The government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in September 2010 seeking the new guidelines handed out to SEC staff that instructs them how to process FOIA submissions. Among the pages blacked out were those telling SEC employees how to—yes—go about blacking out certain documents.

 

Obama was supposed to receive the honor from good-government advocates a couple weeks ago, but the crisis in Japan and preparations to bomb Libya got in the way. But in rescheduling the Oval Office ceremony, no one from the White House bothered to alert the media. One of the groups that presented the award was The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

 

“Since the first day of his Administration, President Barack Obama has made Open Government a high priority.” Thus begins the latest product of the Obama administration’s effort at transparency—an opening sentence of a report that was unveiled to the media … anonymously. Three State Department officials conducted a briefing for reporters to clue them in on the material. But the officials refused to be quoted, as the Associated Press noted, “in apparent contradiction of the goal” of Obama to make government more open to the people.