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Secret Service and White House Win Rosemary Award for Worst in Open Government in 2017

National Security Archive: “The Secret Service and the White House have emerged as the dubious winners from the hard-fought competition for the National Security Archive’s infamous Rosemary Award for worst open government performance of 2017. The award, which the Archive began bestowing in 2005, is named after President Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, who testified she had inadvertently erased 18 and ½ minutes of a crucial Watergate tape when she stretched to answer the phone with her foot still on the transcription pedal. Previous Rosemary Award “winners” include the CIA, the Treasury Department, the Air Force, the FBI, the Justice Department (twice), and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The Secret Service clinched the 2017 award for its claim that “There is no system for keeping track of Presidential visitors at Mar-a-Lago.” This remarkable assertion was made in an October 4, 2017, court filing during the course of the National Security Archive’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking the Secret Service’s White House visitor logs, along with Secret Service records of presidential visitors at other Trump properties. The shocking claim that there is no system for tracking who has access to the President when he is at Mar-a-Lago (or any other Trump property) means that anyone, from lobbyists to foreign agents, can have direct access to the president for the price of a Mar-a-Lago membership paid to the president himself…”

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