In 2011, Andrew Breitbart tweaked the Huffington Post’s liberal readers by arguing that the White House’s boasts about transparency were bogus–particularly regarding the White House guest list, which President Barack Obama had made available to the public for the first time under then-“ethics czar” Norm Eisen.
Andrew noted that the White House would never confirm the identity of an individual on the guest list. For example, it would not confirm whether a Bertha Lewis who had visited on Sep. 5, 2009 was the same Bertha Lewis who was CEO of ACORN.
“Eisen and the White House have created a haystack that can hide a needle,” he wrote.
In addition, the White House claimed–by leaking anonymously and selectively to sympathetic journalists–that that Bertha Lewis had not actually visited. And there was no way to prove otherwise, Andrew noted.
“President Barack Obama has won praise from the media–and from himself–for putting the White House visitor logs online,” Andrew observed. “Yet the visitor logs may hide more than they reveal.”
Now, Andrew has been vindicated–again–by the White House defense against the claim that former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited 157 times. The fact that he was cleared to visit does not mean that he actually visited, the Obama administration says, adding that no one actually takes attendance at critical meetings of high-level administration meetings to discuss national policy on taxation and health care.
In other words, the fact that someone is listed as having visited does not mean they actually visited. That is how the Obama administration defines transparency.
Add to that the fact that White House staffers have taken to meeting in the local Caribou Coffee to avoid the guest list, and the entire effort is revealed as little more than propaganda–an effort to obscure the truth with false claims of transparency.
Just as Andrew said.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.