Obama lawyers want MORE secrecy at White House

Say court precedents over FOIA application to visitor logs 'decided wrong'

By Bob Unruh
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

The federal government is arguing that previous court rulings applying the Freedom of Information Act to records such as the visitor logs at the White House are incorrect, and President Obama's administration should be allowed to withhold from the public the information it chooses.

A new government brief filed in a court dispute over the records argues, instead, that people with questions about who visits the White House should go to the White House website and ask for the information, and if the president agrees, it could be released.

The April 21 brief filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia insisted the court should hold that "visitor records are presidential records, particularly given the fact that the White House is voluntarily disclosing the records to the public."

Further, the records assembled and used by the United States Secret Service are not even in the "custody" of the federal agency, since they are transferred periodically onto computer disk and given to the White House, the filing said.

"The Obama administration would undermine a key transparency law in order to keep White House visitor logs secret," said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, which has been fighting for more than a decade over visitor logs.

"Only the Obama administration could offer to release pre-scrubbed White House visitor logs while withholding tens of thousands of other records and call it transparency," he said.

"President Obama has violated his campaign promises of openness and transparency. We hope the court will do what is had done on previous occasions and uphold FOIA law," he said.

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