Rove Group Unveils GOP Version of WikiLeaks

Inspired by WikiLeaks, a Karl Rove-linked conservative group has started its own online home for government dirt: Wikicountability.org. The site, which aims to gather Obama administration documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, allows its creators to “crowd-source both the information and analysis of the information,” says the head of Crossroads GPS. It appears to be among the first such collaborative sites with “a specific political end,” notes the New York Times.

“We have a point of view,” adds Crossroads president Steven Law, so “we would do some vetting” of would-be site editors. Law hopes to point out what he sees as the administration’s lack of transparency. The site may actually be aimed at winning donors, notes the director of the National Security Archive, but transparency does require a “constant push to get the government to be accountable”—and though he believes the Obama White House has made strides toward transparency, "there is still a huge gap between the really strong message on high and the actual performance of the agencies." Still, if Crossroads has "no intention of opening the site to the general public then it’s not really a wiki in the deeper sense," says Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. (More Karl Rove stories.)