Judge Orders White House To Open Visitor Logs

January 12, 2009 7:17 a.m. EST

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - A federal judge has ruled that visitor logs at the White House are not exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and should be opened, and that the Bush administration had illegally destroyed some of the records.

U.S. Chief District Court Judge Royce Lamberth issued a ruling on Friday rejecting the White House's claim of executive privilege and saying that the Secret Service had destroyed visitor records before 2004 upon orders of the administration, in violation of the Federal Records Act.

Lamberth also said acting U.S. archivist Adrienne Thomas had violated his legal obligation to ask the attorney general to take legal action to recover the deleted records.

An independent advocacy group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW), had filed a lawsuit seeking information about how frequent nine conservative religious leaders, including James Dobson and Jerry Falwell, went on visits to the White House. The group had questioned the validity of a memorandum of agreement between President George W. Bush and the Secret Service in 2006 saying visitors to the White House compound were not to be publicly disclosed.

Lamberth had ruled in December 2007 that the White House's visitor logs were public documents and ordered them released within 20 days. But he subsequently granted a request from the Bush administration to keep the logs confidential until an appeals court gives a ruling on whether the records are part of the public domain.

CREW's chief counsel, Anne Weismann, called the ruling a "victory" in a statement. She added that the ruling "reaffirms the public's right to know what the government is doing. We are pleased that the judicial branch has ripped the cloak of secrecy away from the White House and we hope the incoming administration takes heed of the court's decision and ensures Secret Service records are available to the public."