Patrick Leahy Quotes

He was criticizing the George W. Bush Administration of his own party.

For many people the implication of this quotation is that there should be no government secrets withheld from the citizens who have the right to examine. Others argue that government may have temporary secrets to protect against foreign enemies for example, but that these must be declassified very promptly so that the citizens can examine the actions of their government in time to replace the government if they are not satisfied. Almost all government officials tend to reject the first implication out of hand, and grudgingly accept the second with their discretion controlling when declassification should take place. The problem of America is twofold. There is much over-classification (material kept secret that should not be at all), and the time till declassification is long in general and truly absurd in many cases. For example, there are documents from WWII that by 2013 had still not been declassified. See {591444}, {641317}, and {589105} for exemplar views. William Jennings Bryan introduced this principle into the American political dialogue. See {641027}.

At the time there was no Secrecy & Classification System nor any laws enforcing secrecy or confidentiality. However there was no freedom of information laws of expectations even on the part of journalists. This was the first Freedom of Information policy of the American government. Some politicians were more open than others but there was no national, governmental before this. There were however leakers and whistleblowers though the terms were not in use. Note that Roosevelt herein created the first whistle blower protection—himself.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had released an unclassified Summary of the Committee Report on the CIA using torture and perverse treatment of suspect terrorists in the aftermath of the 9-11 attack on New York. Most Republicans argued vehemently that the Report should be classified and kept secret as the CIA behavior was so egregious, unpalatable, and morally reprehensible that there would be negative consequences including perhaps demonstrations and attacks against Americans in foreign countries. Moreover, Terrorist organizations would use the heinous CIA behavior as a recruiting tool for anti-American terrorists. McCain, who had himself been the victim of North Vietnamese torture cited the moral and ethical reasons to prohibit torture but also explained what has been proven over and over again that torture victims will tell the torturer any nonsense that they think the torturer might believe just to get obtain relief from the agony of the torture.

The executive order to which this statement referred was the then new President’s first—Executive Order 13489. It was enthusiastically received by the public, historians, researchers and the media. However at the end of Obama’s two administrations, the system was a little better than when George W. Bush, blocked much of the Freedom of Information Act from being implemented. However, the agencies who want to operate in secrecy without having to deal with public criticism, had developed even more sophisticated techniques of avoiding transparency and when they must disclose, they have developed techniques to delay the process, sometimes even for years, while they study whether the material should be disclosed. The president personally declassified a few CIA files from decades ago that the agency maintained should be secret, but he did nothing else systemic so solve the problem of declassifying and material and nothing to control the over classification which virtually everyone agrees is a major problem. More material is being classified than ever.

The SBU’s were invented by executive agencies without any congressional authorization and used to keep things from public view that did not meet the criteria of the security classification system. Many just saved the agencies from answering many questions but many were just cover ups for embarrassing government actions or incompetence.