Repeat after me — the Most. Transparent. Administration. Evah. The White House has refused to allow the Senate to access over 9,000 top-secret documents related to their probe of CIA activities in interrogations and black-site operations, even though Barack Obama explicitly criticized those activities in the previous Bush administration when he ran for President in 2008. This time, Obama hasn’t even bothered to claim executive privilege:

The White House has been withholding for five years more than 9,000 top-secret documents sought by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for its investigation into the now-defunct CIA detention and interrogation program, even though President Barack Obama hasn’t exercised a claim of executive privilege.

In contrast to public assertions that it supports the committee’s work, the White House has ignored or rejected offers in multiple meetings and in letters to find ways for the committee to review the records, a McClatchy investigation has found.

The significance of the materials couldn’t be learned. But the administration’s refusal to turn them over or to agree to any compromise raises questions about what they would reveal about the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists in secret overseas prisons.

One has to wonder if this is just a habit in this administration. Let’s be clear about the context; the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation wants to get to the bottom of activities that took place before Obama became President. The theory of the investigation, to the extent we know it, is that the CIA lied to George W. Bush and Congressional intelligence committees about its interrogation tactics and operations in the war on terror. That’s probably why no explicit claim of executive privilege has been made — but absent that, the Senate Intelligence Committee has the right to see materials relating to proper oversight of the CIA.

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