The Bush Administration has refused to release information on a wide range of subjects, including the secret meetings of Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy policy task force. It has ordered federal Websites to remove much of the information they had posted that the Administration believed could be sensitive. It issued a controversial memo limiting access to records under the Presidential Records Act in November 2001, which allowed former Presidents and Vice-Presidents to prevent access to records. And it refused to disclose information on the Patriot Act and the names of those arrested after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Many of those denied access to information have sued the government. Among the most widely publicized was the suit brought by a group of advocacy organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and others, to force the Department of Defense (DOD) to turn over documents relating to the harsh interrogation methods used against detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The suit yielded hundreds of thousands of documents, including reports by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) confirming such treatment.
While open-government advocates express varying levels of confidence in the proposed new Ombudsman’s importance, they agree on at least one thing: it is important that the law be implemented as written. As expressed by Steven Aftergood, head of the Government Secrecy Project for the Federation of American Scientists, “Any effort by the Administration to deviate from the terms of a statute should be opposed, no matter how trivial it might be, because the law is the law.”
So two questions need to be answered: Is the president listening? And, if not, does Congress have the spine to tell The Decider he’s not?
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