This Is How An Open Society Is Destroyed

Decades ago, we passed the Freedom of Information Act. The ideas underlying the FOIA are accepted by almost everyone, at least in principle. Human beings are corruptible and love power. Government is a source of concentrated power. Secrecy facilitates governmental corruption and abuses of power. The best way to guard against corruption and abuses of power is to ensure that the actions of government officials are transparent - that government officials cannot hide their corruption and criminality behind an impenetrable veil of secrecy.

Hence, the Freedom of Information Act.

During the Bush Administration, our soldiers and CIA officials tortured prisoners. They did so systematically and at numerous detention facilities. There are pictures of these abuses. I have not seen many of these pictures. But given the ferocity of the efforts to keep them hidden, and given that senior officials have essentially admitted that some of the photos depict sexual abuse of prisoners by American soldiers, I am convinced that they are horrific.

The Bush Administration refused to disclose these pictures. It argued that to do so would "inflame anti-American sentiment and endanger our troops." Perish the thought that these officials might want to suppress evidence of their rampant criminality to avoid accountability. Perish the thought that these government officials actually ordered the abusive techniques and, in so doing, undermined well ingrained military norms against barbarism - norms enshrined in decades old military, national, and international law. Perish the thought that military and civilian authorities might actually want to protect themselves from embarrassment and/or prosecution. Non! non! non!

Ignore the obvious. Protect the Troops!

This was the Bush Administration's posture. When the ACLU sued under the Freedom of Information Act to get these photographs, the government resisted. The Government lost in court. It then appealed.

During the period when the case was pending, a politically gifted politician ran for president on a platform of change and government transparency. He repeated, as often as he could, that our government must be transparent. That secrecy was the great enemy of democracy, and that his administration would be the most transparent in history.

He Won the election!

But then, the appeal in the ACLU's suit was denied and the government lost - on Obama's watch. The Appeals Court affirmed the District Court's Order requiring the release of the Photos. But what is our current presidential champion of transparency's response? He wants to change the law retroactively to exempt the photographs of miltary barbarism from the Freedom of Information Act.

You think I'm kidding? Read this.

Three times in the last three years, Congress has moved to retroactively change laws that government officials decided (in secret) to violate. In 2006, Congress immunized military officials from prosecution for violations of our torture statute. In 2007, congress granted retroactive immunity to telecom companies that illegally allowed the government to spy on American citizens. And now President "yes we can" Obama wants to legally exempt pictures of military barbarism from the requirements of the FOIA - an act whose sole purpose is to expose governmental criminality when it occurs, and prevent it from occurring by presenting government officials with a constant threat of exposure.

And Obama is seeking this retroactive exemption to protect Bush administration officials. Not his officials. Bush administration officials!

We now regularly change our laws retroactively to protect our leaders when they decide to break the law in secret. If anything could destroy the rule of law, it is this practice. Additionally, we have the spectacle of a president who ran on a platform of the rule of law and governmental transparency, invoking this most dangerous of precedents (retroactive immunity for law breakers) to undermine one of the most important and fundamental laws protecting our form of government (the FOIA). And this President is doing this in response to a Court order upholding the FOIA request.

OBAMA is losing his soul. Bush administration corruption must be so bad that Obama believes its exposure would destroy the nation. But in trying to keep the Bush administration's criminality hidden, Obama's is furthering the project began by Bush administration officials. Obama's actions advance the precedent that government officials are not bound by any existing law, and that the government (not the people) is the final arbiter regarding what the people can know about the government's actions.

This is truly disheartening and disturbing. These are baby steps towards tryanny.

Joe H.