Obama Agencies Invoking Secrecy Provision More Often than Under Bush

[tekisui]

Source: The Raw Story

One day after being sworn into office, President Barack Obama instructed federal agencies to ensure government transparency by complying with the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act law.

"All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government," Obama wrote in a memo to federal agencies Jan. 21, 2009. "The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA."

"The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public," the newly-installed president continued. "They should not wait for specific requests from the public. All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and down by their Government. Disclosure should be timely."

One year later, Obama's requests for transparency have apparently gone unheeded. In fact a provision in the Freedom of Information Act law that allows the government to hide records that detail its internal decision-making has been invoked by Obama agencies more often in the past year than during the final year of President George W. Bush.

Major agencies cited that exemption to refuse records at least 70,779 times during the 2009 budget year, compared with 47,395 times during President George W. Bush's final full budget year, according to annual FOIA reports filed by federal agencies.

more: http://rawstory.com/2010/03/obama-agencies-invoking-secrecy-provision-bush/

[Teaser]

1. that's a bureaucratic problem

once a bureacrat gets used to doing something, getting them to stop is a pain in the ass.

[LiberalFighter]

2. How many times was it done during the other years Bush was in office?

[tekisui]

3. Good question, I don't know.

It would help gain perspective.

[FrenchieCat]

4. Let's take all of our energy to take down this President and his administration

and democratic congressmenbers
while the media and their corporate cronies fucks us up
some more!

Yeah....let's do that.

[tekisui]

5. Let's ignore all the things Obama does that we hated about bush!

Yeah....let's do that!

:eyes:

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ProSense]

7. What a crock and distortion. An AP review?

Major agencies cited that exemption to refuse records at least 70,779 times during the 2009 budget year, compared with 47,395 times during President George W. Bush's final full budget year, according to annual FOIA reports filed by federal agencies.

An Associated Press review of Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major agencies found that the use of nearly every one of the law's nine exemptions to withhold information from the public rose in fiscal year 2009, which ended last October.

So the include part of Bush's term and attribute it to Obama?

[Cha]

8. Doesn't matter..if it's anti-President Obama..

why let facts get in the way? AP is so known for their anti-mediawhoredom..right?

And, rawstory just loves to jump on the bandwagon.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

9. Apples v. Oranges

You're right. It includes the last four months of the Bush Administration. Can you imagine how much crap they were classifying as "Top Secret" in order to prevent leaks of embarrassing material? And then you have the first several months of the Obama Administration when there were scores of Bush loyalists still covering for their old boss.

I saw the article this morning and I thought, "I wonder how long it will take some Obama Hater to post this on DU?"

Asked and Answered.

[tekisui]

12. Wecan revisit it when we get numbers solely for Obama.

And, then you can trot out more apologia.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

14. If by "apologia" you mean facts and logic...

By all means, let's have more apologia.

And the Administration really should be held accountable for its own actions -- just not for the actions of the Bush Administration.

When we have a clear comparison to make, it should be made.

[Jennicut]

10. Facts don't matter to some.

[tekisui]

11. Do you have the numbers with the last four months of bush

taken out?

It is still very high. The point is not how much it is done compared to bush, but that it is still be done with such frequency.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

15. No...and neither do you...

So why don't you wait until we have valid numbers for comparison before you repost MSM bullshit?

[tekisui]

19. You seem very sensitive about this issue.

Will you tell me now how many must have occurred under Obama for you to not defend it?

How many are you ok with?

Just so I know what to look for with future numbers.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

21. Stupidity does that to me....

If you want to say there are MORE under Obama, take one full year of Obama (October 2009 through September 2010) and compare it to the last full year of Bush (October 2007 through September 2008), and see if the number is actually higher.

This isn't rocket science.

[salguine]

13. Wow, an unpleasant truth. See if this gets unrecced into oblivion.

[ProSense]

16. "unpleasant truth" overused buzz words. AP has a more detailed story:

Earlier this week, Attorney General Eric Holder said the government is making progress. In a speech Monday at the start of Sunshine Week, when news organizations promote open government and freedom of information, Holder noted that the Justice Department turned over all documents in information requests in more than 1,000 more cases than it had the previous year.

"Put simply, I asked that we make openness the default, not the exception," Holder said. "I'm pleased to report that the disturbing 2008 trend — a reduction in this department's rate of disclosures — has been completely reversed. While we aren't where we need to be just yet, we're certainly on the right path."

Much of the Obama administration's early effort seems to have been aimed at clearing out a backlog of old cases: The number of requests still waiting past deadlines spelled out in the open-records law fell from 124,019 in budget year 2008 to 67,764 at the end of the most recent budget year. There is no way to tell whether people whose cases were closed ultimately received the information they sought.

link

And the "most recent budget year" (2009) still included part of Bush's term.

[arcadian]

17. The swarm has been alerted.

[zulchzulu]

18. Ah...the paragraph from the cited article that nukes this screed...

Much of the Obama administration's early effort on FOIA seems to have been aimed at clearing out a backlog of old cases: The number of requests still sitting around past the time limits spelled out in the open-records law fell from 124,019 in budget year 2008 to 67,764 at the end of the most recent budget year over the 17 agencies, the AP's review found. There is no way to tell whether those whose old cases that were closed ultimately received the information they sought.

Given that the federal government can't just turn around on a dime on FOIA standards (we're talking thousands of cases under review) as well as Exemption 3 cases, which are pending release due to continuing investigations, the above paragraph points to how the Obama administration is trying to turn the ship around on FOIA issues.

Let's see in a year how progress is going.

[timeforpeace]

20. Why the thin-skinned defensive responses? What's so bad about invoking the Secrecy Provisions?

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

22. Because Bush used the provision for more than just National Security

They slapped "Classified" on anything they didn't want the public to know about. People should be demanding more transparancy in government and that's what Obama promised.

My beef with this story is that it takes a year's worth of the "Obama Adminstration" which includes the last four months of the Bush Administration. And those four months would have been a period with the Bush people were slapping "Classified" on anything and everything in sight, just to be sure. I'm certain that if you had a month-by-month breakdown, those four months were be HUGE.