Spawning a culture of secrecy

[R. A. Hettinga]

<http://www.townhall.com/columnists/marktapscott/printmt20040805.shtml>

Townhall.com

Spawning a culture of secrecy
Mark Tapscott (back to web version) | Send

August 5, 2004

Quick, call the FBI! Get a search warrant ASAP. Put the Justice
Department's best investigators and prosecutors on the case. National
Security has been compromised by another leak of classified information.

And what vital secrets were leaked this time, you ask? Why, appropriations
for the Central Intelligence Agency Š in 1953, 1954 and 1955.

It happened in the District of Columbia District Court recently in a
Freedom of Information Act suit. The files were clearly marked "Secret" and
"Security Information," yet they were exposed to the whole world.

Actually, it was no accident. Steven Aftergood of the Federation of
American Scientists, the plaintiff in the FOIA suit, purposely made the
files public. He says he wanted "to demonstrate to the Court that the CIA's
classification policy on the matter is erroneous and that historical
intelligence budget information must be released."

But the problem goes way beyond the spy agency. It includes a bureaucratic
culture of secrecy that has grown over the decades to encompass the entire
government. Experts across the political spectrum agree that government
keeps too much information classified for much too long. And too much is
unnecessarily exempted from disclosure under the FOIA.

Two serious problems result. One, ironically, is that we wind up with too
little control of truly important national security information. (Witness
the recent disappearance of computer disks containing sensitive data about
America's nuclear weaponry.) When too much information is classified,
bureaucrats become understandably confused about what constitutes truly
sensitive information and show less concern about safeguarding that
information. The second problem, of course, is that too much information
the public should see remains closed doors.

Over the years, federal bureaucrats in virtually every agency and
department have stamped countless millions of documents "classified" or
otherwise exempted them from public disclosure. Now those documents remain
locked away from public inspection, even though there is no longer any
reason for keeping them secret.

President Bush amended the executive order on classification last year,
directing federal agency heads to implement several reforms designed to
insure the classification system properly identifies and processes what
should and should not be kept out of the public eye. Among other things,
Bush stipulated that the classification system is not to be used "to
prevent or delay the release of information that does not require
protection in the interest of national security."

Unfortunately, thanks to the bureaucratic inertia that fosters the culture
of secrecy, progress is hard to see. J. William Leonard, director of the
Information Security Oversight Office in Washington, D.C. noted recently
that senior government colleagues "candidly acknowledge that the government
classifies too much."

The problem is so bad, Leonard said, that some agencies "have no real idea
how much information they generate is classified" and "whether too much or
too little information is classified and whether for too long or too short
a period of time."

Similar problems are seen on the FOIA side. A National Security Archive
survey last year looked at the 35 federal agencies that handle 97 percent
of all FOIA requests received in a typical year. Among other things, NSA
said, its survey "revealed a federal FOIA system in extreme disarray.
Agency contact information on the Web was often inaccurate; response times
largely failed to meet the statutory standard; only a few agencies
performed thorough searches including e-mail and meeting notes; and the
lack of central accountability at the agencies resulted in lost requests
and inability to track progress."

These problems didn't start with the Bush White House and there is no
reason to think they will go away after November, regardless of who wins
the election.

Should anybody outside of Washington care? In 1966, then-Congressman Donald
Rumsfeld said the most vigorous opponents of the proposed FOIA included
executive branch bureaucrats with "a vested interest in the machinery of
their agencies and bureaus" who resent "any attempt to oversee their
activities either by the public, the Congress or appointed department
heads."

Now consider these facts: Every .31 seconds, the federal government makes a
credit-card purchase. Every .77 seconds, it issues a contract worth $25,000
or less. Every 14 seconds, it signs a contract worth more than $25,000. Few
of the more than 33 million annual purchases identified by the Procurement
Executives Council will ever be reviewed outside of government.

Clearly, the bureaucratic culture of secrecy has a lot to hide.

Mark Tapscott is Director of the Center for Media and Public Policy at The
Heritage Foundation, a Townhall.com member group.


-- 
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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