Now you see it, now you don't.

A federal Inspector General conducted an audit of the Kabul Bank that revealed that the bank was operating as a personal piggy bank for ruling class in the capital of Afghanistan. The U.S. had touted the bank and the Afghan financial sector as a rare U.S. success stories in Afghanistan.

Secrecy News reports that the federal government has removed the audit from public view. Apparently the federal government, after the fact, classified some documents used in the audit.

The Washington Post wrote some groundbreaking stories on problems at the bank.

If a public official asks you for a bribe, give him a public records request. Our colleague Sarah Cohen at Duke pointed out a very interesting academic paper that shows the benefits of open records. Yale economist Leonid Peisakhin studied India, where there is often a huge gulf between government officials and powerless or poor citizens. He studied slum dwellers and middle class citizens trying to get government services. The result? People who used the freedom of information law attained almost the same results of people who paid bribes.

Some members of the Washington press corps were unhappy with the new Obama administration on Wednesday when news photographers were denied access to the Oval Office. Traditionally, the major news agencies have been allowed to take pictures of the new President in the office on his first day at work. 

Three agencies refused to distribute a photo taken by White House photographer Pete Souza. It was distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Photo Service, which is partly owned by the McClatchy Co., owner of The News & Observer. We rarely print White House photos. After a discussion of this particular situation, we opted to use the photo because we believed our readers would want to see President Barack Obama in his office on his first day at work. The photo is clearly labeled and the context explained.

The press, and most importantly the public, also had reasons to be pleased with the administration on Wednesday. One of the Obama administration's first acts was to issue a memo to all federal government department heads and agencies directed them to comply with both the letter and the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act. That move was in contrast to the Bush Administration, which kept a tight grip on information.

The memo reads in part that the law "should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The government should not keep information confidentially merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears." 

Linda Williams