Foster case should not lead to further government secrecy

No one ever said that operating an open government would be comfortable for everyone or that it could be done without offending anyone's sensibilities.
But the family of Vincent Foster, the Clinton-era White House lawyer, is claiming just such a comfort zone should exist in arguing that some police photos taken when Foster's body was found should not be subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
Foster, 48, was found dead of a gunshot to the head in a park in Virginia in 1993. The longtime friend of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton was handling several personal legal matters for them at the time, including their investment in the Whitewater real estate venture.
Conspiracy issue
Allan Favish, a California lawyer who continues to theorize that Foster's death was part of a grand conspiracy, believes 10 photographs taken when Foster's body was discovered could reveal evidence that points to murder. He already has reviewed the photographs that have been released, and some are posted on his Web site.
Favish may be an obsessive conspiracy theorist. We're sure that some would describe him as such. But that does not diminish the public interest that is served by protecting access to materials such as the Foster photos. Foster was a figure of some significance in a controversy that led to the second impeachment trial of a president in U.S. history.
If the court agrees with Foster's family, it would expand privacy exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act, which generally allows reporters and others to get unclassified government records that officials would not otherwise release. The act allows officials to withhold information that could cause "an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."
Foster's family is arguing that his personal privacy should extend to them.
While that certainly sounds like compassionate public policy, it would be bad public policy. The court would be opening a whole new area in which bureaucrats would have to delve when evaluating Freedom of Information Act requests that should be matters of routine.
A love of secrecy
It does not surprise us that the Justice Department is siding with the Foster family, but we doubt that it is out of any great sense of concern or compassion.
This is an administration that routinely resists public access to government documents and processes of all kinds. It has wrapped cloaks of secrecy around the procedure it used to develop an energy policy, around the detention of hundreds of persons in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and around the papers of past presidential administration that Congress deemed open by specific legislation.
If the court goes along with the arguments of the Foster family and the administration, it will enable government to operate in private, in the name of being sensitive. That may allow some people to feel warm and fuzzy, but it will be a disservice to the principle of open government.
If Foster walked out of the White House one day having made the decision to end his own life, that was a choice he made -- unfortunate and tortured as it may have been -- and one that his family will suffer with for a long time to come. It is not a choice, however, that should be permitted to lead to a climate of increased government secrecy.