{"id":15530,"date":"2021-01-28T09:02:31","date_gmt":"2021-01-28T14:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=15530"},"modified":"2024-09-11T16:01:44","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T20:01:44","slug":"federal-secrecy-protects-the-crimes-of-every-president-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/28\/federal-secrecy-protects-the-crimes-of-every-president-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal Secrecy Protects the Crimes of Every President"},"content":{"rendered":"

Counterpunch<\/strong>, January 28, 2021<\/span><\/p>\n

Federal Secrecy Protects the Crimes of Every President<\/a><\/h1>\n

by<\/span> James Bovard<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
\n

Ever since the 9\/11 attacks, Republicans and Democrats have conspired to keep Americans increasingly ignorant of what the federal government does. The number of secret federal documents skyrocketed, and any information that was classified supposedly cannot be exposed without dooming the nation.<\/p>\n

Politicians and federal agencies recognize that \u201cwhat people don\u2019t know won\u2019t hurt the government.\u201d James Madison, the father of the Constitution, declared in 1798 that \u201cthe right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon \u2026 has ever been justly deemed, the only effectual guardian of every other right.\u201d But this right has faded badly in recent decades. During the 2020 Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer warned that if the Senate did not vote to hear witnesses, \u201cthis country is headed towards the greatest cover-up since Watergate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Actually, \u201cconventional wisdom\u201d in the nation\u2019s capital is often the result of cover-ups, ignorance, and servility. Daniel Ellsberg, who risked life in prison to leak the Pentagon Papers, observed in 2002, \u201cIt is a commonplace that \u2018you can\u2019t keep secrets in Washington\u2019 or \u2018in a democracy.\u2019 \u2026 These truisms are flatly false\u2026. The overwhelming majority of secrets do not leak to the American public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the 1990s, the number of documents classified annually by federal agencies increased more than tenfold. In 2004, Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) derided the federal classification system as \u201cincomprehensibly complex\u201d and \u201cso bloated it often does not distinguish between the critically important and the comically irrelevant.\u201d The New York Times reported in 2005 that federal agencies were \u201cclassifying documents at the rate of 125 a minute as they create new categories of semi-secrets bearing vague labels like \u2018sensitive security information.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The more information the government withholds, the easier it becomes to stampede people with deceptive disclosures. As a federal appeals court warned in 2002, \u201cWhen government begins closing doors, it selectively controls information rightfully belonging to the people. Selective information is misinformation.\u201d The current classification system combines the worst aspects of cover-ups and arbitrary power.<\/p>\n

Classification can be a political flag of convenience that politicians exploit to dominate the media. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd observed in 2006 that \u201cthe entire Iraq war was paved by [Bush administration] leaks. Cheney & Co. were so busy trying to prove a mushroom cloud was emanating from Saddam\u2019s direction, they could not leak their cherry-picked stories fast enough.\u201d Bush administration disclosures of sensitive information were often handed on a silver platter to pliant journalists. Newsweek\u2019s Richard Wolffe explained the Bush White House method: \u201cThey declassify when they feel like it. I\u2019ve been with senior administration officials who have just decided to declassify something in front of me because it\u2019s bolstering their argument.\u201d<\/p>\n

Each classified document is tacitly backed by a federal iron fist ready to squash anyone who discloses it without permission. William Leonard, former chief of the federal Information Security Oversight Office, complained in 2011 that the Obama administration had \u201ccriminally prosecuted more leakers of purportedly classified information than all previous administrations combined.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Obama administration portrayed leaking classified information to the media as worse than spying for a hostile government. The Obama Justice Department declared in 2011 that government officials who \u201celected to disclose the classified information publicly through the mass media\u201d were \u201cposing an even greater threat to society\u201d than were foreign spies. Unless, of course, the leaks were approved by political appointees to serve the president\u2019s purposes. Obama administration officials compared former NSA analyst Thomas Drake to mass killers and terrorists after he was accused of leaking information on NSA boondoggles to the Baltimore Sun. Drake and his lawyers heroically whipped the Justice Department in federal court.<\/p>\n

New York Times reporter James Risen, a courageous Pulitzer Prize winner, spent almost a decade in the federal crosshairs after his 2006 book, A State of War, exposed the NSA\u2019s illegal warrantless wiretapping and other federal crimes. Justice Department official Robert Parker compared Risen\u2019s case to a reporter who received drugs and then refused to expose his source. Robert Litt, general counsel for the Director of National Intelligence, compared journalism to drunk driving to justify punishing any journalist who published confidential information. But the Justice Department could not prove Risen\u2019s disclosures harmed anything except the credibility of the government.<\/p>\n

When Risen appealed his case to the Supreme Court, he declared, \u201cCompelling journalists to testify about their conversations with confidential sources will \u2026 create the inevitable appearance that journalists either are or can be readily converted into an investigative arm of the government.\u201d But the Obama administration\u2019s brief told the Supreme Court that \u201creporters have no privilege to refuse to provide direct evidence of criminal wrongdoing by confidential sources.\u201d The administration also invoked \u201cthe uniquely federal interest in preventing the unlawful disclosure of classified national-defense information\u201d to sway the Court not to hear the case. Risen labeled the Obama administration as the \u201cgreatest enemy of press freedom\u201d in our time. He also declared, \u201cThe attorney general of the U.S. has been turned into the nation\u2019s chief censorship officer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Obama administration believed that its classification decrees were so sacrosanct that no federal judge could overturn them. \u201cWe don\u2019t think there is a First Amendment right to classified documents,\u201d Justice Department lawyer Catherine Dorsey told a federal judge in 2015. Dorsey agreed that the \u201cgovernment\u2019s position is tantamount to claiming the Court \u2018has absolutely no authority\u2019 to unseal evidence even if it\u2019s clear the government\u2019s bid to keep it secret is based on \u2018irrationality\u2019 or that it\u2019s \u2018hiding something,\u2019\u201d as the Intercept reported. Expansive definitions of secrecy provide a pretext to harass anyone who dissents from the official line.<\/p>\n

William Binney, a legendary retired National Security Agency computer expert, was targeted because he was suspected of leaking classified details of NSA illegal surveillance years after he left the agency. Despite his voluntarily agreeing to several FBI interviews, a dozen federal agents raided his home. According to the New York Times, one agent \u201cran upstairs and entered the bathroom where Mr. Binney was toweling off after a shower, pointing a gun at him. Agents carried away a computer, disks, and personal and business records.\u201d Despite finding no evidence of criminal wrongdoing, NSA stripped Binney of his security clearance, thereby destroying his consulting business. The feds eventually cleared him of any wrongdoing, but \u201cthe investigation derailed his career and changed his life,\u201d the New York Times reported. Binney commented, \u201cAfter a raid like that, you\u2019re always sitting here wondering if they\u2019re coming back. This did not feel like the America we grew up in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of former officials and military personnel with security clearances must allow pre-publication reviews of their books and other writings. Former Justice Department lawyer Jesselyn Radack observed that pre-publication review \u201chas always been a filter to promote fawning memoirs by senior government officials while censoring whistleblowers and critics.\u201d A 2019 lawsuit claimed that the pre-publication censorship vested excessive power in government officials \u201cwho can delay or discriminate against lower-ranking people who criticize government actions, while speedily clearing favorable memoirs and other writings by retired senior officials.\u201d Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, declared, \u201cThis far-reaching censorship system simply can\u2019t be squared with the Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Torturers have benefited mightily from censorship. Mark Fallon, a veteran counterintelligence officer and counterterrorism expert, wrote a book entitled Unjustifiable Means: The Inside Story of How the CIA, Pentagon, and US Government Conspired to Torture. But his account of the torture regime was badly delayed and heavily censored. Fallon asserted that much faster, better treatment was given to books by the architects and apologists for CIA torture, including former CIA director George Tenet, acting general counsel John Rizzo, and former Counterterrorism Center chief Jose Rodriguez.<\/p>\n

Similarly, when former FBI counterterrorism agent Ali Soufan wrote a book on CIA torture abuses, the CIA demanded that Soufan \u2014 who was on-site for brutal interrogations \u2014 remove the pronouns \u201cI\u201d and \u201cme\u201d from his narrative. The CIA also deleted quotations in his book that had previously appeared in congressional hearing transcripts.<\/p>\n

While books by former FBI and CIA agents can be endlessly delayed and heavily censored, the feds speedily approved memoirs by Hillary Clinton and former FBI chief James Comey.<\/p>\n

Federal censorship may have had a cameo role in the congressional case against Trump. John Bolton wrote a book about his experiences as Trump\u2019s national-security adviser that was said to provide additional information regarding Trump\u2019s dealing with the Ukrainian government. Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for his dealings with Ukraine, though the Senate failed to convict and remove him from office. Bolton\u2019s lawyer denied the book contained classified information, but previous manuscript reviews of other would-be authors have dragged out for months or years. The Trump administration sought to block the book\u2019s release but federal judge Royce Lamberth approved publication in June, though he did state that Bolton had \u201cgambled with the national security of the United States\u201d by opting out of a pre-publication review process. In September (2020), federal prosecutors convened a grand jury to pursue charges relating to Bolton\u2019s book.<\/p>\n

The growth of government secrecy sparks practically an arms race by citizens seeking to learn what politicians are doing before it is too late to stop them. Official lies have done vastly more harm to America than unauthorized disclosures. Lies subvert democracy by crippling citizens\u2019 ability to rein in government. Citizens are left clueless about perils until it is too late for the nation to pull back. In his 1971 opinion on the Pentagon Papers case, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black declared that a free press has \u201cthe duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.\u201d Unfortunately, the media\u2019s acquiescence to mass secrecy has long betrayed that duty. If Americans had contemporaneous access to the actual information in government files, far more citizens would recognize the false claims used to plunge the nation into one foreign debacle after another.<\/p>\n

When federal judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced former Trump aide Rick Gates early this year, she declared, \u201cIf people don\u2019t have the facts, democracy doesn\u2019t work.\u201d But Republicans and Democrats in Washington have long since approved denying Americans the facts millions of times a year. Unfortunately, secrecy and lying are often two sides of the same political coin.<\/p>\n

The more secrets politicians keep, the less trust they deserve. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared in 2012, \u201cLack of transparency eats away like a cancer at the trust people should have in their government.\u201d And the federal government is giving citizens trillions of reasons each year for distrust.<\/p>\n

Thanks to pervasive secrecy, we have an Impunity Democracy in which government officials pay no price for their abuses. If democracy depends on transparency, and government transparency is an illusion, then what is U.S. democracy? We can either have vast secrecy or we can have \u201cgovernment under the law.\u201d We cannot have both, and to pretend otherwise is to forfeit our liberty.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published in the December 2020 edition of Future of Freedom.<\/p>\n

This essay was originally published by <\/em>Future of Freedom Foundation<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

James Bovard<\/em><\/strong> is the author of <\/em>Attention Deficit Democracy<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>The Bush Betrayal<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Terrorism and Tyranny<\/em><\/a>, and other books.\u00a0Bovard is on the\u00a0USA Today Board of Contributors. He is on Twitter at @jimbovard. His website is at <\/em>www.jimbovard.com<\/em><\/a> \u00a0This essay was originally published by <\/em>Future of Freedom Foundation<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Counterpunch, January 28, 2021 Federal Secrecy Protects the Crimes of Every President by James Bovard Ever since the 9\/11 attacks, Republicans and Democrats have conspired to keep Americans increasingly ignorant of what the federal government does. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15530"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20443,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15530\/revisions\/20443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}