FOIA’s Future

Advocates Seek Greater Openness in Post-Bush Era

As President Bush prepares to leave office next January, open-government advocates are evaluating his record and hoping his successor shows more interest in public access issues.

The Bush White House is “probably one of the most secretive administrations in the modern era,” says Meredith Fuchs, general counsel for the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv). “There’s very little to suggest they care about the public’s right to know.”

With Sunshine Week taking place March 16-22, newspapers nationwide are showing examples of groundbreaking stories made possible by open-access laws.

That job has become harder in recent years with more than 20 million classifica­tion actions or decisions to classify a unit of government information approved by government agencies in 2006, up from 8 million in 2001, according to the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives (www.archives.gov/isoo). At the same time, the number of declassified pages fell from 100 million in 2001 to 37 million in 2006.

As a result, federal agencies can share less information with state and local govern­ments, says Harold C. Relyea, who has written several reports on government secrecy for the Congressional Research Service, a division of the Library of Congress (www.loc.gov).

Also, a December report, “Improving Declassification,” from the Public Interest Declassification Board, an advisory group whose members are chosen by the president and Congress, called on Bush to establish a National Declassification Center to set standard guidelines regarding government declassifica­tion of documents (www.archives.gov/declassification/pidb/improving-declassification.pdf).

It recommended that Bush establish a system to expedite review of historically significant records to determine whether they should be released publicly.

Bush did sign a bill to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act in December (“Bush Signs FOIA Reform Bill,” February, p. 12). But Bush is pushing to move a new ombudsman’s office from the National Archives and Records Administration to the Department of Justice, which represents the government in FOIA lawsuits.

“Secrecy has been growing, but it’s not just a problem of a single administration,” says Rick Blum, coordinator of the Sunshine in Government Initiative in Arlington, Va., a coalition of media groups, including NAA, advocating open-government issues.

Whether the next administration follows Bush’s precedent on open-government issues depends on several factors, including who the new president and department secretaries are, says Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists (www.fas.org).

In 2001, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft signed a memo instructing federal agencies to withhold government records whenever there was a legal basis to do so, a departure from the policy of his predecessor, Janet Reno, who called for disclosure unless it would result in foreseeable harm.

A new president can take several early steps to improve openness, Fuchs says. These include reverting to Reno’s disclosure policy, preserving White House e-mail records for possible future release and deciding not to exempt the Presidential Daily Brief, a summary of intelligence information, from disclosure. “I am hopeful things will improve,” she says.

Meanwhile, several groups are working to get candidates on the record about open-government issues.

The American Society of Newspaper Editors in Reston, Va., is asking presidential candidates about their overall attitudes regarding public access to information, including positions on secrecy, confidential sources, access to information and allowing cameras in the courtroom.

At presstime, the Sunshine in Government Initiative was developing a pledge supporting openness for congressional candidates to sign. The Society of Professional Journalists in Indianapolis is asking members about major obstacles to open government in the 50 states and plans to suggest that journalists ask candidates what they would do about those issues if elected.

Mary Lynn Jones

Presstime, March 2008

First Published:
February 25, 2008