Transparency and Media - Obama Presidency Oral History

Consistent with Obama’s campaign commitments to transparency and digital public engagement, one day after the 2008 general election, Obama’s transition office launched change.gov. The website allowed visitors to monitor transition activities, create petitions, and submit comments describing actions they hoped the incoming administration would take, which were compiled into a “Citizens Briefing Book” presented to Obama after his inauguration. On his first day in office, Obama continued along this line, launching his “Open Government Initiative,” and issuing presidential memoranda directing key officers to review, and improve, the transparency of executive-branch agency operations. The White House instantiated these commitments while implementing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which involved spending hundreds of billions of dollars to stimulate economic growth in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board supervised this spending to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse, and served as a model for future transparency and oversight efforts. Over the course of Obama’s two terms, the internet was central to the administration’s open government efforts. The administration launched or redesigned dozens of websites that allowed the public to access hundreds of thousands of government datasets, track federal spending, review ethics reports, and submit policy-related feedback and suggestions. In project interviews, narrators speak widely about these efforts, and discuss the administration’s commitment to open government across policy domains. 

The boundaries of the administration’s commitment to transparency were often defined by issues related to classification and national security. In his first months in office, Obama faced difficult decisions about whether to release government records related to the actions of American intelligence agencies during the prosecution of the global war on terror under President George W. Bush. He decided to release four top-secret government memos related to the CIA’s interrogation of terrorist suspects, but blocked the publication of photographs that American personnel had taken of detainees. Explaining those decisions in a speech at the National Archives, Obama reiterated his general commitment to transparency, but emphasized that he would oppose any disclosures that might jeopardize national security, or endanger Americans. 

The question of whether unauthorized leaks and disclosures in fact jeopardized national security or endangered Americans dominated public debates about the administration’s commitment to transparency, and treatment of journalists. From the first months of the Obama presidency, the administration signaled that it would investigate and prosecute leaks, and ultimately charged more people for unauthorized disclosures under the Espionage Act than all previous administrations combined. Across the project archive, government officials, alongside subjects of investigations and prosecutions, share stories of major leaks, and reflect on the importance of limiting and deterring unauthorized disclosures, the impact of WikiLeaks' publication of diplomatic cables on the conduct of American diplomacy, the inclusion of investigative journalists in leak prosecutions, the government's secret obtainment of Associated Press phone records, and public criticism of the administration's approach to containing disclosures.

The Obama Presidency Oral History’s coverage of issues related to transparency and media relations overlaps and intersects with several other topic areas in the collection, including Elections and Campaigns, the People’s House, and the East Wing.