White House Blocks Access To Visitor Logs

Secret Service Records Made Off-Limits After Watchdog Review Of Lobbyist Meetings

(AP)  The White House and the Secret Service quietly signed an agreement last spring in the midst of a major lobbying scandal declaring that records identifying visitors to the White House complex are not subject to public disclosure.

The Bush administration did not reveal the existence of the memorandum of understanding until last fall. The White House is using it to deal with a legal problem on a separate front — a ruling by a federal judge ordering the production of Secret Service logs identifying visitors to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

In a federal appeals court filing three weeks ago, the administration's lawyers used the memo in a legal argument aimed at overturning the judge's ruling. The Washington Post is suing for access to the Secret Service logs.

The five-page document dated May 17 declares that all entry and exit data on White House visitors belongs to the White House as presidential records rather than to the Secret Service as agency records. Therefore, the agreement states, the material is not subject to public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

In the past, Secret Service logs have revealed the comings and goings of various White House visitors, including Monica Lewinsky and Clinton campaign donor Denise Rich, the wife of fugitive financier Marc Rich, who received a pardon in the closing hours of the Clinton administration.

The memo last spring was signed by the White House and Secret Service the day after a Washington-based group asked a federal judge to impose sanctions on the Secret Service in a dispute over White House visitor logs for Jack Abramoff, a once-powerful but now disgraced lobbyist.

The chief counsel to another Washington-based group suing to get Secret Service logs calls the creation of the memo "a political maneuver couched as a legal one."

"It appears the White House is actually manufacturing evidence to further its own agenda," Anne Weismann, a Justice Department lawyer for 19 years and now chief counsel to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Friday.

The White House and the Secret Service declined to comment.

Last year in the Abramoff scandal, the Bush administration, in response to three lawsuits, provided an incomplete picture of how many visits Abramoff and his lobbying team made to the White House.

The task of digging out Abramoff-White House links fell to a House of Representatives committee that collected the lobbyist's billing records and e-mails. The House report found 485 lobbying contacts with presidential aides over three years, including 10 with top Bush administration aide Karl Rove.

As part of its security function of protecting the White House complex, the Secret Service uses the log information to conduct background checks on people prior to daily appointments and visits.

The memorandum of understanding is an unusual step because it deals with an unsettled area of law.

Federal courts will ultimately decide whether records identifying White House visitors and who they are going to see are under the legal control of the Secret Service or are presidential records publicly releasable solely at the discretion of the White House.

[long_rider]

Our elected officials should move forward on this one.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010607D.shtml

[long_rider]

Conflict of interest here?

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010807N.shtml

[long_rider]

more info on the ways of the chimp and his goon squads:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010807O.shtml

[long_rider]

What Iraq is all about:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010807A.shtml

[randalds]

Your so called "god's word" makes me want to puke. It represents to me the unneeded deaths and persecution of millions upon millions of innocent human beings. It represents nothing more then a base excuse for hate and prejudice of the most deadly kind. It is a vile excuse for centuries of torture, conquest and programs. religion is the worst plague upon mankind. Worse then the black death.

[randalds]

Using vulgar language is hateful and cruel, not sharing God's word. I never told you you had to believe in what I'm sharing. You on the other hand claim to "know" that you're right.

That's called humanism. That's what you've chosen to believe.
Posted by singinrick at 03:52 PM : Jan 08, 2007

Yet what you are saying is offensive. If you acknowledge or not, it is disgusting, nauseating and lies of the most sickening order. Much worse then any obscene word I could hurl at you. That's what you'll never understand. You lies, even if you don't know them to be such, are far worse to me then any filthy name I could ever call you. You make me want to puke by what you consider words of your faith. To me they are filth of the most disgusting kind. For you to quote a single word of scripture is to me worst then if I called you a a ****king child rapist. T me your "faith" is that sick.

[sy2502]

singinrick
every "holy book" of every religion, apparently, has prophecies that became true. More likey, they talk about stuff so vague that it can be adapted to any event we want.

[randalds]

Quote, quote, quote. It's all you have. Time for me to go to bed. Safe, secure and knowing I am right and you are the one who is lost in mythology. Shame that my conviction does not included doing what I can to rescue you from your loss. I don't care about your "soul", because you have none.

[randalds]

Sorry, I don't see how I'm ducking the point. I wouldn't ever dream of cursing you out, or deliberately insulting you. If I have, I am sorry, but I'm simply sharing my beliefs, the same thing you are doing, only I choose not to curse at you and call you every name in the book, because that is being hateful.
Posted by singinrick at 02:54 PM : Jan 08, 2007

The "sharing" you refer to (which I prefer to call preaching) is every bit as insulting to me as the most obscene word I have ever said to you. Every time you quote a scripture it's as much of a slap in my face as when I call you an as*shole. To me there is no difference.

[randalds]

It's not a question of bible verses lying. There are many good books of philosophy that can guide people with wisdom. The bible is no difference. the bible is a rather weak book of philosophy, mixed in with many many myths.

Just because the bible has some OK advice to offer doesn't make it the word of a mythical god. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile.

[randalds]

-I'm still trying to figure out how telling you that God loves you is hateful.

But anyhow...

You cursing at me is hateful and cruel. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.

Posted by singinrick at 02:13 PM : Jan 08, 2007

Again you duck the point.

[randalds]

Oh and by the way, sin and hate lead to War, not God loving people who love one another.
Posted by singinrick at 07:35 PM : Jan 07, 2007

Was itt was sin and hate that led Christians to torture and murder Jews who refused to deny their faith during the Inquisition? Perhaps these "loving" Christians were missing during the invasion of England by the christian Normans when they murdered 10's of thousands of Saxons, with priests wetting their swords as enthusiastically as the regular soldiers. Where was this christian love during the Crusades when Christians slaughtered 100's of thousands of Muslims? Or maybe they were just "spreading the love around" when missionaries spread out around the world to preach the word of god to the savages, while condemning millions of them to death through disease and killing all who refused to convert. How many civilizations and pure cultures did they destroy during their forced missions? 100's of thousands is a very conservative estimate. And deny it or not, Hilter WAS a christian who murdered 6 million Jews because they were of a different faith and for no other ral reason. Your religion is responsibile for more hate, death, bigotry and outright slaughter then any other "faith" in the history of mankind.

[randalds]

-Really??? I thought you said you "KNOW" there is no God. With this being said you must have a strong faith that God doesn't exist, otherwise you wouldn't make such a bold statement proclaiming there IS NO GOD.

As I said, we'll just leave it as I believe in God and you don't. You can keep slandering me as much as you'd like but it won't change the Truth in the end. I don't know how people go through life simply believing in nothing at all...but that's your choice, and your right. There is no god because one is not needed and in fact would be supurflious.

Posted by singinrick at 07:58 AM : Jan 08, 2007

I don't "have faith" that god does not exist, I know. I know it the same way I know gravity does exist or that the Earth revolves around the Sun, instead of the other way around that the Christian church murdered people for denying. I know there is no god because no god is or was needed to make what we have today.

[randalds]

"No you didn't call me a lunatic here, I'm calling you one."
posted by RandalDS

-Exactly my point! You're being hateful and I'm not!

Posted by singinrick at 07:55 AM : Jan 08, 2007

And you're intentionally missing my point that the preaching you and others do is every bit as offensive to me as the obscene words and insults I throw at you. Just because you don't define your preaching as hateful, doesn't mean I don't. I find preaching to be extremely insulting and disgusting lies. To me there is absolutely no difference between you quoting scripture to me and me calling you a ****king as*shole. To me the are both equally insulting.

[randalds]

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.


Posted by singinrick at 08:13 AM : Jan 08, 2007

There is no devil to be afraid of. Doesn't exit anymore then Thor or Odin.

[randalds]

It's not possible to have faith, in the religious daffynition of the word, in the non-existence of a god when you are certain scienctifically that there is not one. Of course you can't put it into a theory that a religious loony would understand because it's almost impossible to prove a negative. However not being able to prove there is not a god is not the same thing as saying there might be. Science doesn't work like that, only fairy tales do.

[frankly6]

singinrick

Thanks for the fairytale quotes.

[bvckvs-2009]

Nixon committed a flurry of additional criminal acts like this one when he was trying to cover up his corruption.

This is just another example of the lack of morality and ethics among the Religious Right.

[randalds]

And again, no atheism is not a belief in anything, not even a belief in the non-existence of a god.

Should read "not even a faith in the non-existence of a god".

[randalds]

According to your dialogue above anyone who doesn't believe in God is an "intelligent" human being.

So the insults on us believers continue.

Oh and by the way, sin and hate lead to War, not God loving people who love one another.
Posted by singinrick at 07:35 PM : Jan 07, 2007

If you actually understood my comment you'd realize that you twisted my words around backwards in an attempt to prove your case. Not surprising though as the vast majority of preacher types like you are little more then snake oil salesman anyway. You're selling myths, so only lies will work.

No you didn't call me a lunatic here, I'm calling you one.

And again, no atheism is not a belief in anything, not even a belief in the non-existence of a god. However since you are unable to get your mind around such a concept you constantly try to look at it from a religious point of view, which is why you'll never understand it.