The Political Chase

Judge: White House Must Disclose Visitors

For seven years the White House has managed to successfully use one of its most powerful tools, the fabled invisible cloak, to keep its visitors from the public’s eyes. Their fairy tale may be coming to an end. A federal judge ruled today the cloak must be removed by declaring that visitors logs for the White House and Dick Cheney’s residence are subject to public records requests.

White House visitor logs are public documents, a federal judge ruled Monday, rejecting a legal strategy that the Bush administration had hoped would get around public records laws.

The ruling is a blow to the Bush administration, which is fighting the release of records showing visits by lobbyist Jack Abramoff and prominent religious conservatives.

The records are created by the Secret Service, which is subject to the Freedom of Information Act. But the Bush administration has ordered the data turned over to the White House, where they are treated as presidential records outside the scope of the public records law.

We may finally learn about Dick Cheney’s secret energy-policy meetings and how frequently felons, such as disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, had crumpets and tea with the president.

In January of this year, I noted that the White House had taken the unprecedented step of ordering the Secret Service to keep visitor’s logs secret. Their intention was to thwart investigators from learning how frequently Abramoff had visited the White House and to fight lawsuits seeking information about Dick Cheney’s secret energy policy meetings.

Maybe we’ll learn about the president’s wiretapping activities in 2015.