This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, April 25, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Obama administration talked a good game on transparency, but from double talk on when and where the president can order

Americans killed to the Pentagon's assertion that the U.S. is at war with classified

enemies the Obama record on transparency is weak.

Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute.

We spoke today.

The most transparent administration in history quickly became something else.

Yeah, it should have been a clue when the first time that line was floated by, or one of the

first times by then press secretary Robert Gibbs in 2010, Politico reported that laughter broke out in the briefing room.

This has been far from the most transparent administration in history.

In fact, it's an administration that has attempted to conceal from the American public

some of the most basic questions you can debate in a democracy.

Questions like, what's the law?

When does the government believe it's legally entitled to collect your personal data?

When does it believe it's legally entitled to kill you?

When and with who are we at war?

These are actually things that the... and with who are we at war?

These are actually things that the Obama administration,

the self-styled most transparent administration

in history, has tried to conceal from the American public behind a veil of secrecy.

They've done a lot of this with Congress's help.

...