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THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release January 21, 2009

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

SUBJECT: Freedom of Information Act

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The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve. In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public.

All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.

The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public. They should not wait for specific requests from the public. All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their Government. Disclosure should be timely.

I direct the Attorney General to issue new guidelines governing the FOIA to the heads of executive departments and agencies, reaffirming the commitment to accountability and transparency, and to publish such guidelines in the Federal Register.

Speaking as a scientist, free flowing information is the picture of pure beauty.

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WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama moved to reshape U.S. international policy Thursday, ordering the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison camp closed within a year and naming new envoys to the Middle East and Afghanistan-Pakistan.

“We have no time to lose,” he said as he welcomed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to help forge what he called “a new era of American leadership” in the world.

It was a day in which Mr. Obama sought to reverse some of the most contentious policies of his predecessor.

“I can say without exception or equivocation that the United States will not torture,” he said in a visit to the State Department on his second full day in office.

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GENEVA — Former detainees, human-rights advocates and government officials around the world welcomed President Barack Obama’s decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, saying Thursday it helped restore their faith in the United States.

The UN’s torture investigator, Manfred Nowak, said news that Mr. Obama will order the prison closed, review military trials of terror suspects and end harsh interrogations was a sign of goodwill by the new American administration. But he warned that shutting the prison will require difficult decisions and said freed inmates should be allowed to sue the United States if they were mistreated.

“Justice also means to look into the past,” Mr. Nowak told The Associated Press. Mr. Nowak, an Austrian law professor, has previously said he had reliable accounts to indicate that Guantanamo detainees have been tortured.

Pentagon official Susan Crawford told The Washington Post in an interview published last week that the United States tortured one inmate, a Saudi named Mohammed al-Qahtani, in 2002. She was the first senior Bush administration official to make such a statement.

We are emerging from the Dark Ages into the light.