Bush Secrecy Produces ‘Decisions Without Democracy’

‘Secrecy is the bane of democracy because it is the enemy of accountability,’ wrote Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.Bush Secrecy Produces ‘Decisions Without Democracy’By Cliff Montgomery – Aug. 2nd, 2007A fascinating report jointly produced by OpenTheGovernment.org and People For The American Way Foundation entitled, “Government Secrecy: Decisions Without Democracy”, was released in July 2007.Its introduction includes a re-printed preface to the 1987 edition, written by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and former aide to President Kennedy.Though writing about the Reagan Presidency, Schlesinger’s words are even more valid today:“Secrecy is the bane of democracy because it is the enemy of accountability. The framers of the American Constitution designed a system of government intended to bring power and accountability into balance.”The secrecy system, as it has been nurtured by the executive branch over the last forty years and with special zeal over the last seven years, is the indispensable ally and instrument of the Imperial Presidency.”Now no one can question the right of the state to keep certain things secret. Weapons technology and deployment, diplomatic negotiations, intelligence methods and sources, and military contingency plans are among the areas where secrecy is entirely defensible.”Secrecy is defensible too in certain domestic areas: personal data given the government on the presumption it would be kept confidential–tax returns, personnel investigations and the like; and official decisions that, if prematurely disclosed, would lead to speculation in land or commodities, preemptive buying, higher governmental costs and private enrichment.”But the contemporary state has extended the secrecy system far beyond its legitimate bounds. In doing so, the target is far less to prevent the disclosure of information to enemy governments than to prevent the disclosure of information to the American Congress, press and people.”For governments have discovered that secrecy is a source of power and an efficient way of covering up the embarrassments, blunders, follies and crimes of the ruling regime.”When governments claim that a broad secrecy mandate is essential to protect national security, they mostly mean that it is essential to protect the political interests of the administration. The harm to national security through breaches of secrecy is always exaggerated.”The secrecy system has been breached since the beginning of the republic–from the day in 1795 when Senator Mason of Virginia enraged President Washington by giving the secret text of Jay’s Treaty to the Philadelphia Aurora, or the day in 1844 when Senator Tappan of Ohio enraged President Tyler by giving the secret text of the treaty annexing Texas to the New York Evening Post.”No one has ever demonstrated that such leaks, or the publication of the Pentagon Papers either, harmed national security. No one can doubt that these disclosures benefited the democratic process.”The republic has survived great crises–the War of 1812, the Civil War, the First and Second World War–without erecting the suffocating structure of secrecy the Reagan administration proposes today. One wonders what greater crisis justifies the extreme measures taken and contemplated by the Reagan administration since 1981.”The consequences for American democracy of the cult of secrecy may be dire. For the secrecy system not only safeguards the executive branch from accountability for its incompetence and its venality. Worse, it emboldens the state to undertake rash and mindless adventures, as the Iran-contra scandal sadly reminds us.“ ‘Though secrecy in diplomacy is occasionally unavoidable,’ wrote James Bryce, who was not only an acute student of comparative government but also a distinguished diplomat, ‘it has its perils…Publicity may cause some losses, but may avert some misfortunes.'”Perhaps President Reagan will one day regret that the press had not exposed his secret intentions toward Iran in time to block his ill-considered policy, as President Kennedy regretted that the New York Times had not played up its story on the exile invasion of Cuba. ‘If you had printed more about the operation,’ he told a Times editor, ‘you would have saved us from a colossal mistake.'”Because the secrecy system is controlled by those on whom it bestows prestige and protection, it has long since overridden its legitimate objectives. The religion of secrecy has become an all-purpose means by which the American Presidency seeks to dissemble its purposes, bury its mistakes, manipulate its citizens and maximize its power.”This People For the American Way report…is a meticulous and dispassionate account of the growth and widening reach of the secrecy system and of the danger it poses to American democracy. It is not too late for Congress to bring the secrecy system under control and redress the balance between presidential power and presidential accountability.”The issue is hardly new.“ ‘Executive secrecy,’ John Taylor of Caroline, the philosopher of Jeffersonian democracy, wrote in 1814, ‘is one of the monarchial customs, plausibly defended, and certainly fatal to republican government…How can national self government exist without a knowledge of national affairs? or how can legislatures be wise or independent, who legislate in the dark upon the recommendation of one man?’ ”Like what you’re reading so far? 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