-By Warner Todd Huston
The intrepid Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News has been one of the few reporters attempting to dig deep into controversial stories–and by controversial we mean stories that Obama would rather see go away. But after her work on Fast & Furious and Benghazi, she is now reporting that she’s been shut out of the information loop by the White House.
Attkisson was one of the few members of the progressive media establishment interested in covering the Fast & Furious scandal and has lately also been a bulldog looking into the Benghazi cover-up. She has been so far reaching in her work that she was dubbed a “persistent voice of media skepticism” by The Washington Post.
Her work got her praise and rumors that her boss, David Rhodes, may fire her for being too effective. Naturally, CBS boss Rhodes has a brother that is a close Obama adviser. Ben Rhodes, the CBS executive’s brother, also happens to be one of the operatives in the Obama administration directly involved in the Benghazi cover-up.
Now, in a separate interview with CSPAN, Attkisson says that she has been frozen out by Obama’s White House.
Attkisson told CSPAN that she looked into why the decision was made not to convene the Counter-Terrorism Security Group as the Benghazi attacks continued. She wondered why presidential directive SPD-46 was not followed. She told the cable channel that she got a cursory answer from the White House “before they quit talking to me altogether.”
Attkisson also said that Obama has turned foot dragging on releasing information to the public into an art form.
The CBS reporter said that the Freedom of Information Act, “has now been used, instead of to facilitate the release of public information, which was its intention– it’s now in my opinion been used to withhold and delay the release of public information. I get pretty much zero response. That didn’t start under the Obama administration. He seems to have perfected it, he and the federal agencies.”
Attkisson isn’t the only one saying that Obama’s record on FOIA requests is dismal. Others agree with her.
When Obama came to office he claimed he would have the “most transparent administration in history” but his record speaks to quite the opposite of that.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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