Thread: Secrecy rises: Washington gives public less and less

Secrecy rises: Washington gives public less and less

Increasingly, officials evade law on transparency.



Back in 1989, as a young graduate student at the University of Southern California researching a masters thesis, William Aceves asked the government for information about its "freedom of navigation" program involving international waters and air space.

The seemingly benign request, made under a 1966 law designed to let people find out what their government is doing, languished for years.

Just last month, Aceves, now a full professor at California Western School of Law in San Diego, got another batch of partially blacked-out papers, a staggering 18 years after his first request.

Aceves is among dozens of people whose requests for information have lingered in limbo at various agencies for more than a decade, according to a new audit by the National Security Archive, a public watchdog group. Thousands of requests take years. Many more take months.

The law says they are supposed to be processed within 20 days.

Those delays are a measure of how effective Washington's politicians and bureaucrats are at throwing up barriers to the public's right to know. Thanks to mismanagement, inadequate resources and outright obstruction, Congress' ringing commitment to open government 40 years ago is now barely a murmur.

In truth, people who run things in Washington have never been enthusiastic about having the public looking over their shoulders. President Lyndon Johnson tried to prevent passage of the Freedom of Information Act in 1966. Former Johnson aide Bill Moyers has said that LBJ "hated the thought of journalists rummaging in government closets."

Since then, resistance has only increased, particularly under the current administration. In 2001, at the beginning of the Bush presidency, then-attorney general John Ashcroft told agencies to adopt a policy of non-disclosure whenever possible. The number of information requests that are fully granted has since dropped by more than 40% since 2000. Aceves says that as he has received papers off and on during his 18-year quest, he has noticed that more and more is blacked out.

This serves the interests only of those who have something to hide, and not just from the press.

Contrary to the anti-media paranoia of Johnson and countless other politicians, the biggest users of the Freedom of Information Act are private citizens, not journalists.

A sampling by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government of more than 6,400 requests filed with various departments and large agencies in one month found that more than 60% came from businesses or their representatives. They used the law to get information ranging from asbestos levels in old Navy ships to cockpit recordings from crashed airliners and background data on prospective employees.

An additional one-third of the requests came from private citizens or state and local agencies: a police department looking for possible federal grants, a divorce searching for hidden assets, a whistle-blower looking for backing for a claim of government wrongdoing, a lawyer looking for parents overdue on child support payments.

Media requests accounted for only 6% of the total — in part because prying the information out is so time-consuming and difficult — but the results are often newsworthy. Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act:

*USA TODAY was able to tell readers last month about 122 levees around the country that are so poorly maintained that they could fail in a major flood. Last week, reporter Gregg Zoroya used FOIA to obtain a Pentagon memo about the lack of a comprehensive approach to deal with troops who might suffer from traumatic brain injury.

*McClatchy Newspapers was able to examine 200 million computerized Veterans Affairs Department records and document last month how ill-equipped the agency is to handle Iraq war veterans with post-traumatic stress syndrome.

*Marine Corps Times revealed in 2005 that nearly 10,000 Marines were issued body armor with potentially fatal flaws — and that the government knew it.

A proposal pending before Congress and due for a House vote as early as this week would make it harder for foot-dragging agencies to sandbag requests they don't like. They would require better tracking of requests, meaningful penalties for non-compliance with the law, and removing incentives for agencies to stall and force citizens to file lawsuits in order to get even the most basic information.

Such changes are overdue. When Johnson grudgingly agreed to sign FOIA in 1966, he spoke glowingly of "a deep sense of pride that the United States is an open society in which the people's right to know is cherished and guarded." Sadly, the promise of that right is still unappreciated and unprotected in too many places.

Posted at 12:22 AM/ET, March 12, 2007 in Ethics - Editorial, Politics, Government - Editorial, Privacy - Editorial, Reforming Washington - Editorial, USA TODAY editorial | Permalink

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/03/post_27.html

I would like to see the pre-2000 years, as I suspect the secrecy and resistance to handing over requested information is mainly associated with the Bush administration.