Obama: transparently disappointing: the president has fallen far short of promises to establish "an unprecedented level of openness in government.".

• Author: Riggs, Mike

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ON MARCH 28, 2011, a group of leading transparency advocates passed through the security checkpoints along the perimeter of the White House compound to present Barack Obama with an award for his efforts to open up government. The president who took office promising "an unprecedented level of openness in government" was getting his due for introducing sunlight into the murky workings of state. Supposedly.

Some of the participating activists were thrilled. "In the 28 years that I've advocated for open government ... this is the first time I've heard of such a meeting," wrote Gary Bass, director of OMB Watch, on the transparency group's website. "Rather than it being a photo op," wrote Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, "it was everything we hoped."

They were right about one thing: It wasn't a photo op. The meeting was closed to the media, off limits even to a promised pool photographer and reporter. The ceremony did not appear on Obama's public schedule, and the White House did not release a transcript of the conversation. "Shh!" read the headline in Politico. "Obama Gets Anti-Secrecy Award."

The activists at the meeting, including Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive, Patrice McDermott of OpenTheGovernment.org, and Lucy Dalglish of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, stood by the award. But others used the occasion to assess the gap between candidate Obama's transparency pledges (including one he signed with the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit organization that publishes this magazine) and President Obama's transparency record. Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation, Washington's premier open-government group, told The Hill the award was "foolishly conceived" given Obama's "tremendously disappointing" actions in office. Steve Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, told Politico, "I don't feel moved today to say 'Thank you, Mr. President.'"

Three months later, what started out as a drip of disappointment had turned into a flood of discontent. At a secretive meeting organized by the Aspen Institute, Dalglish and others met privately with Obama administration officials to discuss the case of New Fork Times national security reporter James Risen, who was subpoenaed for reporting classified information he allegedly obtained from CIA officer Jeffrey A. Sterling about the Bush administration's efforts to sabotage Iran's nuclear program. "The Risen subpoena is one of the last you'll see," the Obama official told Dalglish, according to an interview she later gave the Times. Good news for investigative journalists? Think again. "We don't need to ask who you're talking to," the official reportedly said. "We know."

Dalglish was no longer so sanguine about the administration's commitment to sunlight. "For God's sake," she told the Times. "Get off of e-mail. Get off of your cellphone. Watch your credit cards. Watch your plane tickets. These guys in the NSA know everything"

'Disclosure Would Threaten Security'

This was not the change transparency advocates thought they were getting. On January 26, 2009, less than a week after his inauguration, Obama sent a promising-sounding memo to the heads of every federal agency, announcing that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)--which had been given short shrift by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Bush's attorneys general during the previous eight years--would once again be treated with respect. "A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency," the memo began."In our democracy, the Freedom of Information Act ... is the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open Government. At the heart of that commitment is the idea that accountability is in the interest of the Government and the citizenry alike."

The memo went on to say that FOIA, which is the primary legal means by which citizens can petition the federal government to cough up information, "should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure...