Of all the odd things this administration has done, this is undoubtedly one of the oddest.
The President who said his was going to be the most open, most transparent administration in history held a secret ceremony Wednesday to accept an award for being open and transparent.
Politico.com has the super secret details:
The secret presentation happened almost two weeks after the White House inexplicably postponed the ceremony, which was expected to be open to the press pool.
This time, Obama met quietly in the Oval Office with Gary Bass of OMB Watch, Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive, Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight, Lucy Dalglish of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Patrice McDermott of OpenTheGovernment.org, without disclosing the meeting on his public schedule or letting photographers or print reporters into the room.
“Our understanding going into the meeting was that it would have a pool photographer and a print reporter, and it turned out to be a private meeting,” Bass told POLITICO. “He was so on point, so on target in the conversation with us, it is baffling why he would not want that message to be more broadly heard by reporters and the public interest community and the public generally.”
Remarkable. Even the people who gave him the award for being open and transparent don’t understand why the meeting was closed and undisclosed.
This would be funny if it weren’t so damn symbolic of the gulf between this administration’s words and its actions.
Source: Politico.com
