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White House releases first batch of visitor logs

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  1. Freedom of Information
The White House on Friday published nearly 500 visitor records online that detail visits made in the months from Obama's…

The White House on Friday published nearly 500 visitor records online that detail visits made in the months from Obama’s inauguration until the end of July, The Washington Post reported.

The records were in response to 110 specific records requests made in September and were released nearly two months before the White House is set to begin publishing visitor logs online each month.

In September, the Obama administration agreed to begin publishing visitor logs to settle four lawsuits brought by the government accountability group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. CREW had sued for access to the records, which are maintained by the U.S. Secret Service, under the Freedom of Information Act.

CREW dropped its suits when the government agreed to turn over the records as part of a new voluntary disclosure policy that took effect on Sept. 15, which states that the White House will release visitor logs going forward once they are 90 to 120 days old. The logs released Friday were not subject to the comprehensive disclosure policy because it is not retroactive.

A release by Norm Eisen, special counsel for ethics and government reform, noted that the White House would publish future batches of visitor logs once the 90-day window has elapsed.

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