“The Obama administration has proven its pledge to usher in a new era of government transparency was more than just a campaign promise,” CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan said. “The Bush administration fought tooth and nail to keep secret the identities of those who visited the White House. In contrast, the Obama administration – by putting visitor records on the White House web site – will have the most open White House in history.”
“We will achieve our goal of making this administration the most open and transparent administration in history,” President Obama said in a statement. “Americans have a right to know whose voices are being heard.”
The most striking revelation in CREW’s analysis of the visitor logs is that Texas “super-lobbyist” Stephen Payne made “53 different visits [to the White House] starting in June 18, 2001, and ending on June 13, 2007.”
Blogger Lindsay Beyerstein, wrote last year, “As you may have heard, Republican fundraiser and lobbyist Stephen Payne was caught on tape offering meetings with Dick Cheney and Condi Rice in exchange for a hefty donation to the George W. Bush presidential library. … White House press secretary Dana Perino admitted that Payne has probably met with the president on a number of occasions, but she balked when reporters asked her about visitor logs that might establish how often, citing ‘lawsuits and stuff.’”
CREW is now able to document those meetings exactly. “The newly released records show Mr. Payne visited President Bush on four separate occasions: December 12, 2001; April 2, 2002; May 8, 2003; and December 15, 2004. Mr. Payne’s White House visits also included visits to Karl Rove on August 6, 2002, and December 18, 2003. A separate set of records from visits to the vice president’s residence shows Mr. Payne attended a holiday reception hosted by the Cheneys on December 10, 2002; an event at the residence on December 14, 2006; and a holiday party hosted by the Cheneys on December 13, 2007.”
The visitor logs also reveal almost 200 visits to the Bush White House by leaders of the religious right, 35 of which were visits with President Bush himself. The visitors included such familiar names as James Dobson, Gary Bauer, the late Jerry Falwell, and leaders of the Traditional Values Coalition, Concerned Women for America, the Family Research Council, and the American Family Association.
The largest number of vists were from the chairman and the executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, who between them visited the White House a total of 69 times from 2001 to 2008, including 8 visits with President Bush.