Washington Monthly editor Charles Homans presents a roadmap for digging out the most important secrets that the Bush administration wants to keep hidden forever. It won’t be easy. As Vice-President Cheney said in a speech in 2007, “I learned early on that if you don’t want your memos to get you in trouble someday, just don’t write any.” According to Homans, “The records of the White House…are in the hands of administration loyalists, and won’t stay in the building when Obama takes office. Preserving these documents as public records, even if we can’t read them for twelve years, is our most pressing concern. When Obama takes the reins in January…he should direct the government’s inspectors general to undertake exhaustive, top-to-bottom audits of the classified documents their agencies have produced under Bush, declassifying and releasing everything for which secrecy isn’t of demonstrable national security interest. One specific trove of documents is a priority: the records of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel.”