On May 21, President Obama gave a speech defending his administration’s controversial positions on national security and transparency.  Despite his campaign promise to bring change and accountability along with greater transparency, some open government advocates have been worried that his actions have not lived up to the hype.

Concerning his release of the torture memos written during the Bush administration, Obama stated:

“I released the memos because the existence of that approach to interrogation was already widely known, the Bush Administration had acknowledged its existence, and I had already banned those methods. The argument that somehow by releasing those memos, we are providing terrorists with information about how they will be interrogated is unfounded - we will not be interrogating terrorists using that approach, because that approach is now prohibited.”

Interestingly, this same argument to release the torture memos was made by Sens. Lieberman (I-CT) and Graham (R-SC) last week to withhold the torture photos:

"The release of these old photographs of past behavior that has now been clearly prohibited can serve no public good, but will empower al-Qaeda propaganda operations, hurt our country's image, and endanger our men and women in uniform."

President Obama adopted the Lieberman-Graham position.  Why withhold the photos if the past actions are now denied and banned?  We have chosen to release the memos which describe the torture, but not the photos that depict the torture.  These are both records of government actions and should thus be subject to the same openness standards.