..out of the dark

One argument says the following: it is necessary with secrecy, specially on the top, in order to have assistants and advisers give honest counsel to their president. Without fear of later being held to account and shamed publically (presumably because the public would not understand, or take things out of context). This would naturally also remove the leader from any ethical considerations with his own counsel - because to hear honest counsel, however degenerate and immoral and so on will not be the sole reason for setting a "policy", which then is delegated downwards in the system.

In a sense, this argument is only looking at governing from the point of view of a leader. In the sense that the leader perceives himself, regardless of the mechanisms around him. Of course - we know always that this is not how things work. And a pox upon those who try to translate this into actual reality in government, by translating government functions into the top tier of the ruling elite..

Another argument for secrecy is this: during important and secret missions, it must not be public knowledge what the plans are, what the military is supposed to do, and what later is the overall strategy.

How far can you pull that argument? Is it too far when it's used to advocate an open- ended, limitless war on an indefinite enemy that has no seeming location, country or particular appearance? Is it too far when it goes beyond the specific operational details in the short term that, if revealed, would endanger the military operation?

Yet another argument goes like this: we're better off not knowing, and it's probably for the best to let the government govern on their own.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/10/03/BL2007100301071_2.html

Why All the Secrecy?

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What's been behind the Bush administration's unprecedented secrecy in its pursuit of terrorists?

Has the goal been to keep critical national security information away from those who would do the country harm? Or to hide conduct that is basically indefensible?

Senators yesterday heard directly from a former senior Justice Department official about how, in the case of the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, the White House obsession with secrecy had nothing at all to do with keeping al Qaeda in the dark -- and everything to do with not letting anyone argue or get in the way.

Dan Eggen writes in The Washington Post: "No more than four Justice Department officials had access to details of the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program when the department deemed portions of it illegal, following a pattern of poor consultation that helped create a 'legal mess,' a former Justice official told Congress yesterday.

"Jack L. Goldsmith, former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the White House so tightly restricted access to the National Security Agency's program that even the attorney general and the NSA's general counsel were partly in the dark.

"When the Justice Department began a formal review of the program's legal underpinnings in late 2003, the White House initially resisted allowing then-Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey to be briefed on it, Goldsmith said.

"Goldsmith's testimony provided further details about the fierce legal debate and intense secrecy surrounding the NSA surveillance program within the Bush administration in early 2004. The fight culminated in a threat by Goldsmith, Comey and others to resign en masse if the program were allowed to continue without changes."

This kind of unprecedented "compartmentalization" didn't just happen by accident -- it was the signature tactic of Vice President Cheney and his top legal enforcer, David S. Addington. (See my September 5 column, What Addington Wrought.)

Here's what Goldsmith wrote about Addington in an excerpt from his recent book published on Slate: "The vice president's counsel, who was the chief legal architect of the Terrorist Surveillance Program, was singing the White House tune on FISA. He and the vice president had abhorred FISA's intrusion on presidential power ever since its enactment in 1978. After 9/11 they and other top officials in the administration dealt with FISA the way they dealt with other laws they didn't like: They blew through them in secret based on flimsy legal opinions that they guarded closely so no one could question the legal basis for the operations. My first experience of this strict control, in fact, had come in a 2003 meeting when Addington angrily denied the NSA inspector general's request to see a copy of OLC's legal analysis in support of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. Before I arrived in OLC, not even NSA lawyers were allowed to see the Justice Department's legal analysis of what NSA was doing."

The question, then, that should come up because of the secrecy problematic here would have to be - when is it proper to presume guilt on those keeping secrets? Should it be only when there is ample proof of criminal culpability? In that case, where is the "reasonable" limit standard? When it's possible to sue for damages, perhaps? What then if the secrecy privilege is used to stall legal proceedings?

It seems obvious to me that from the fundamental realisation that government cannot be trusted, we need to assume that secrecy in general must be kept to the lowest level possible. So whenever unargued and improperly argued secrecy is maintained, we can at right away presume that what is hidden from the public is something the leadership is not proud of. After all, it has never happened in history that a government has kept secret what would promote how they are diligently pursuing their duties.

So, where is that limit? Where more secrecy will invariably lead to a corrupt and criminal regime? Is it when we have proper procedure in order to check whether the process is followed, but cannot properly discover every detail of each transparent step in the process at all times? Or is it when the process, such as it is, is impossible to follow, and it is not possible to have any good picture of what the process involves?

You decide, as they say..