When Government Doesn't Tell
The New York Times
February 3, 2002
TOP SECRET
By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM
WASHINGTON
MORE than any of its
recent predecessors, this
administration has a penchant
for secrecy.
The Bush White House has
steadfastly refused to tell
Congress about contacts last year
between corporate executives and
a task force to develop energy
policy headed by Vice President
Dick Cheney. Last week, the
General Accounting Office, the
investigative agency of Congress,
announced it would sue the
White House to obtain the
information, the first time it has
ever filed such a suit.
That is only the most recent
example of the Bush
administration's keeping material
from becoming public. Some of
these moves, of course, are
related to the attacks of Sept. 11.
For example, President Bush
determined that accused
terrorists could be tried in secret
military tribunals.
The government has also refused
to reveal the identities or
nationalities of the Taliban and Al
Qaeda fighters held captive at
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, or the
names and locations of hundreds
of immigrants imprisoned in the
United States, because the
authorities insist they might be able to cast light on the
terrorism.
"Proclamation of a wartime crisis automatically increases
the amount of government secrecy," said former Senator
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who wrote a book in 1998 about
excessive secrecy in Washington.
But the Bush team's inclination to keep information
under wraps goes far beyond the reaction to terrorist
attacks or even what can be regarded as traditional efforts
to conduct delicate government affairs out of the limelight.
"This administration has a knee-jerk response - reflexive
secrecy," said Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National
Security Archive, a research center at George Washington
University.
Steven Aftergood, director of the project on government
secrecy of the Federation of American Scientists, said he
knew of no previous administration so determined to
withhold routine information. Last month, Mr. Aftergood
sued the government to gain access to the Central
Intelligence Agency's budget for 1947 - data he has been
denied even though the 1997 and 1998 C.I.A. budgets
have been declassified and are public.
Last year, to the dismay of historians, Mr. Bush signed an
executive order restricting public access to the papers of
former presidents. Attorney General John Ashcroft also
established more restrictive rules governing what agencies
release under the Freedom of Information Act.
The government is even refusing to give Congress the
results of a survey taken after the 2000 census to
calculate how many people were either missed or
double-counted by the census takers - data that has
nothing to do with national security, law enforcement,
confidential communications or any other normal grounds
for keeping data from Congress. The Commerce
Department says it is not confident the figures are
accurate.
Exactly why the administration is so tightfisted with so
many kinds of information is something of a mystery. One
administration lawyer offered a theory. He said Mr. Bush
and Mr. Cheney want to right a balance they believe has
tilted much too far toward Congress, largely because of
precedents established when President Bill Clinton
misused executive authority by trying to keep matters
secret to cover up wrongdoing. The same thing happened,
for the same reason, in the Nixon administration, the
lawyer said. He recalled that Mr. Cheney had been chief
of staff for President Gerald R. Ford and familiar with a
White House playing a weak hand against Congress.
As essential as openness is in a democracy - without it
public officials could never fully gain the consent of the
governed because there would be no way to hold officials
accountable - no one doubts that some democratic
processes require secrecy. Clearly, for example, diplomatic
negotiations and grand jury proceedings cannot take
place in public, and taxes could not be collected if returns
were not confidential.
Those cases are easy to recognize, like night and day, said
Dennis F. Thompson, a professor of political philosophy at
Harvard who has written widely about government
secrecy. But other cases are more like dusk, Mr.
Thompson said. Usually, as in the case of the energy task
force, they involve efforts by the White House to withhold
information sought by political opponents that might
embarrass the president or hamper his policies.
Mr. Bush asserts he is withholding details about Mr.
Cheney's task force to protect the right of a president to
get unvarnished confidential advice. "We're not going to
let the ability for us to discuss matters between ourselves
to become eroded," he told reporters last week. "It's not
only important for us, for this administration. It's an
important principle for future administrations."
David M. Walker, who as comptroller general heads the
accounting office, said he was not after confidential advice.
He was not asking for minutes or transcripts of what was
said at the task force meetings. What Congress wants, Mr.
Walker said, is merely the names of the participants and
the dates, times and topics of the meetings, information
he said was essential for Congress to fulfill its duty to
oversee the activities of the executive branch.
AS is so often the case,these arguments about principle
mask a political dispute. Democrats would like to show
that Mr. Cheney and his colleagues met extensively with
major campaign contributors and froze environmentalists
out. The White House would like to limit any disclosures
that call further attention to the administration's ties to
oil and gas companies, particularly to the Enron
Corporation.
But the philosophical clash between the executive and
legislative branches over access to information is also real
and important, a conflict fought in almost every
administration since George Washington refused to give
Congress papers about a disastrous battle with Indians in
the Northwest Territory. Usually these disputes are
eventually settled by a compromise that allows both sides
to claim victory.
Leaving politics aside, the line between what information
should be kept confidential and what should be revealed
to Congress and the public is hard to draw. Mark J.
Rozell, a professor of politics at Catholic University and an
expert on executive privilege, said the basic principle in a
democracy should be that the presumption is in favor of
openness and information is kept secret "only in the
service of some absolutely clear national interest."
Professor Thompson of Harvard suggested that a
distinction could often be made between the advice and
the formulation of policy. A president, he said, should be
able to keep advice secret, but "it's very important for
citizens to know the reasoning that goes on behind
policymaking and not just the final decisions."
Such prescriptions may be useful in the abstract, but are
hard to apply to specific cases. For when it comes to the
president and Congress, politics can rarely be left aside.
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