The Secret White House
More than one president has complained of being 'knee deep in leaks,' and the current president made it clear at the start of his admninstration that such behavior would not be tolerated in his White House. While it's ironic that the current Plame investigation has to do with intentional leaks, it has been hard for the press and the public to get any clear view as to how this president governs.
More than White House discipline is involved here: Mr. Bush and his crew have used some 'tools' more extensively than any prior administration. The New York Times editorial today comments on this.
The Bush administration is classifying the documents to be kept from public scrutiny at the rate of 125 a minute. The move toward greater secrecy has nearly doubled the number of documents annually hidden from public view - to well more than 15 million last year, nearly twice the number classified in 2001 - as bureaucrats have invented more amorphous categories like "sensitive security information." At the same time, the declassification of documents required under the Freedom of Information Act has been choked down to a fraction of what it was a decade ago, leaving the government working behind an ever darker, ever denser screen.
Thomas Kean, the co-chairman of the independent commission on the 9/11 attacks, warns that the official twilight could not be more counterproductive for security.
"The best ally we have in protecting ourselves against terrorism is an informed public," Mr. Kean said. The government's failure to prevent 9/11 was linked to barriers in the sharing of information between agencies and with the public, he said, not to leaks of sensitive information.
This process has been in place from the very start. A quick Google of "White House Secrecy" yielded thousands of hits. Here are a few:
The Christian Science Monitor (3/25/02):
WASHINGTON – From the very start, George W. Bush made it clear that his would be a leak-tight White House. In the past year, he has succeeded to a remarkable degree, and is even carrying that promise far beyond his relationship with the media.
The president's emphasis on confidentiality predates the war on terror, though. In his father's administration, the younger Bush took a special interest in helping with leak control. He had his own papers from his time as Texas governor archived in his father's presidential library, so that they would not be managed by the state of Texas – or subject to the state's open-records laws.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal (10/09/03):
Washington - One of the nation's leading newspaper executives took the Bush administration to task Wednesday for what he termed an "unsettling trend toward governmental secrecy."
Tony Ridder, chairman of the Newspaper Association of America, the industry's largest and most important trade organization, said the resultant fear, frustration and anger felt by many veteran journalists in the nation's capital are "unprecedented, even going back to the dark days of Watergate."
Wired.com (10/16/03):
"This administration has repeatedly demonstrated a predilection for secrecy. Withholding information is the default. Disclosure is like pulling teeth.
They see little room or need for public oversight," Aftergood (Steven Aftergood heads the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy)said.
Transparency in government is essential in a democracy, which even the most conservative of citizens can appreciate. While some government functions must be secret (such as the intelligence work of the CIA), especially in a time of war, the blanket classification of information as 'secret' is dangerous, especially when that classification prevents the very people who need the information from getting it.
How ironic, then, that this maladministration chose to leak the identity of a CIA agent as a form of revenge on her husband.
More than White House discipline is involved here: Mr. Bush and his crew have used some 'tools' more extensively than any prior administration. The New York Times editorial today comments on this.
The Bush administration is classifying the documents to be kept from public scrutiny at the rate of 125 a minute. The move toward greater secrecy has nearly doubled the number of documents annually hidden from public view - to well more than 15 million last year, nearly twice the number classified in 2001 - as bureaucrats have invented more amorphous categories like "sensitive security information." At the same time, the declassification of documents required under the Freedom of Information Act has been choked down to a fraction of what it was a decade ago, leaving the government working behind an ever darker, ever denser screen.
Thomas Kean, the co-chairman of the independent commission on the 9/11 attacks, warns that the official twilight could not be more counterproductive for security.
"The best ally we have in protecting ourselves against terrorism is an informed public," Mr. Kean said. The government's failure to prevent 9/11 was linked to barriers in the sharing of information between agencies and with the public, he said, not to leaks of sensitive information.
This process has been in place from the very start. A quick Google of "White House Secrecy" yielded thousands of hits. Here are a few:
The Christian Science Monitor (3/25/02):
WASHINGTON – From the very start, George W. Bush made it clear that his would be a leak-tight White House. In the past year, he has succeeded to a remarkable degree, and is even carrying that promise far beyond his relationship with the media.
The president's emphasis on confidentiality predates the war on terror, though. In his father's administration, the younger Bush took a special interest in helping with leak control. He had his own papers from his time as Texas governor archived in his father's presidential library, so that they would not be managed by the state of Texas – or subject to the state's open-records laws.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal (10/09/03):
Washington - One of the nation's leading newspaper executives took the Bush administration to task Wednesday for what he termed an "unsettling trend toward governmental secrecy."
Tony Ridder, chairman of the Newspaper Association of America, the industry's largest and most important trade organization, said the resultant fear, frustration and anger felt by many veteran journalists in the nation's capital are "unprecedented, even going back to the dark days of Watergate."
Wired.com (10/16/03):
"This administration has repeatedly demonstrated a predilection for secrecy. Withholding information is the default. Disclosure is like pulling teeth.
They see little room or need for public oversight," Aftergood (Steven Aftergood heads the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy)said.
Transparency in government is essential in a democracy, which even the most conservative of citizens can appreciate. While some government functions must be secret (such as the intelligence work of the CIA), especially in a time of war, the blanket classification of information as 'secret' is dangerous, especially when that classification prevents the very people who need the information from getting it.
How ironic, then, that this maladministration chose to leak the identity of a CIA agent as a form of revenge on her husband.
posted by Diane at 8:06 AM
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