From the Raleigh News and Observer (1/25/09): In his inaugural address, President Obama spoke of the need for government officials to "do our business in the light of day."
On Wednesday, he issued a memo that said his official policy was more openness.
In interpreting the federal Freedom of Information Act, he said, “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.”
So you are now expecting me to applaud President Obama? OK.
Nice rhetorical flourish on the federal FOIA. This promises to be the opposite of the Bush policy.
But forgive me for being wary of presidents who proclaim their commitment to openness.
It is one of the great historical ironies that President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the FOIA into law in 1966. He said at the time: “[A] democracy works best when the people have all the information that the security of the nation permits.”
This was from the guy who was secretly planning the escalation of the Vietnam War in 1964 at the same time he was campaigning as the peace candidate against Barry Goldwater.
Still, I don’t want to be too cynical. It doesn’t hurt my ears to hear a president come out in favor of openness, and it would have astonished the men who fought for the passage of the FOIA to have heard Obama.
This group of prominent journalists and congressmen launched their campaign for a federal public records law in the mid-1950s because, in their time, everything in government could be kept secret. Everything.
Pre-FOIA, records could be withheld from the public “for good cause” or if officials found that secrecy was “in the public interest.”
President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in a letter to his defense secretary in 1954 that releasing documents would make it difficult for bureaucrats to “be completely candid in advising with each other on official matters.”
Copies would get waved in citizens’ faces for years by bureaucrats who insisted it not only allowed secrecy but practically required it.
This became a real problem as the federal government grew, and its reach went far beyond Washington down to the local level.
For example, if you were a reporter looking into why someone with lots of political mojo landed a federal contract in North Carolina, you weren’t entitled to see whether there were any other bidders or even see a copy of the contract.
And it got nutty.
The Defense Department wouldn’t release 30-year-old transcripts requested by a newspaper of the famous 1925 court-martial of air power advocate Billy Mitchell.
Another request, for statistics on peanut butter purchases by the military, was denied.
Reason? Bureaucrats figured that our enemies could calculate the number of soldiers from that data. Those wascally Wussians.
Fortunately, we’ve come a ways from the days of Elvis-era secrecy. It’s far from perfect. It can take an ungodly amount of time to get documents out of the feds.
But maybe the new president’s statements will have the opposite effect of the Eisenhower letter more than a half-century ago, sending this message cascading through the federal government: “We’re for openness. If you want to hold back records and play games with the FOIA, you’re on your own.”