Remember when Barack Obama was running for
president and he promised that, unlike secrecy-obsessed George Bush and
Dick Cheney, he would insist on a “transparent” administration that
wouldn’t hide information from the American people unless it was
absolutely necessary?
That would have been nice. But of course
it turns out it was just talk. Obama has only been president for 10
months and already he is just as casual as his predecessors about
demanding secrecy for things that have no good reason to be kept secret
at all.
Why, for instance, is the Obama White House fighting so
hard to prevent the release of documents about who lobbied Congress to
give immunity to the telephone companies that cooperated with Bush’s
warrantless wiretapping program?
A federal court concluded that
there is no reason for the administration to keep that information from
the public. It’s not classified. There aren’t precious national
security secrets at stake. It’s a list of names of those who spent
money to influence our elected officials into voting their way on the
passage of a law.
The names on that list might somehow turn out
to be politically embarrassing to some members of Congress, or even to
some members of the Obama administration—remember, as a Senator Obama
voted in favor of giving telecom companies immunity from prosecution.
But embarrassment shouldn’t be a good enough reason to keep something
secret, especially not in Obama’s new promised land of transparency.
Yet
the administration has refused to obey the court’s order. First the
White House asked for a 60-day delay. The court knocked that down. Then
they tried for a 30-day delay. Again, the court said no. So they then
filed an emergency motion to prevent the release of the documents.
Once more, the court turned them away.
But this week, after administration
lawyers tried yet again, the court finally caved and agreed to postpone
the order to make the documents public.
A proud day for democracy. High
fives all around at the White House.
Eventually, we’ll find out
what’s going on here. Or, maybe we won’t. Cheney pulled all kinds of
tricks like these to forever keep secret the names of the big oil
lobbyists experts who dictated the outcome he consulted on his energy
task force.
Back then, of course, Democrats were outraged
that the Bush White House would try to hide that information from the
public. One of the angriest was Rahm Emanuel, then a congressman and
now Obama’s chief of staff.
“The vice president’s willingness
to ignore the rules remains just as strong as ever,” Emanuel fumed.
“Democrats are prepared to hold the vice president accountable and
ensure that no one in our government is above the law.”
So why isn’t Rahm just as furious at his own boss, seeing how he is doing the same thing?
