Study Shows White House Visitor Logs Transparent, to a Point

A new analysis of White House visitor logs shows that the administration is releasing names of who comes there, but the logs also have a lot of gaps and leave out some information.

The Center for Public Integrity combed through the more than one million logs and found holes where thousands of visits were not listed -- including lobyists, campaign donors, other government staffers, friends, and policy wonks. Then, there's the celebrity factor. For example, performers Bob Dylan Joan Baez and Jennifer Hudson came to the White House in early February. However, Dylan isn't listed, nor is his given name, Robert Zimmerman.

The study also noted the logs leave out some key information about the visitors - like who they met with and why. The group also found names were on the log for people who never actually ended up going to the White House like actor Ryan Gosling whose name was on the list, but who's representative tells the center he didn't ever go.

But the administration argues that the logs aren't meant to be a transparency tool.

"The White House access system is designed first and foremost to protect the President, Vice President, their families and staff while imposing the smallest possible administrative burden -- and the information contained in the records reflects that," said White House Spokesperson Kate Beddingfield.

"The Obama Administration has taken unprecedented steps to increase transparency by releasing visitor records from the system each month to provide the American people with more information about their government. No previous White House has ever adopted such a policy," Beddingfield added.

But the analysis also found that less than 1 percent of the nearly half a million stops to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the majority of the first year of the administration have been made public.

It also notes that five lower-level aides had more than 4,000 visits but former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel tallied less than 500 while he was in the West Wing.

The White House recently won a transparency award, which the president accepted with no press coverage.

Obama memorably said on the campaign trail that he was going to make it the most transparent administration ever. Posting the visitor logs, decreasing over-classification of documents and making the health care debate open for television cameras (even though it took a little while), they note as steps to open up the White House.

They have also posted several blog posts on WhiteHouse.gov touting their initiatives, using many web tools to enable people to find and access documents and information.

Fox News' Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.