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Secure often means secret Post-9/11, government stingy with information
By Laura Parker, Kevin Johnson
and Toni Locy
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON -- When United Nations analyst Ian Thomas contacted the National Archives in March to get some 30-year-old maps of Africa to plan a relief mission, he was told the government no longer makes them public.
When John Coequyt, an environmentalist, tried to connect to an online database where the Environmental Protection Agency lists chemical plants that violate pollution laws, he was denied access.
And when civil rights lawyer Kate Martin asked for a copy of a court order that has kept secret the names of some of the hundreds of foreigners jailed since Sept. 11, the Justice Department told her the order itself was secret.
''They say, 'There's a secrecy order barring us from telling you this. But the language of the secrecy order is secret, so you'll just have to take our word for it,' '' she says.
In the eight months since the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, the Bush administration has moved more quickly than any administration since World War II to make government activities, documents and other information secret, liberals and conservatives say.
Hundreds of thousands of public documents have been removed from government Web sites. Other public information has been edited, and access to some materials has been made more difficult. Some government materials yanked from the Internet, such as EPA reports on the consequences of industrial accidents at chemical plants, may be viewed only in government reading rooms. Visitors must have an appointment and have to be accompanied by a government escort.
Attorney General John Ashcroft's Justice Department set the tone for the focus on secrecy in October, telling U.S. agencies to be more cautious about releasing records and other materials. Ashcroft soon will announce disclosure rules for agencies that could redefine the government's view of ''public information.''
The restrictions imposed are a dramatic turnabout from the policies of the past three decades. After the Watergate scandal led to an era of government disclosure, officials typically released all information that did not involve issues such as national security, trade secrets or personal privacy. But after the deadliest attack on U.S. soil, the notion of what could compromise ''national security'' was expanded.
At first, no one much objected. Protecting maps and descriptions of nuclear power plants, hydroelectric dams, pipeline routes and chemical supplies seemed justified, for national security. Withholding details about airlines' and airports' security violations also seemed to make sense.
At a time when critics of the White House were wary of appearing unpatriotic, Congress was mostly silent as the Bush administration clamped down on other government information whose links to security were less clear.
The climate has changed. A growing number of critics, including several federal judges, say the administration's secrecy effort is beginning to look more like opportunism than enhanced security.
''There is more commitment to secrecy than in any administration in the post-World War II period,'' says Morton Halperin, who served in the Johnson, Nixon and Clinton administrations and is a senior fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations. ''We've never had hundreds of people arrested for long periods of time without knowing who they are, why they're being held, where they are and what the charges are against them. Even during the Japanese internment, there was no effort to keep secret who was being detained.''
Conservatives who normally support Bush policies also are beginning to fret about restrictions on material that has been public.
''If the public paid for it, the public has a right to see it,'' says Mark Tapscott, director of the Heritage Foundation's Center for Media and Public Policy, a conservative think tank. ''Otherwise, you will have manipulation to conceal the truth. Government does that. It doesn't make any difference whether it's a Democratic government or a Republican government.''
Bush administration officials counter that since Sept. 11, the government's main mission has been to prevent terrorism. They say their moves are aimed at that.
''I cannot and will not divulge information . . . that will damage the national security of the United States, the safety of its citizens or our efforts to ensure the same in an ongoing investigation,'' Ashcroft told a Senate panel in December. ''Each action taken by the Department of Justice . . . is carefully drawn to target a narrow class of individuals: terrorists. Our legal powers are targeted at terrorists. Our investigation is focused on terrorists. Our prevention strategy targets the terrorist threat.''
Officials have suggested that the disclosure guidelines to be announced by Ashcroft will give agencies a uniform standard for releasing information. But observers say it appears that the rules also might tell agencies to more narrowly interpret the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the 1966 law often used by the media and others to gain access to records.
That view seems to be supported by a March 19 memo from White House chief of staff Andy Card that outlined precautions on protecting information about weapons of mass destruction. The memo urged agencies to more aggressively guard ''sensitive but unclassified'' information.
''We seem to be shifting to the public's need to know instead of the public's right to know,'' says Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a group here that monitors government spending and takes its name from the Office of Management and Budget.
Bass says one of his researchers has not been allowed an appointment at the OMB's reading room for more than a month.
''The executive branch is creating opportunities to have a new class of information exempt from public disclosure,'' he says.
Under U.S. law, the administration's moves can be checked by the courts and Congress. Lawsuits challenging the administration's refusal to disclose certain information are beginning to stack up. And on Capitol Hill, lawmakers are grumbling about secrecy.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., have asked the General Accounting Office to investigate the Justice Department's treatment of detainees in the terrorism probe.
Other lawmakers are frustrated that the department has gone to court to try to keep the new Homeland Security office and its director, Tom Ridge, exempt from the FOIA.
''We must rebalance the need to protect our nation with the need to protect our Constitution,'' says Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., ranking member on the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security.
States eye restrictions
For many Americans, the crackdown on information is becoming apparent because state governments are following the Bush administration's lead. Lawmakers in 18 states are examining or have passed plans to give local officials more power to shield information:
* In Arkansas, residents soon might not be able to find out how close their homes are to facilities that store hazardous materials. Information about where and when truck convoys might carry radioactive waste through communities also would be withheld under a measure that will be taken up by the Legislature in January.
* Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating has created a security panel whose activities are not subject to open meetings and open records laws.
* In Connecticut, officials have floated a plan that would give state agency directors the authority to withhold information they believe ''may result in a safety risk.''
* In Iowa, architectural drawings for schools, public utilities, airports and some local government buildings are being classified. The plan flew through the Legislature after lawmakers learned that the county clerk in Burlington had received an unusual request for aerial photographs of a site that includes an Army munitions plant.
''All of our initial discussions were dominated by questions about, 'How far do we go?' '' says David Miller, chief of staff at Iowa's Emergency Management Division. ''If we went too far, we knew we would be criticized, and rightfully so. It's a difficult balance.''
Meanwhile, the U.S. Conference of Mayors this week asked the U.S. Senate to back a plan that would allow cities to hide studies that show the vulnerabilities of water systems. The mayors said the studies ''would be very valuable to domestic or international terrorists.''
Crises have led to secrecy
The U.S. government often has embraced secrecy during crises.
After World War II, concerns about the Soviet bloc and its military buildup led the U.S. government to classify enormous amounts of information. That continued during the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, until some of the government's secrecy efforts during the 1960s were exposed as attempts to cover up domestic spying by the CIA.
Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University who served as a counsel on privacy in the Clinton administration, says that historically, the U.S. government has eased off demands for secrecy when two things have occurred.
''One is the reduced perception of threat. Things get better. The war ends,'' he says. ''The second is proven abuses caused by secrecy. So far, the Bush administration has been effective. We hope we won't need congressional hearings to show how tragically wrong this instinct for secrecy has been.''
Analysts say the Bush administration's push for secrecy stands out in part because it follows a decade in which the Clinton White House used improving technology to make government more accessible to Americans.
Ten years ago, there were no government Web sites providing information to the public; the current complaints are a reaction to a pulling back from a time of unprecedented openness.
Steven Aftergood, a researcher at the Federation of American Scientists, acknowledges as much.
''I'm not claiming the sky is falling,'' he says. ''What is worrisome is the growth of official secrecy in many cases that are not justified by an identifiable threat.''
The Justice Department's efforts to keep its terrorism probe secret have drawn the most criticism.
Ashcroft has refused to identify hundreds of foreigners who have been rounded up since Sept. 11. Authorities have not said why they have been detained or where they have been held. Ashcroft has closed the hearings for those held on immigration charges.
Last week, Ashcroft ordered county jails, where most of the foreigners have been held, not to release the prisoners' names. He also refuses to clarify inconsistent government estimates on how many foreigners have been released.
In October, the Justice Department said it had detained more than 1,100 people in the terrorism probe. About 100 of those were charged with criminal offenses.
Only one detainee, Zaccarias Moussaoui, has been charged with being involved in the al-Qaeda conspiracy that carried out the attacks on Sept. 11. He is awaiting trial in Virginia on charges that could result in the death penalty.
At least 718 foreigners have been jailed for immigration violations during the terrorism probe. Many of the violations are minor, such as overstaying a visa.
Other foreigners have been held as material witnesses, meaning that authorities believe they could be useful in the probe. Justice officials have not released their names and have not identified even the grand juries that might call the material witnesses to testify.
Some federal judges say the secrecy has gone too far.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds in Detroit ruled that an immigration hearing for one detainee could not be closed.
''Openness is necessary for the public to maintain confidence in the value and soundness of a government's actions, as secrecy only breeds suspicion,'' Edmunds said, rejecting the government's request that the hearings be closed for national security reasons.
In New York, U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin found that authorities had overreached by jailing material witnesses without charging them.
''If the government has probable cause to believe a person has committed a crime, it may arrest'' them, Scheindlin wrote. ''But since 1789, no Congress has granted the government authority to imprison an innocent person in order to guarantee that he will testify before a grand jury conducting a criminal investigation.''
The Justice Department has indicated that it will carry on its fight for secrecy. It has appealed the Detroit decision and is considering an appeal in New York.Cover storyCover story
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