Despite the claim of being one of the most transparent administrations in modern American history, the Obama White House continues to reveal just how cloistered it really is. The latest development involves internal communication methods among senior officials such as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who is among several presidential advisors who routinely uses reportedly off-the-record email addresses.
This fact was revealed by The Associated Press (AP) as it sought emails from members of the White House staff as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. After stonewalling these efforts for months, the Obama administration acquiesced and provided the addresses.
In addition to the report, the AP announced several of the secret emails, including Sebelius's. It also sought these records from the Labor Department, yet officials from that government agency initially demanded a payment of over $1 million in order to process the documentation. When presented with the questionable legality of the request, Labor provided some of the materials to the source.
In an interview, Kel McClanahan, a government transparency advocate, told the AP that this revelation poses uncomfortable questions for those seeking to reveal government intransigence in the future.
"What happens when that person doesn't work there anymore? He leaves and someone makes a request (to review emails) in two years," McClanahan said. "Who's going to know to search the other accounts? You would hope that agencies doing this would keep a list of aliases in a desk drawer, but you know that isn't happening."
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