900,000 workers now secret: Government won't say who, where

December 10, 2005

December 7, 2005

BY MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN

WASHINGTON -- Breaking a tradition of openness that began in 1816, the

Bush administration has without explanation withheld the names and

work locations of about 900,000 of its civilian workers, according to

a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

''Citizens have a right to know who is working for the government,''

said Adina Rosenbaum, attorney for the Transactional Records Access

Clearinghouse, a research group at Syracuse University, who sued to

get the data.

Since 1989, TRAC has been posting on the Internet a database with the

name, work location, salary and job category of all 2.7 million

federal civilian workers except those in some law enforcement

agencies. The data, provided on compact discs, are often used by

reporters and watchdog groups.

Info 'critical for ... oversight'

The New York Daily News used the data to find names of guards at a

detention center where abuse was alleged. Another reporter used it to

find names of Transportation Security Administration guards at

LaGuardia Airport to pursue cargo theft allegations.

''Secret governors are incompatible with a free government,'' TRAC

wrote the federal Office of Personnel Management last Feb. 2 when the

agency withheld the data. ''Basic information about the employees who

carry out the day-to-day actions of government is critical for

meaningful public oversight.''

The Office of Personnel Management said it would not comment until the

lawsuit is reviewed.

Gary A. Lukowski, OPM's work force information manager, wrote TRAC in

2004 that the agency was reviewing ''disclosure of individual employee

records as this relates to the Freedom of Information Act and the

Privacy Act.'' Last spring, Lukowski forwarded the 2004 discs and

noted that ''individual records for the Department of Defense are

excluded from the file provided.''

The suit said that, in violation of the Freedom of Information Act,

OPM did not mention that another 150,000 names and workplaces had been

deleted or say why. AP

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