From The Founder's Desk
columnist: Walt Thiessen

Topic: National Security
White House Video Leak Is Tip Of Insecurity Iceberg

---

The announcement by Rita Katz of the SITE Institute that the White House had leaked advance knowledge of the Osama bin Laden video is more than just an embarrassment to the Bush administration. It's one more indicator that the administration's policies are working contrary to the best interests of the American people.

---

by Walt Thiessen
(Libertarian)
Thursday, October 11, 2007

Independent reports by the AP and the Washington Post say that SITE Institute director Rita Katz has accused the Bush Administration of leaking advance information regarding the recently released video by Osama bin Laden. Such actions undermine the efforts of intelligence institutes like hers which perform valuable services to our country in the struggle to detect and apprehend Al Qaedda's leadership. But it isn't just an isolated blunder. It is the tip of a huge insecurity iceberg that not only plagues the Bush administration but also threatens the liberties and best interests of the American people. Reuters reported that the White House denied the allegations.

The report came just one day after the AP also reported that the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear the appeal of Khaled el-Masri, the German citizen who says the CIA kidnapped and tortured him for three weeks before they finally decided they had the wrong man. The Court ruled based on the so-called "state secrets privilege" that the Supreme Court has used since 1953 to deny the hearing of cases where the government claims that state secrets will be revealed if a case is permitted to proceed.

Open The Government, a coalition of journalists, consumer and good government groups, environmentalists, library groups, labor and others, recently released a report which identifies just some of the Bush administration's excesses and possible cover-ups of serious mistakes made where security is concerned. Their report suggests in part that most of what gets listed as "classified" these days has no business being labeled as such.

"It is estimated that between 10 percent and 90 percent of all documents are over-classified. Lee Hamilton, the Vice-Chair of the 9/11 Commission said that 70 percent of the classified information that he saw during the Inquiry was 'needlessly classified'....

"Carol Haave, the Deputy Under-Secretary of Defense, testified in a Congressional hearing in 2004 that she believed that 50 percent of information was over-classified. At the same hearing, William Leonard, Director of the Information Security Oversight Office thought it was even higher. He noted that over-classification was 'disturbingly increasing, where information is being classified that is clear, blatant violation of the order.' Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director (now Secretary of Defense) Robert Gates testified to the 9/11 Commission 'We overclassify very badly'....

"The rules for classification of information for national security reasons are set by the U.S. Executive Order 12958 on Classified National Security Information originally issued by President Clinton in 1995 and amended by President Bush in 2003.

"The E.O. prohibits the classification of information to 'conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error, prevent embarrassment to a person, organization or agency, retain competition, or prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of national security information.' It also prohibits the classification of basic scientific information not clearly related to national security. In practice, however, these prohibitions have often been unsuccessful, with information such as the report on the abuses from the Abu Ghraib prison being classified to prevent its release."

Meanwhile, their Secrecy Report Card 2007 provides focus on the impact of invocations of the state secrets privilege by the Bush Administration:

"Between 1953 and 1976, the federal government invoked the 'state secrets' privilege only six (6) times. Between 1977 and 2000, administrations invoked the privilege 59 reported times (a rate of 2.46 times per year). Since 2001, the state secrets privilege has been invoked at least 38 times, or a rate of 5.85 times each year."

In other words, the Bush administration has more than doubled the rate of invoking "state secrets" as a way to stop court cases against the government from proceeding. Some of these cases involve victims of 9/11 and their families.

Tom Schoop of GovExec.com reported last April that Freedom of Information Act requests are being approved at a much lower rate than under previous administrations.

"At the FBI, 74 percent of requests for information last year were denied on the grounds that no records could be found. Six years ago, the figure was 56 percent.

"The story was the same at other agencies: The State Department provided full or partial disclosure of information in response to requests 54 percent of the time in 2000. But by 2006, the figure had dropped to 35 percent. At Commerce, the decline was from 67 percent to 52 percent. And the response rate at the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped from 46 percent to 35 percent.

"Also...agencies are redacting more of the information they eventually let out. In 2000, the FBI provided 1,284 unaltered documents in response to FOIA requests. In 2006, only 56 such documents were released. The CIA issued 1,084 uncensored documents six years ago, and only 334 last year."

This article is the first part of a multi-part series that explores the various ways that the Bush administration, even more than prior administrations, puts our country's security at increased risk while using the "state secrets privilege" and other, similar executive powers to cover up its messes. It is a story that has repercussions which extend not only into our past but also into our present, our immediate future, and our distant future.

On Friday, I will continue this series by taking a closer look at the origins of the state secrets privilege in a 1953 landmark Supreme Court ruling. I'll show how the ruling helped to cover up government wrongdoing and incompetence in that case and laid the groundwork for future administrations to cover up their wrongdoing and incompetence.

Then on Monday, I will focus specifically on how the Bush administration has used the privilege on a case-by-case basis. This is where we'll get a clearer picture of how our government is deliberately hiding the truth to us about so many aspects of the struggle against terrorism, including the events of 9/11.

After these initial articles are completed, I will follow up with more articles touching upon other Bush administration activities with similarly negative repercussions. Taken individually and separately, none of the points I have and will discussed may seem terribly threatening to Americans by themselves, but when the whole picture is view with a high level of detail, readers will have a much clearer perspective of the threat that Bush's approach to terrorism has on American liberty, security, and the best interests of its people.

Did you like this article?
If you did, Thumb It!
5 thumbs so far

2007 Walt Thiessen, all rights reserved.
Published: Thursday, October 11, 2007
Last modified: Friday, October 12, 2007

The views expressed in this article are those of Walt Thiessen only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Walt Thiessen is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.

Report violation by Walt Thiessen of Nolan Chart LLC's terms of use policy.