the political realities of campaigning as a democrat notwithstanding, the pledge to reveal documents that the bush administration had declared secret before you knew what they said was, well, naive.
Despite Obama pledge, Justice defends Bush secrets
WASHINGTON – Despite President Obama's promise of more open government, the Justice Department is resisting pressure to release documents the Bush administration kept secret about domestic wiretapping, data collection on travelers and U.S. citizens, and interrogation of suspected terrorists.
In half a dozen lawsuits, Justice lawyers are defending Bush administration decisions to withhold records from the public. They have opposed formal motions or spurned out-of-court offers to merely delay these cases until the new administration rewrites Freedom of Information Act guidelines and decides whether the new rules might allow the public to see more.
In only one case has the Justice Department agreed to suspend a FOIA lawsuit until the disputed documents can be re-evaluated under the yet-to-be-written guidelines. That case involves negotiations on an anti-counterfeiting treaty, not the more controversial, secret anti-terrorism tactics that spawned the other lawsuits as well as Obama's promises of greater openness.
"The signs in the last few days are not entirely encouraging," said Jameel Jaffer, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed several lawsuits seeking the Bush administration's legal justification for warrantless domestic wiretapping and for its treatment of terrorism detainees.
The documents sought in these lawsuits "are in many cases the documents that the public most needs to see," Jaffer said. "It makes no sense to say that these documents are somehow exempt from President Obama's directives."
More
