They Write Letters

Someone's got some explaining to do:

Sen. Patrick Leahy asked the Secret Service on Wednesday why the agency signed an agreement with the Bush administration to keep White House visitors logs secret. [...]

Signed last May 17 in the midst of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, the memorandum of understanding says the logs are "at all times presidential records; are not federal records; and are not the records of an agency subject to the Freedom of Information Act."

I referred to this clandestine agreement between the White House and the Secret Service here.

Leahy's inquiry comes at the heels of a lawsuit filed by CREW, the same group that released the Bush/Abramoff photo, against the National Security archives:

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is suing over the National Archives' refusal to disclose why it asked the Secret Service to start retaining its own copies of the White House visitor records. If the National Archives views the logs as federal records as opposed to presidential records, that could bolster the efforts of CREW and other private organizations suing to obtain White House visitor logs.

If CREW wins, it could open a veritable cornucopia of goodies as to the people who had revolving door access to the White House.

If the Republicans were still the majority party, inquiries like this would've been next to nil. With the adults in charge for a change, it just gets better and better.



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