At the outset of his presidency, President Obama signed a memorandum to all federal departments and agencies declaring his support for the Freedom of Information Act. He directed that “all agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to usher in a new era of Open Government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.”
It appears, however, that his Treasury Department appointees didn’t get the memo because for months Treasury has resorted to unexplained delays and other questionable tactics to avoid making public thousands of documents related to the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. The documents were requested by Bloomberg News and Judicial Watch, among other news and public interest groups.
The Examiner reported Monday that Treasury’s Office of Financial Stability, which oversees TARP, renewed a contract with Phacil Inc. in May 2009 for “Freedom of Information Act Analysts to support the Disclosure Services, Privacy and Treasury Records,” according to a report from Neil Barofsky, TARP’s special inspector general. We also reported Monday on an Internet employment solicitation from Phacil seeking FOIA analysts with experience in the “use of FOIA/PA exemptions to withhold information from release to the public.” Shortly after we described the ad, it was updated to add the phrase “that is considered classified, sensitive or falls outside of FOIA/PA guidelines.” It should be noted that, according to OpenSecrets.org, Phacil’s top executives have donated only to Democrats, including Obama, who honored them at the White House last May, according to Phacil’s Web site.
These revelations cast further light on the Obama administration’s reluctance to level with taxpayers on how their money was used to bail out big banks, insurance companies and other Wall Street operations. On Monday, Bloomberg News reported that it was forced to wait 20 months before Treasury turned over reams of documents about the government’s involvement with Citigroup, but they were so heavily redacted that only phrases like “Today’s going to be a busy day!” were legible. On Tuesday, the Clearing House Association LLC, a group of the biggest commercial banks, filed an appeal with the Supreme Court asking that details of emergency loans the Federal Reserve made to financial firms in 2008 continue to be withheld from public view.
The Congressional Oversight Panel has criticized the use of contractors “not bound by the FOIA,” which may leave TARP’s implementation “forever shielded from public scrutiny.” Barofsky has also described TARP as replete with problems with transparency. That’s an understatement if we ever heard one.
