OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: The CIA's Shifting Reasons For Withholding Documents in the Torture Tapes Case

Some of those cables are included in the 580 documents Panetta asked Judge Hellerstein to authorize the agency to keep under wraps. The CIA has identified a sampling of 65 of those documents that it prepared for review and possible release that Panetta told Hellerstein must be withheld to protect national security.

"Al Qa'ida has a very effective propaganda operation. When the abuse of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison was disclosed, al-Qa'ida made very effective use of that information in extremist websites that recruit jihadists and solicit financial support. Information concerning the details of the [enhanced interrogation techniques] being applied would provide ready-made ammunition for al-Qa'ida propaganda.

"The resultant damage to national security would likely be exceptionally grave, and the withholding of this information is therefore proper under certain FOIA exmptions.

The Obama administration is applying the same argument-a threat to national security--in explaining its reasons for not turning over to the ACLU 44 photographs that depict U.S. Soldiers abusing detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the fact that a detailed description of the photographs at issue have been publicly available for some time.

In that case, the Obama administration is now going above and beyond what the Bush administration had done in attempting to block the materials.

The administration is appealing to the case to the Supreme Court and at the same time looking to Congress to pass legislation to block release of the photographs. Late Monday, Senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham threatened to shut down Congress if legislation they sponsored blocking the release of all photographs showing U.S. Soldiers abusing prisoners is stripped from the Iraq/Afghanistan war supplemental funding bill.

Both cases mark an about-face on the open-government policies that President Obama proclaimed during his first days in office.

On Jan. 21, he signed an executive order instructing all federal agencies and departments to "adopt a presumption in favor" of Freedom of Information Act requests and promised to make the federal government more transparent.

"The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears," Obama's order said. "In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public."

It's becoming increasingly clear that after the disclosure of the "torture memos" in April and the backlash that ensued that Obama is aiming to avoid further criticism by continuing the Bush administration's era of secrecy.

The argument Panetta has laid out about the reasons the documents in the interrogation tapes case should continue to be guarded by secrecy does not appear to be credible.

According to veteran CIA analyst Melvin Goodman, Panetta has become entrenched in CIA bureaucracy.

"It is obvious Panetta wants to make no waves at the CIA," Goodman said.

"It is extremely difficult for any outsider to make his mark within a bureaucracy as parochial and insular as the one at CIA," said Goodman, who spent more than two decades at the agency. "Panetta, unfortunately, has tried to ingratiate himself with the negative elements. Panetta's first mistake was to keep in place all of the holdovers from the era of George Tenet and Porter Goss, who were responsible for the culture of cover-up created at the CIA.

"In keeping Steven Kappes as the deputy director, Panetta signaled that there would be no change at the Agency and no punishment for corruption," Goodman added. "Kappes, after all, was the ideological driver for those policies that Obama and Panetta criticized before Panetta's confirmation. Instead of reaching out to contrarians or dissidents from the intelligence community, Panetta has relied solely on the leadership he inherited, the very people who have a vested interest in making sure that nothing changes."

Panetta's about-face stands in stark contrast to statements he made in a series of op-eds in the Monterey County Herald and other publications last year. In a March 8, 2008, column titled, "Americans Reject Fear Tactics," Panetta wrote that "all forms of torture have long been prohibited by American law and international treaties respected by Republican and Democratic presidents alike."

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