Government Secrecy After September 11

The war on terrorism has been accompanied by a far-reaching reconsideration of government information policy. Some have questioned whether the very openness that characterizes our political system is a weakness because it provides information that could be used against us by terrorists.

The Bush Administration's rather consistent approach has been to clamp down on the disclosure of information across the board, restricting public access even to various kinds of unclassified and historical information.

The FAS Project on Government Secrecy is predicated on the notion that secrecy and security are two different things, and that indiscriminate secrecy - no less than indiscriminate disclosure - can undermine security by disabling our political institutions. Accordingly, we have found much to criticize in the Bush Administration policies.

How much should Congress know?

While one can debate exactly how much information about the war on terrorism should be made public, it is harder to argue that Congress should be kept in the dark. Yet that seems to be the Administration's preference.

In an October 5 memo obtained by FAS and published on our web site, President Bush directed that no more than eight members of Congress should receive classified briefings about the war. Not even the leadership of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees were to be kept in the loop.

Washington has no fury like a committee chairman scorned, however, and so the Administration was compelled to disavow these restrictions after just a few days.

But despite this awkward reversal, some members of Congress complain that the quality of the briefings they receive is still inadequate. For example, Sen. John McCain, a member of the Armed Services Committee, recently said that he gets "no information" from the briefings and sees "no reason" to attend them. The quality of congressional oversight can only suffer as a consequence, to the ultimate detriment of national policy.

How much should the FOIA disclose?

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is the lever that permits Americans to move the world of government information. It is the law that establishes and defines the public's right to know what the government is doing.

Of course, there are numerous exemptions built into the law to protect classified, personal, and proprietary information, among other categories. But the whole thrust of the law is to promote public access to information.

Now a new Bush Administration FOIA policy encourages government officials to withhold information from disclosure whenever they possibly can. Past policy (in theory) was to release information unless "foreseeable harm" could result. But on October 12, Attorney General Ashcroft told agencies to deny requests for access to information whenever there was any legal argument for doing so, regardless of whether or not harm would result.

The upshot is already evident in a pattern of increased denials of public requests for information. It is a worrisome trend that must be challenged.

How much should the public know about the past?

On November 1, the Bush Administration took time out from the war on terrorism to issue a new executive order that will make it more difficult for Americans to gain access to historical records generated by past Presidents.

Specifically, the new order allows past Presidents as well as the incumbent President to veto public access to historically valuable presidential records by asserting executive privilege. Remarkably, the order purports to grant executive privilege even to the surviving family members of a deceased President, a true innovation in government secrecy.

Since classified, privacy, and other forms of information are already protected from disclosure, the new executive order invites the suspicion that it is intended to shield embarrassing information, a category for which an explicit exemption does not exist.

Fortunately, this seemingly gratuitous new policy has inspired an impressive degree of resistance, including congressional calls for it to be rescinded.

These are just a few of the latest developments in secrecy policy. Others include new limits on the freedom of Pentagon employees to communicate with the public; new restrictions on government web sites, which are being substantially curtailed; and, not least important, the development of a new executive order on classification and declassification policy.

The FAS Project on Government Secrecy works to illuminate these and other important information policy areas. We research and publish original source documents, generate critical commentary, and provide information support to journalists and editorial writers. It looks like our plate is going to be full.