Self-Serving Secrecy

In wartime, there is little more vital to government than its ability to work in secret. Secrecy can save lives, both at home and on the battlefield.

But when that need is used as an excuse to avoid political embarrassment - as President Bush did recently in thwarting the release of old presidential records - public trust is lost.

Hiding behind a bogus claim of expanding openness, Bush issued new rules that will greatly complicate the Presidential Records Act, a post-Watergate law intended to ensure the release of administration records 12 years after a president leaves office - in this case, those of the Reagan administration.

Under the law, Reagan documents were due for public release this year. Instead, Bush chose to stack the deck against disclosure, abolishing rules the Reagan administration itself wrote and replacing them with new roadblocks that:

• Allow a designated representative of a dead or incapacitated president the right to assert executive privilege in the president's name.
  
  
• Strip the Archivist of the United States' right to overrule former presidents' executive-privilege claims.
  
  
• Triple the time former presidents have to review document requests to 90 days and give the current president an indefinite period to review those decisions.
  
  

Both Bush and his staff pretend they're increasing access to the documents.

In introducing the rules, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that under existing law and procedures a former president has the right to withhold any documents for any reason. "But thanks to the executive order more information will be forthcoming", he said.

That's true only if you pretend that the 1978 law isn't already in effect, implemented through Reagan's executive order.

Administration opponents and critics of government secrecy believe Bush may be attempting to shield members of his administration who also served under Reagan, including Colin Powell and Gale Norton, from embarrassing revelations.

Whatever the motive, Bush's move is part of a larger administration pattern of obstructing the public's right to know how government works. For months Bush has fought congressional efforts to reveal the role of industry lobbyists in writing his energy plan. Bush's attorney general wrote a memo last month promising to back government agencies in court when they exploit legal loopholes to fight Freedom of Information Act requests.

Today the Bush administration enjoys broad public support. Each time the administration abuses secrecy as a convenient dodge rather than a last resort, it puts that support at risk.