I’m not sure why, but this court ruling didn’t seem to get as much attention as it should have this week.
Suggesting the government was acting as if it had something to hide, a federal judge Wednesday gave Washington one month to release records related to the treatment of prisoners in Iraq.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein chastised officials for moving at a “glacial pace” in responding to nearly year-old Freedom of Information Act requests from the American Civil Liberties Union and four other watchdog organizations.
“If the documents are more of an embarrassment than a secret, the public should know of our government’s treatment of individuals captured and held abroad,” Hellerstein wrote.
Hmm, the Bush administration with something to hide? Who knew?
As it turns out, Henry Waxman knew.
Waxman, the ranking Dem on the House Government Reform Committee, released a report this week detailing the often-astonishing lengths the Bush administration will go to in order to keep the affairs of government secret.
As Salon’s Geraldine Sealey noted:
The Bush administration has hidden from the public, Waxman tell us, a wide range of documents including: “(1) the contacts between energy companies and the Vice President’s energy task force, (2) the communications between the Defense Department and the Vice President’s office regarding contracts awarded to Halliburton, (3) documents describing the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib, (4) memoranda revealing what the White House knew about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and (5) the cost estimates of the Medicare prescription drug legislation withheld from Congress.”
Unfortunately, it’s not just keeping records from the public and Congress; Bush also classifies documents with reckless abandon.
“In fiscal years 2001 to 2003, the average number of original decisions to classify information increased 50 percent over the average for the previous five fiscal years. Derivative classification decisions, which involve classifying documents that incorporate, restate, or paraphrase information that has previously been classified, have increased even more dramatically. Between FY 1996 and FY 2000, the number of derivative classifications averaged 9.96 million per year. Between FY 2001 and FY 2003, the average increased to 19.37 million per year, a 95 percent increase. In the last year alone, the total number of classification decisions increased 25 percent.”
“… Taken together, the actions of the Bush Administration have resulted in an extraordinary expansion of government secrecy. External watchdogs, including Congress, the media, and nongovernmental organizations, have consistently been hindered in their ability to monitor government activities. These actions have serious implications for the nature of our government. When government operates in secret, the ability of the public to hold the government accountable is imperiled.”
That, I suspect, is exactly the point. Take a look at Waxman’s report; it’s pretty devastating.