Bush team takes hit on secret files

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is coming under fire for allegedly allowing political concerns to determine what it deems to be sensitive national security material after a series of document declassifications that critics contend were timed for strategic advantage.


In several recent cases, the administration first refused requests for information by saying that releasing it would jeopardize national security, then released that same information itself at a moment when it became politically convenient to do so -- leaving the impression that it was safe to release all along.

After first refusing to allow Congress to see a memo about Al Qaeda from a month before the 2001 attacks, and then letting only some of the 9/11 Commission see it in private, the White House released the entire document to quell rising public pressure. After the Justice Department fought the American Civil Liberties Union in court to suppress statistics on how often it used the Patriot Act, Attorney General John Ashcroft called a news conference and announced them.

Last week, President Bush himself rebuked Ashcroft for declassifying Justice Department memos from the Clinton era showing deliberations involving Jamie Gorelick, the number two Justice official under Clinton who is now a member of the 9/11 Commission, over how the CIA and FBI could share terrorism information.

http://tinyurl.com/2uykx

.... but it sure is good to see it in print in a major paper :)

jeopardizes the protection of legitimate secrets, such as the names of covert operatives

Those which are organized by him as well as those which are not.

in History. They hate leaks but if they don't do anything wrong they have nothing to fear.

With all of the shit piling up against this administration, isn't there some mechanism beyond Congressional intervention to punish the White House?

I mean- some of these offenses are beyond the purview of political wrongdoing (i.e., lying about the Medicare bill's cost, lying about WMDs to get IWR passed). In the case of genuinely criminal behavior, all you would need is some principled US Attorney...

...who was probably appointed by the President or Congress, and who probably reports to Ashcroft. Ugh.

Well, I'm still holding out hope for the Valerie Plame affair. Someone is going to go down. Maybe. I think?

:shrug:

-MR