and it was determined that presenting the weapons release data as a whole better reflects the airpower provided in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Kinetic events involving RPAs are the exception, with only about 3 percent of all RPA sorties over Afghanistan involving kinetic events.”
The data removal coincided with increased scrutiny on RPA policy caused by President Obama’s nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA. Brennan faced opposition in the Senate over the use of RPAs and his defense of their legality in his role as Obama’s deputy national security adviser.
On Feb. 20, two days before the metadata indicates the scrubbed files were created, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., sent a letter to Brennan saying that he would filibuster the nomination over concerns about using RPA strikes inside the U.S., a threat he carried out for over 12 hours on March 6 (Brennan was confirmed the next day).
That same day, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told a crowd in South Carolina that strikes by American RPAs have killed 4,700 people.
“Sometimes you hit innocent people, and I hate that, but we’re at war, and we’ve taken out some very senior members of al-Qaida,” Graham was quoted by the Patch website as saying.
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13th March 2013 at 3:43 am
card802 says:
They said it couldn’t happen in America, seems to be happening a lot faster, doesn’t it?
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by Reuters.
The proposed plan represents a major step by U.S. intelligence agencies to spot and track down terrorist networks and crime syndicates by bringing together financial databanks, criminal records and military intelligence. The plan, which legal experts say is permissible under U.S. law, is nonetheless likely to trigger intense criticism from privacy advocates.”
When government can no longer keep the house of cards from falling and looks to you and I for money, you will be considered a terrorist if you do not comply and hand over what little you have saved, to save the nation from their mistakes.
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13th March 2013 at 6:58 am
sensetti says:
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13th March 2013 at 7:46 am
Thinker says:
Card, I read that, too. All I could think was how it happened in the previous 4T, when government agents had to be present when you opened your safe-deposit box, and everyone was required to turn in their gold.
It’s happened before, and it will happen again. All we can do is understand that, and prepare for it.
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13th March 2013 at 10:36 am
card802 says:
Thinker,
I hear you.
It seems as though history is going to repeat.
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13th March 2013 at 11:08 am
Stucky says:
sensetti
You’re picture doesn’t show up …. but I see it’s titled “fuck-omama.gif” ….. so I voted thumbs up anyway.
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13th March 2013 at 11:13 am
Thinker says:
Another example of how the Administration prevents Congress from oversight:
President Barack Obama’s defense to Democratic senators complaining about how little his administration has told Congress about the legal justifications for his drone policy: Dick Cheney was worse.
That’s part of what two senators in the room recounted of Obama’s response when, near the outset of his closed-door session with the Senate Democratic conference on Tuesday, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) confronted the president over the administration’s refusal for two years to show congressional intelligence committees Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel memos justifying the use of lethal force against American terror suspects abroad.
More Here.
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13th March 2013 at 11:53 am
Biggy Mofo says:
Yo You mad stupid motha fuckin crackers, trying ta make fun our o’ main nigga Barack. He smoked yo’ whitey honkey wax werkz Romney didn’t he? You dum fucks gots nuttin’ now. But we’s gots dat thin`, what da fuq iz it called, awww yea, uh majority. You dum cracker fucks will never gots anyone in da system anymo’. An Barack just increased our EBT cash an’ our fine SNAP. It’s catching on, mo’ homies an’ trailer trash is getting dem chickn n` corn bread ‘n waffles stamps than ever ‘bfoe. an’ Barack iz handing out free healthcare ta 16 million mo’ o’ us. Obamacare iz da bomb. we’s is an army, standing behind Maxine an’ Barack an’ Jesse, an’ you cannot defeat us ever ag’in. So laugh all you wants, you dum honkies, an’ keep paying those taxes; cause we’s gots da last laugh didn’t we’s? in the hood
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13th March 2013 at 12:01 pm