The Most Transparent Administration™ Keeps Bragging, Concealing

Seeking to assuage concerns about the administration’s record of
opacity, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest
unctuously assured
the Society of Professional Journalists last month that Obama is
transparent because he is transparent:

The president has set an historically high standard of
transparency that is part of the legacy to which future presidents
will aspire and the president and his administration are
justifiably proud of these accomplishments.

And earlier this week, on the same day we learned the Obama
administration demands
the right to edit White House press pool reports, the president

promised that The Most Transparent Administration™ would
continue to work towards open governance:

Speaking at a meeting of the Open Government Partnership at the
United Nations, the president said the U.S. would “lead by example”
with a series of new initiatives to promote open government.

So what is the actual transparency record for the Obama
administration?

Not good. After all, these are the folks who won’t even
disclose what
coffee the president drinks. From going after
whistleblowers to restricting reporter access to obfuscating his
foreign policy, Obama is about as open as the front door of the White
House.

Tooting the Whistleblowing Horn

Columbia Journalism Review
writes that “the Obama administration has prosecuted more
people as whistleblowers under the 1917 Espionage Act than all
former presidents combined.” Journalism heavyweights Leonard
Downie Jr. and James
Goodale have been some of the loudest in warning about the
current administration’s heavy-handedness towards reporters and
their sources. Goodale describes the president’s stance on press
freedom as “antediluvian, conservative, backwards. Worse than
Nixon. He thinks that anyone who leaks is a spy!”

Phone records of an A.P. journalist
have been seized, a Fox News reporter was
specifically targeted, and
other journalists have faced intimidation from the government
for their reporting. Nor are sources of government information
safe: last year the Obama administration launched an “Insider
Threat” program in response to the Edward Snowden leaks. The
program encourages government employees to snitch on colleagues
suspected of leaking information.

Giving Reporters the Run-Around

But even run-of-the-mill reporters are having an increasingly
difficult time as the Obama administration tightens its grip on
information access. Diluting and filtering
what information is released and
how it is presented has become the modus operandi for the
administration. Journalists are being
shut out of meetings normally open to the press. The
administration has also
clamped down on photography of the president and official
events. The restrictive policy has been described as “Orwellian”
and White House chief photographer Pete Souza has been called a
“propagandist.”
Veteran New York Times political correspondent David
Sanger
said that “this is the most closed, control-freak
administration I’ve ever covered.”

Bush by Any Other Name

But nowhere is this restriction of information more apparent
than with respect to the administration’s foreign affairs and
national security policies. Access to photos and information about
the ISIS engagement is
tightly controlled. Despite promises of transparency, the
Department of Homeland Security’s no-fly list
continues to operate in the dark. The administration is also

notoriously reluctant in disclosing information on the ongoing
drone program in the Middle East—although it loves
bragging about its accomplishments in a program that
didn’t until recently officially exist. FOIA requests are

consistently denied or ignored—apparently often enough to
justify an “FOIA
Denial Officer.” Even the government’s use of
torture—that quintessentially Bush-era bugbear—falls under the
administration’s cone of
silence.

Sometimes it seems like the only thing we do know about the
administration is that it will continue eloquently praising its own
unprecedented transparency. We would do well to put pressure on
Obama to make good on his promises. Or at the very least point out
to him that “least” is not spelled m-o-s-t.