COOP News (ehemals: Wamu /WMIH)

Sept. 25, 2008, was just another Thursday in Seattle – until the federal government orchestrated the largest bank failure in U.S. history.

Late that afternoon, officials with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the former Office of Thrift Supervision strode through the lobby of the Seattle headquarters of Washington Mutual and entered an elevator.

On the 32nd floor they walked into the boardroom, where they presented the bank's directors with legal papers that said the federal government had seized and sold WaMu's banking subsidiaries.

As a result, thousands of people lost their jobs, investors lost billions of dollars and greater Seattle lost a corporate citizen that helped finance the rebuilding of the city after the great fire of 1889.

Without a doubt, it was one of the most consequential federal actions in our region's history.

Did our federal government act wisely? Even 3 1/2 years later, citizens have too little information to know.

Federal regulators issued a short press release and then hid their remaining information about WaMu behind a heavy curtain of secrecy. The FDIC responded to public records requests by releasing hundreds of documents that were almost entirely blacked out.

The public's inability to evaluate their government's action underscores the constant threat to one of our nation's grandest ideas, the concept of open government.

For more than 200 years, Americans have been part of a great experiment in self-rule based on laws.

It's an ambitious civic model that's idealistic and hopeful and at odds with much of human history. But it works.

It doesn't work well, however, if a key ingredient is missing: informed citizens.