Do Americans Need a Right to Know?

An essential component of an effective, working democracy is an informed citizenry. Unless citizens are aware of how their government is functioning, they cannot adequately criticize or give recognition for work well done, know the extent to which special interests are influencing government, or hold government and its leaders accountable.
Here is what openthegovernment.org statement of values says about government openness:

“The public’s right to know promotes equal and equitable access to government, encourages integrity in official conduct, and prevents undisclosed and undue influence from special interests.”

The Bush Presidency has been the most secretive administration in our nation’s history, even reclassifying previously unclassified documents from prior administrations. According to openthegovernment.org, in 2003, the federal government created 60%more secrets in 2003 than 2001, a total of 14 million new documents. Incidentally, it is not inexpensive to classify and retain documents. Openthegovernment.org reports that “for every tax dollar spent declassifying old secrets, the Government spends $185.00 creating and securing old secrets.” According to government statistics, the amount spent classifying documents in 2006 was $8, 200,000,000.00

Here are some highlights of the unprecedented level of secrecy of the Bush administration. As catalogued by openthegovernment.org.

▪From 2001-2006, the “state secrets” privilege has been raised 39 times, more than double the average of the previous 24 years. All it takes to invoke state secrecy is for the administration to assert that there is a “reasonable danger” to national security if the information is released.

▪ In 2000, 45 percent of government was awarded under full and open competition; by 2006, only 34 percent of contract dollars was awarded under such open competition. 25.9 percent ($107.5billion) of government contracts was awarded without any competition.

▪Through 2006, President Bush has issued at least 151 signing statements, challenging 1149 provisions of laws and questioning the constitutionality of 126 laws. According to the Constitution, the President is obligated to faithfully execute the laws. How can the public know whether the laws are being faithfully executed when the President has disputed so many laws? This, of course, raises issues about signing statements, themselves. 2concon.org proposes a constitutional amendment to bar the legal validity of signing statements.

▪In 2006, the number of original classification decisions by the federal government was 231, 995.

▪ In 2006, over 60% of the 7,189 meetings of the federal advisory committees giving scientific and technical advice to the government were completely closed to the public despite the language in the federal law governing such committees that “each advisory committee meeting shall be open to the public.”

▪On three separate occasions President Bush has invoked “executive privilege”
to keep documents from Congress or to keep government officials from testifying before Congress. Despite the Supreme Court case of United States v. Nixon, discrediting the generalized use of executive privilege.

▪Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Requests. The number of FOIA requests was 21, 412,736 in 2006. Backlog has tripled in the last nine years. Only 12 agencies do not have a backlog of requests. One request is 20 years old. Costs of handling requests has gone up 70%.

The above examples are just some of the more widely known examples of the use of secrecy by a government that is supposed to be accountable to the people. I have not given any details of secrecy policies in state governments, which is flourishing, nor have I discussed secret patents, national security letters, the foreign intelligence surveillance court, or pseudo-classified information where the federal government controls even more federal information through vague restrictions.

My belief is that if the Constitution is amended to provide a right to know, perhaps with a proviso that there is a general presumption against government secrecy, then Congress will enact laws enabling a watchdog agency to review all decisions of classification, with the ability to revoke those decisions, then government will become more accountable as citizens become more informed.

Posted on 4th February at 4:17 pm

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