Obama: The Most Secretive President?

The Daily Beast reports:

Having been elected to the White House with the promise of increased openness and transparency regarding government operations, Barack Obama may end his presidency as among the most secretive in American history.

That, anyway, was the conclusion of a couple of the high-powered panelists Monday night during a debate on freedom of the press vs. national security at the Paley Center for Media.

The result--argued Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post--is stifled freedom of the press, less official accountability and a potential increase in government-sanctioned wrongdoing behind a veil of secrecy that supposedly protects the homeland but actually shields federal officials from legitimate public inquiry.

“The Obama administration--after first starting out by making promises of greater transparency, lessening over-classification, providing greater protections for whistleblowers--has in fact turned its back, and done virtually the same thing as the Bush administration,” said Shamsi, who directs the ACLU’s National Security Project.

The establishment's Lloyd Grove.