Judge orders more searches for Abramoff visits (AP)
In several orders this week, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth sided with watchdog groups Judicial Watch and Citizens in opposition to Responsibility and Ethics, which are suing the Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security for access to the logs.
The administration in 2006 agreed to produce all suited records about the visits “without redactions or claims of exemption.” But it soon argued that the what is contained of certain “Sensitive Security Records,” which are created in the course of conducting more extensive background checks on particular White House visitors, cannot have existence publicly revealed even though they could show some of Abramoff’s visits.
Lamberth disagreed this week, aphorism those defence records are not exempt under the federal Freedom of Information Act on the grounds that the complaint could promote criminal activity.
“The court is not convinced that the information plaintiff primarily seeks — the name of a censor, the dates and general condition of affairs of his visits, and the person(s) visited — would allow even the greatest in number dedicated would-be criminal to see which visitor characteristics trigger … a pawn check,” Lamberth wrote in one of the orders.
He also ordered DHS and the Secret Service to inquiry visitor records that had been transferred to White House control.
To date, the government has turned over several Secret Service records referring to White House visits by Abramoff — at least six of them in the seasonable months of the Bush administration in 2001 and a seventh in early 2004, reasonable before Abramoff came under criminal investigation.
The White House has released little information hind part before the visits, but none appears to involve a small group meeting with President Bush.
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