It's been a long, long road, folks. A long and top secret road.
I was pouring over the presser Tony Snow held yesterday and was thinking about just how secretive this administration has been since day one. Turns out, most of our suspicions -- like the one about Cheney's energy task force -- were dead on. And now we are discovering a web of secrecy with the U.S. attorneys scandal that is mind-boggling in its scope and implications.
Psssst ... yo there, Mr. Decider ... I have something to whisper in your ear, something super special top secret: you're toast.
I took a little trip down memory lane tonight. It wasn't that fun, let me tell you, but I brought back souvenirs.
Remember Bush’s second week in office? Here’s a flash from the secret past:
In his second week in office George W. Bush created the task force, officially known as the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG) with Dick Cheney as chairman. This group was supposed to develop an energy policy for the Bush administration. With both Bush and Cheney coming from the energy industry, which had contributed heavily to their campaign, and with the group proceeding in extreme secrecy, critics charged that the energy industry was exercising undue influence over national policy.
Lo and behold, four years later we find out we don’t deserve to know anything, because the White House needs confidentiality to do it’s oh-so-valuable work:
Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force
By Dana Milbank and Justin Blum
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 16, 2005; A01
A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.
The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who posed the question about the task force, said he will ask the Justice Department today to investigate. "The White House went to great lengths to keep these meetings secret, and now oil executives may be lying to Congress about their role in the Cheney task force," Lautenberg said.
Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for Cheney, declined to comment on the document. She said that the courts have upheld "the constitutional right of the president and vice president to obtain information in confidentiality." http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Joshua Bolten used to be the budget director. Today he is White House chief of staff and also, it seems, the confidentiality enforcer:
Regarding criticism that the Bush administration withholds information from Congress and is not cooperative with the legislative branch, Bolten says that tension is inherent in the U.S. political system.
"It's been a sore spot for well over 200 years, that the executive branch guards its prerogatives to run the government, to serve as the executive of government without 535 individual executives up on Capitol Hill," he says.
A certain degree of confidentiality is necessary, Bolten also says, in order for the executive branch to perform its job properly. http://www.npr.org/...
It isn’t that people didn’t notice Bush and his buddies were too secret. But I had never heard this story. Note the reappearance of the "hidden earpiece" hypothesis (boy, I hope we get the truth on that shit someday soon):
This tradition does not sit well with Indonesian specialist Fred Burks, who is making a noisy exit from government service after 18 years of interpreting for top U.S. officials, including President Bush and former president Bill Clinton. Burks resigned last month in protest against what he sees as excessive government secrecy. Burks interpreted for Bush at an Oval Office meeting with Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri in September 2001, eight days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He says Bush displayed such a detailed grasp of Indonesian issues at the meeting that he came away thinking the president must have been fed information through a hidden earpiece.
Burks says he is free to talk about his work as a contract interpreter for senior government officials because he was never required to sign a secrecy agreement. That changed last month when the State Department insisted he agree to a new contract that included a pledge never to disclose "any information" that he learned in the course of his government interpreting work to unauthorized outsiders. He refused. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Wow. Seems like only yesterday that John Ashcroft was "doing the people’s business." Remember when, on October 12, 2001, he issued new FOIA regulations that effectively – well – effectively made sure there would be no more freedom of information in this country? Note in the excerpt below how Ashcroft pledges the DOJ will defend denials of access to information. Makes a lot of sense NOW, doesn't it? From his directive:
I encourage your agency to carefully consider the protection of all such values and interests when making disclosure determinations under the FOIA. Any discretionary decision by your agency to disclose information protected under the FOIA should be made only after full and deliberate consideration of the institutional, commercial, and personal privacy interests that could be implicated by disclosure of the information.
In making these decisions, you should consult with the Department of Justice's Office of Information and Privacy when significant FOIA issues arise, as well as with our Civil Division on FOIA litigation matters. When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions unless they lack a sound legal basis or present an unwarranted risk of adverse impact on the ability of other agencies to protect other important records. http://www.fas.org/...
NSA spying was a big deal for a week or two. There was supposed to be oversight. What happened to that? Probably a secret. We do know this:
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board was created by Congress in 2004 on the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, but is part of the White House, which handpicked all the members. Though mandated by law in late 2004, the board was not sworn in until March 2006, due to inaction on the part of the White House and Congress.
The three-hour meeting, held at Georgetown University, quickly established that the panel would be something less than a fierce watchdog of civil liberties. Instead, members all but said they view their job as helping Americans learn to relax and love warrantless surveillance.
"The question is, how much can the board share with the public about the protections incorporated in both the development and implementation of those policies?" said Alan Raul, a Washington D.C. lawyer who serves as vice chairman. "On the public side, I believe the board can help advance national security and the rights of American by helping explain how the government safeguards U.S. personal information."
Board members were briefed on the government's NSA-run warrantless wiretapping program last week, and said they were impressed by how the program handled information collected from American citizens' private phone calls and e-mail.
But the ACLU's Caroline Fredrickson was quick to ridicule the board's response to the administration's anti-terrorism policies, charging that the panel's private meetings to date largely consisted of phone calls with government insiders and agencies.
"When our government is torturing innocent people and spying on Americans without a warrant, the PCLOB should act -- indeed, should have acted long ago," Fredrickson said. "Clearly you've been fiddling while Rome burns. This board needs to bring a little sunshine. So far America is kept in the dark -- and this is the first public meeting you have had." http://www.wired.com/...
Miers for the Supreme Court? If it wasn’t already in the history books, no one would believe it. Nor could anyone believe that Bush expected Congress to confirm Miers without any real information:
Bush says he won't air memos from Miers
Sparks standoff with both parties
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | October 25, 2005
WASHINGTON -- President Bush vowed yesterday not to release any White House memos by his Supreme Court nominee, Harriet E. Miers, provoking a standoff with senators from both parties who have demanded more information about her work in the White House. Bush, speaking after his morning Cabinet meeting, said he would not release Miers's memos, to preserve the confidentiality of the presidential decision-making process. Miers has served Bush as his staff secretary, as deputy chief of staff, and as White House counsel over the past five years. "It's a red line I'm not willing to cross," Bush said. http://www.boston.com/...
It’s far from over. Secrets, secrets, secrets. You think Cheney is sweating the U.S. attorneys scandal? Nah. On March 13, he met with corporate honchos at a private dinner sponsored by the Treasury Department [hey, wait! You mean government departments do a lot of private gigs? Who woulda thunk it?] to keep things rolling for his business buddies:
Bush administration officials begin series of high-level discussions with top executives from Wall Street, corporations and major accounting firms; many executives have urged rollback of laws passed in wake of Enron and WorldCom scandals as well as limits to liability from government and shareholder lawsuits; Vice Pres Dick Cheney opens conference by speaking to group at private dinner sponsored by Treasury Department. http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/...
And then there’s Tony Snow. Protector of confidentiality, keeper of secrets big and small. He actually said the words "dignified basis." Whatever that means.
Well, let me put it this way. What you're talking about is a situation -- I'm going to step back. The idea of allowing the confidentiality of White House communications to remain that way is rooted in something that is as old as the Constitution itself, which is the separation of powers.
And what we're talking about is a system that allows the president to preserve his prerogatives and, at the same time, create a dignified basis for moving forward. http://www.salon.com/...
Here's a great resource for you: A compendium by the American Federation of Scientists entitled "The Project on Government Secrecy." http://www.fas.org/...
Just some background, because we're going to be hearing a lot about secrecy, and confidentiality, and presidential prerogatives in the next few days.
What we're going to hear is this: SAME OLD SHIT.
And, dear friends, I pass along a stock tip. Klieg Lights. Definitely a buy.
crossposted at www.diatribune.com