As Congress Intensifies Efforts for Openness, Administration AccedesElizabeth Williamson
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/12/AR2008011202308.htmlAfter years of hammering on the walls of secrecy surrounding the Bush White House, activists and Congress have begun, slowly, to open some cracks.
A federal magistrate on Tuesday ordered the administration to reveal by this week whether it has backup copies of millions of missing White House e-mails, which may describe decisions related to the Iraq war.
Last month, a federal judge ruled that lists of presidential visitors that President Bush has kept secret are in fact public records.
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"They're getting exactly the open government results they labored to prevent, and in part because they so overreached," said Thomas Blanton, who heads the National Security Archive at George Washington University. "They could have gotten 90 percent of the extra power they wanted if they went to Congress and the public, but by going for 100 percent and doing it in total secrecy, they undermined their own legitimacy and left the presidency weaker than when they started."