We have a free press, right? That freedom implies the absence of interference from an overreaching state. With respect to government information, governments routinely distinguish between materials that are public or protected from disclosure to the public based on a classification process that protects some information from disclosure due to the information’s relevance to protecting the national interest.
Washington is making more and more information, including some that is decades-old, inaccessible except to journalists who are “trusted”. That is journalists who the Administration or an agency have invested time and effort to determine that they will put the best possible spin on whatever they are fed.
In the past, the term “access journalism” meant giving exclusive interviews (or leaks) to pet reporters who had established that they won’t bite the hand that feeds them good stories. From the perspective of the government, this is a virtuous circle: Not only can they reward reporters who play ball, but over time, these correspondents become influential, by virtue of having an inside information advantage.
But there are darker ways this game is played. Some agencies block information from journalists or historians who prefer to report rather than to take dictation. The American Historical Association has an article about government agencies using the courts to keep secrets secret:
In a two-to-one decision the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, in May 2014, agreed with the CIA that a volume of its…history of the 53-year-old Bay of Pigs Invasion could “confuse the public” and should thus be kept secret.
Huh? What are we supposed to be confused about? That the invasion failed? That the CIA set it up? Or maybe that the Agency was flat-assed wrong about the popular anti-Castro uprising that was supposed to be triggered by the invasion?
To win the legal argument, the CIA successfully convinced the two Judges that any document the agency deems “predecisional” (dealing with file information developed prior to a decision to act) can be withheld permanently. To do this, they rely on the CIA Information Act of 1984. This bill was a deal made to speed the CIA’s processing of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests while protecting information unlikely to be released because of national security concerns. But today, the CIA doesn’t abide by Congress’s intent, it routinely refuses to search its operational files – in particular, files which have been subject to an investigation. As an example, Admiral William McRaven, the Joint Special Operations (JSOC) Commander who oversaw the Osama bin Laden raid, knew about this transparency black hole when he ordered the FOIA-complying Department of Defense to purge its computers of all files on the Navy SEALs raid on bin Laden and send them to the CIA, where the Operational Files Exemption would keep them “safe” from search and review for release.
If our society wants to maintain even a veneer of democracy, we have to change the CIA Information Act, which keeps important information from the public. It seems it is used to preserve the image of the CIA and shield it from criticism, as much as it is used to protect national security.
A second dark way in which the game is played is demonstrated by the Obama administration’s pursuit of more criminal leak investigations than all previous administrations combined. The Institute for Public Accuracy reported yesterday that 14 Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists have issued individual statements voicing support for New York Times reporter James Risen, who continues to refuse to name his source for information about a bungled CIA operation in Iran that appeared in his 2006 book State of War. The DOJ is considering whether to attempt to force Risen to testify against his sources.
Third, the White House occasionally threatens reporters about their methods of obtaining information. Press Secretary Josh Earnest publicly lectured the WaPo after they reported that Obama aides had early warning of a potential border crisis, and for citing an anonymous sources. At the same time, other reporters present at the lecture pointed out a familiar email that had just arrived in their inboxes: an invitation to a phone call with anonymous White House officials:
.@PressSec condemns anonymous sources. Just arriving in email: White House invitation to reporters for call with anonymous admin officials.
— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) July 21, 2014
All of this is designed by the Administration’s spinners to produce cover stories. Because there’s always a cover story, even if it’s “nothing happened.” Cover stories are built like onions, one layer behind another, a fallback story behind every cover story.
Anti-transparency is tantamount to anti-accountability. Criticism is the only known antidote for error.
By contrast, in a competitive arena like business (or sports), ruthless postmortems, particularly of failures, often happen in public. They are believed to be necessary for improving performance.
But in Ultimate Politics, Washington can’t tolerate critiques, so they plan to be even less transparent. Forget the Constitution, folks.
