Sunday, November 25, 2012

Petraeus scandal exposes limits to White House disclosure of visitors

President Barack Obama made a media splash four years ago when he became the first president to declare he would publicly release the names of people who came to visit the White House, whether for official business or pleasure.
But the recent scandal over ex-CIA Director David Petraeus’ extramarital affair has exposed the limitations of both the Obama White House’s promise and its practice.
The two women at the center of the controversy – biographer Paula Broadwell who had the affair and Petraeus friend Jill Kelley whose complaint to the FBI about harassing emails uncovered the scandal – visited the White House a total of five times since Obama took office. And none of their visits was in the publicly released database at the time the scandal broke.

Read more: http://www.washingtonguardian.com/transparency-has-its-limits

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