[Dialogue] Emailing: Did Bush Create The Most Secretive US Govt Ever.htm

[Harry Wainwright]

<http://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/themes/commondreams/logo_bw.gif> 
Published on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 by Inter Press Service
Did Bush Create The Most Secretive US Govt Ever?

by William Fisher

NEW YORK - The administration of President George W. Bush continues to
expand government secrecy across a broad array of agencies and actions --
and at greatly increased cost to taxpayers, according to a coalition of
groups that promote greater transparency.

Dr. Patrice McDermott, director of Open the Government, a watchdog group,
told IPS, "The federal government under the Bush administration has shown
its commitment to secrecy by where it has put its money -- more no-bid
contracts, fewer government employees processing FOIA [Freedom of
Information Act] requests, less on training on classification issues, and
almost 200 dollars spent on keeping secrets to every dollar allocated to
open them."

"Given our growing deficit, the next administration faces difficult choices
in restoring accountable government," he added.

In its "Secrecy Report Card 2008," released Sep. 9, the group concluded that
the Bush administration "exercised unprecedented levels not only of
restriction of access to information about federal government's policies and
decisions, but also of suppression of discussion of those policies and their
underpinnings and sources."

Open the Government is a Washington-based coalition of consumer and good
government groups, librarians, environmentalists, labour, journalists, and
others.

It says that that classification activity remains significantly higher than
before 2001. In 2006, the number of original classification decisions
increased to 233,639, after dropping for the two previous years.

The government spent 195 dollars maintaining the secrets already on the
books for every one dollar it spent declassifying documents in 2007, a five
percent increase in one year.

At the same time, fewer pages were declassified than in 2006. The nation's
16 intelligence agencies, which account for a large segment of the
declassification numbers, are excluded from the total reported figures.

Classified or "black" programmes accounted for about 31.9 billion dollars,
or 18 percent of the fiscal year (FY) 2008 Department of Defence (DOD)
acquisition funding requested last year. Classified acquisition funding has
more than doubled in real terms since FY 1995.

Almost 22 million requests were received under FOIA in 2007, an increase of
almost 2 percent over the previous year. But a 2008 study revealed that, in
2007, FOIA spending at 25 key agencies fell by 7.0 million dollars, to 233.8
million dollars, and the agencies put 209 fewer people to work processing
FOIA requests.

While the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court does not reveal
much about its activities, the Department of Justice reported that, in 2007,
the court approved 2,371 orders -- rejecting only three and approving two
left over from the previous year. Since 2000, federal surveillance activity
under the jurisdiction of the court has risen for the ninth year in a row --
more than doubling during the Bush administration.

The court was established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in
1978 after revelations of the widespread wiretapping by the administration
of Richard M. Nixon to spy on political and activist groups. Recently,
efforts to reform the act have been triggered by the Bush administration's
admission that it had conducted secret surveillance programmes in the U.S.
without warrants from the court.

In addition, more than 25 percent (worth 114.2 billion dollars) of all
contracts awarded by the federal government last year were not subject to
open competition -- a proportion that has remained largely unchanged for the
last eight years.

Investigations by Congress and independent government agencies of the war in
Iraq have revealed billions of dollars in no-bid contracts, covering
everything from delivering food and water to U.S. troops to providing armed
security for U.S. officials and visiting dignitaries. There have been
widespread allegations of waste, fraud and abuse by contractors. Several
have been convicted and prosecutions of others are pending.

During 2007, government-wide, 64 percent of meetings of the Federal Advisory
Committee were closed to the public. Excluding groups advising three
agencies that historically have accounted for the majority of closed
meetings, 15 percent of the remainder were closed -- a 24 percent increase
over the number closed in 2006. These numbers do not reflect closed meetings
of subcommittees and taskforces.

The Federal Advisory Committee Act was passed in 1972 to ensure that advice
by the various advisory committees formed over the years is objective and
accessible to the public.

The report also found that in seven years, President Bush has issued at
least 156 "signing statements", challenging over 1,000 provisions of laws
passed by Congress. In 2007, eight were issued.

The so-called "state secrets privilege" -- invoked only six times between
1953 and 1976 -- has been used by the Bush administration a reported 45
times, an average of 6.4 times per year in seven years. This is more than
double the average (2.46) in the previous 24 years.

The "state secrets privilege" is a legal doctrine that contends that
admission of certain information into court proceedings would endanger U.S.
national security. The Bush administration has frequently invoked the
privilege to dismiss lawsuits that would be embarrassing to the government,
and the courts have generally been deferential to the government's claims.

National Security Letter (NSL) requests continued to rise; the 2007 numbers
are still classified, but the recently unclassified new number for 2006
shows a 4.7 percent increase in requests over 2005. Since enactment of the
USA Patriot Act in 2001, the number of NSLs issued has seen an astronomical
increase.

The NSL provision of the Patriot Act radically expanded the authority of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to demand personal customer records
from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit companies
without prior court approval.

Through NSLs, the FBI is authorised to compile dossiers about innocent
people and obtain sensitive information such as the web sites a person
visits, a list of e-mail addresses with which a person has corresponded, or
even unmask the identity of a person who has posted anonymous speech on a
political website.

The provision also allows the FBI to forbid or "gag" anyone who receives an
NSL from telling anyone about the record demand.

 

C 2008 Inter Press Service
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Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/09/16
 
 
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