Helen Thomas Quotes

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.

Before the Communists, the Nationalist Chinese government controlled the press even more so than the Communists did. And the Chinese Emperors before the Nationalists had a well educated elite of administrators who ran the government but the great mass of the people knew virtually nothing other than what the rulers wanted them to know. With mass illiteracy, there was no efficient way to communicate with the masses anyway. China, with a history of great intellectual accomplishment, has had the most ignorant people in the world by virtue of its size and general illiteracy.

Who does and does not get parole often depends more on politics and political contributions than on any issue of merit. Keeping all the records secret and the meetings closed allows much of this to happen. In Georgia, the politicians are so desperate to be sure that no one can determine the truth about parole decisions that they have passed a law that even the highest judges of the state cannot subpoena parole board records even if they are material and necessary for criminal or civil trials.

There were many critics who were concerned that the ITU was trying to regulate the Internet, but no one could be sure as the proceedings and meetings of the ITU are not publicly available. This is a classic UN problem. They see themselves as representing governments and not people. The Governments have the information and so they delude themselves into believing that they are transparent, when the reality is that for the individual they are totally opaque. Most critics who worry about UN regulation of the Internet, are just as concerned with what other countries are proposing than what there own government’s position is. And most governments themselves do not release the actual transcripts or proceedings of the ITC meetings but only documents giving their positions. This is an example of secrecy being promoted as transparency where the UN covers for member nations who want to maintain secrecy.

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}.

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.