Jeremy Beckham’s recent case involving records of the treatment of primates behind closed doors at the U teaches us many lessons. We have learned that, despite adversity, we must follow our hearts, speak up for the voiceless and abused and participate to the fullest extent in our society.
However, Beckham’s case also teaches us that secrets abound-and they’re multiplying. The treatment of primates in laboratories, President Bush’s and Vice President Cheney’s “shadow government” and secret negotiations are really just a small piece of the pie.
The National Catholic Reporter states: “The volume of federal government information deemed confidential is three times larger today than just five years ago-from 8 million such classifications in 1999 to more than 23 million in 2002.”
Although figures are not yet available for 2003, trends suggest that government secrets are systematizing more than ever.
Last month alone, The Washington Post covered stories on the following issues: the Supreme Court deciding to test the constitutionality of Dick Cheney’s secret “energy task force” records; the Pentagon’s Office of the Inspector General decided less information will be given to we, the people, including “information not specifically approved for public release” and “information of questionable value to the public”; the White House admitted, weeks after the incident, that L. Paul Bremer was the target of an assassination attempt; and Bush signed into law new powers for the National Security Agency, including authority to automatically refuse citizens’ records requests. After a five-month investigation into the secrets of the Bush administration, U.S. News and World Report concluded that the administration’s pattern of secrecy includes much more than just national security issues. For example, information on consumer issues and local environmental hazards is now confidential.Secrecy means a less-informed citizenry and can have dangerous results. For example, a danger the Bush administration (secretly) placed upon us, the people, followed Sept. 11, 2001.
The Environmental Protection Agency needed to issue health advisories about the debris-laden air and New Yorkers were led to believe it was harmless.
However, a later report from Aug. 2003 issued by EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley said that the White House required that the National Security Council review all EPA communications and “convinced the EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones” regarding air quality in New York City.
Bush’s secrecy regime seems to touch everything in the country and around the world.
Before the EPA was to publicly release a detailed report on the state of the environment, the White House “directed major changes” to “emphasize the uncertainties surrounding global warming.”
The changes were so extensive that an EPA internal communication stated that publishing the section on global climate change would “embarrass the agency.”
For example, the White House refused the EPA to state: “Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment.”
Instead, the White House decided the report should state: “The complexity of the Earth system and the interconnections among its components make it a scientific challenge to document change, diagnose its causes, and develop useful projections of how natural variability and human actions may affect the global environment in the future.”
The dangers posed by the Bush administration’s policies are among the most difficult to ascertain because, among other reasons, our democracy is more open than ever before.
Harry Truman once said, “Secrecy and a free, democratic government don’t mix.”
Ironically, we may never know all of the dangers latent in the Bush administration’s systematizing of secrets precisely because we, the people, are not being given all the facts.
