White House Posts Visitor Lists – Is That THE Bill Ayers? (No)

abcnews ^ | October 30, 2009 5:24 PM | Tapper

[jessduntno]

From Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller

Taking what officials call an "unprecedented" step in transparency, the White House released visitor logs today showing some popular names: William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, R. Kelly, and Malik Shabazz visiting the White House.

But, no – those are not who you think they are, official say; these famous people never really visited the White House – these are other people with the same name.

"There’s an important lesson here as well," Norm Eisen, special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform writes in a blog posting on the White House website, "This unprecedented level of transparency can sometimes be confusing rather than providing clear information. A lot of people visit the White House, up to 100,000 each month, with many of those folks coming to tour the buildings. Given this large amount of data, the records we are publishing today include a few "false positives" – names that make you think of a well-known person, but are actually someone else."

For example there are 59 59 Malik Shabazz's listed at whitepages.com and 53 W. Ayers, although some of those are doubles.

The visitor logs span from January 20th – September, 15th, 2009 yet is only in response to individual request that are "reasonable, narrow, and specific." For example the White House would not release a blanket request for all of the visitor logs during that nine month period.

After this initial report, the White House now plans from now on to make each months visitor logs available online 90-120 days after.

[orlop9]

I don’t find it unusual that someone named William Ayers visited the WH, but IF that’s the case shouldn’t we see Ronald Reagan, Thomas Jefferson, & Rush Limbaugh. Something tells me obama is attempting to cherry-pick this list to throw off the wolves-but there are no wolves.

[wideminded]

This is total BS. I know for a FACT of others who visited the WH, and met with the administration, but who are NOT on that list. It is most definitely an incomplete list, so it means nothing. What country are we living in again?

Obviously if there are only 110 names on the list and 100000 people visit the White House every month, it is an incomplete list. I think that so far they only released names for which they had specific requests.

[Gargantua]

"Are those names really that common? Jeremiah Wright?"

Yeah. And how about "Malik Shabazz"?

I know I have at least 3 neighbors on my block named "Malik Shabazz." Unbelievable.

These assh*les are so arrogant and out of touch, they really think we're all idiots. After all, 0bonehead won the election didn't he? We must all be drooling imbeciles!

;-/

[RoadTest]

“no – those are not who you think they are, official say; these famous people never really visited the White House – these are other people with the same name.”

But remember - they lie a lot at the White House.

[TXnMA]

Doesn't everyone know a dozen people named, "Willam Ayers" -- and at least a handful called "Jeremiah ('G-D America') Wright"? </S>

[D-fendr]

Do they think they can act like we’re asking for a list of folks who took the White House tour?

[jessduntno]

“Doesn’t everyone know a dozen people named, “Willam Ayers” — and at least a handful called “Jeremiah (’G-D America’) Wright”? </S>”

Yeah, it’s so common...especially to have that name AND have business at the WHITE HOUSE...