President Obama once boasted that his presidency brought about the “most transparent administration in history.” His claim has since been contradicted by reality—from Hillary Clinton on down. The Wall Street Journal,
Since the 1960s the government has been subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), giving citizens the right to view those records. In 2009 the National Archives issued rules requiring agencies to preserve employee work on nonofficial accounts in a government record-keeping system.
Then came the Obama Administration, whose modus operandi has been to hide from this legal regime. This year the world learned that Hillary Clinton conducted most of her correspondence as Secretary of State on a private, homemade email system that she failed to disclose and kept away from the federal government…
In August the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed a motion in court to gain access to the private email account of White House science czar John Holdren, who may have used it for government work. Some years ago CEI helped bring to light that then-EPA Chief Lisa Jackson used a secret alias, “ Richard Windsor,” when emailing on the EPA system. This seemed designed to thwart FOIA requests for her conversations, since “Lisa Jackson” appeared nowhere on her emails.
In 2013 an Associated Press report revealed the practice was rampant among Administration officials, including the Secretaries of Agriculture, Labor, and Health & Human Services. All had secret government email accounts that neither Congress nor the public knew about.
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