Thriller: Keeping FOIA Secrets

Written by Dr. Dora Kingsley on June 29, 2009, 12:54 PM

In a week when pictures of Michael Jackson visiting with a president are splashed across TV sets, Team Obama is fighting to keep the White House visitor logs secret.

Attorney General Eric Holder set a new legal standard for secrecy, requiring disclosure of public records only “if practicable.” Not since Bill Clinton attempted to redefine the meaning of “is” has terminology been so parsed by an administration. As a veteran of that Clinton-era legal team, Eric Holder obviously learned the benefits of word definition to limit the public’s right to know.

By making the case for subjectivity, the Obama Administration provides legal precedent and political cover for other elected officials, already loath to be transparent. Though Gov. Schwarzenegger signed an executive order last week that put government contracts and audits online, he twice vetoed stronger transparency bills. In Maryland, state legislators wouldn’t pass a disclosure bill even with an amendment that exempted elected officials.

Now, despite cosmetic support for openness, the Obama White House is refusing to disclose which coal industry big-wigs are meeting with the president.

There is plenty of toxic history to suggest that environmental deals made in private don’t benefit the public. Karen Silkwood uncovered nuclear power profiteering by reviewing government documents about a reactor site; Erin Brockovich identified drinking water contamination using public records. These “made for movies” revelations—like political opposition research—depend upon a series of post-Watergate reforms known as FOIA laws. These reforms incorporate the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) plus state and local public record acts—laws that allow everyday citizens like Silkwood and Brockovich, as well as journalists and campaign researchers, to obtain copies of public records from the government.

Obama’s refusal to answer questions about those coal executives, according to Newsweek, is solely based on Holder’s “lawyerly hedge.” Let’s be clear: A “lawyerly hedge” is a subjective definition.

If Holder’s latest parsing of terminology—“if practicable”—is allowed to become the basis for denying any access, public officials will continue walking back from transparency at all levels of government. The political consulting industry should be as outraged as journalists that access to government information is shrinking.


Dr. Dora Kingsley is founder of Trenton West, a national policy and opposition research firm based in California and Washington, D.C. As an adjunct professor with the University of Southern California’s School of Policy, Planning and Development, Dr. Kingsley has taught graduate coursework for fifteen years and is a lifetime fellow of the congressionally chartered National Academy of Public Administration. To contact Dr. Kingsley, click here.