White House will release visitor logs
The Obama administration announced that it will begin to open White House visitor logs to the public by the end of the year. The policy revision comes after a review prompted by an ongoing challenge from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) which stretched back to the previous administration.
The new policy will apply to visitor records created after September 15, 2009, and provides for a 90 to 120 day time lag to “allow the White House to continue to conduct business, while still providing the American people with an unprecedented amount of information about their government.” The new policy excludes “a small group of particularly sensitive meetings (e.g., visits of potential Supreme Court nominees)” as well as visits by “purely personal guests of the first and second families.”
A separate FOIA request for all visitor logs was filed in May by msnbc.com, which today posted a timeline of events and links to related documents. As msnbc.com’s Bill Dedman notes, the White House termed the new policy “voluntary” and made no commitment to turn over records for the period from January 20 to September 15.
UPDATE, Oct. 20: The tug of war over logs from the first eight months of the Obama administration continues, as a request for those records from Judicial Watch hits a wall.
September 11th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Update:
Here’s your chance to help figure out who has been lobbying the White House during the early months of the Obama administration.
Details are at msnbc.com:
Help figure out who has been calling on Obama
A guessing game: Who visited White House in administration’s early days?
Although President Barack Obama has announced that he will make public the names of most visitors to the White House, there’s a catch.
Under the new White House policy, names of visitors during the first eight months of the administration are not being released wholesale. Those visitors will be revealed only if a member of the public requests specific names to be checked against the visitor logs.
It’s a guessing game. The White House rules don’t allow you to ask for “everyone who visited on Feb. 3,” or “anyone who visited green jobs czar Van Jones ,” but you can ask for all visits by specific people, whether former Sen. Tom Daschle or New York Times columnist David Brooks or an Obama campaign donor from your hometown.
For more…
http://bit.ly/uumqo
or the full address:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32715598/ns/politics-white_house/