White House to Keep Its Visitor Logs Secret
The White House announced on Friday that it will cut off public access to visitor logs revealing who is entering the White House complex and shut down a disclosure website containing a wide range of government data. The decision breaks with past practice and returns a cloak of secrecy over the basic day-to-day workings of the administration.
.. White House officials, conceding privately that the decision would be controversial, said the visitor logs were being withheld for national security reasons. They said they were relying on the same legal rationale espoused by the Obama administration in arguing that many of the records were essentially “presidential records,” and therefore not subject to public disclosure.
.. Although a federal court ruled in 2011 that the visitor logs could be kept secret, the Obama administration voluntarily provided many of the records.
.. Lawyers still exercised what they maintained was a right to omit some entries from the logs, in the cases of confidential meetings such as interviews for prospective Supreme Court candidates. And the Obamas left out the names of celebrities and top donors who came to personal events at the White House, such as star-studded birthday celebrations for the president and his wife.