White House Brownout on Clandestine Coffee Klatches

[Geee]

Human Events:

A House hearing Tuesday on the Obama administration’s pledge to conduct a transparent White House lacked one key element—transparency.

That’s because Brad Kiley, director of the White House Office of Management and Administration, refused to appear before the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations to answer questions about top officials meeting with lobbyists and political activists at local coffeehouses in order to circumvent public disclosure and scrutiny.

The records of only 1% of 500,000 meetings during President Obama’s first eight months of office have been made public, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

At least two-thirds of 1 million names that were released were part of the public tours, while thousands of known visitors to the White House, including numerous lobbyists, are missing from the logs, the center says.

“White House staff apparently purposely scheduled meetings at the Caribou Coffee around the corner from the White House so that those meetings won’t show up on the White House logs,” said Rep. Cliff Stearns (R.–Fla.), panel chairman. Rep. Michael Burgess (R.– Tex.), said the meetings also pose a significant security risk. “It’s really hard to bug the White House, but not hard to bug Caribou Coffee,” Burgess said.

“This is the way they have chosen to conduct business to avoid scrutiny and oversight,” Burgess said.