Source:
The GuardianUS secrecy boss on the attack over torture briefElana Schor in Washington guardian.co.uk, Wednesday April 30 2008 Article historyAbout this articleClose This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Wednesday April 30 2008. It was last updated at 19:10 on April 30 2008.A legal brief that exempted the US military from criminal laws following the 9/11 attacks was improperly kept classified for years, the former head of the US government agency in charge of document secrecy said today.
The March 2003 brief, which allowed Pentagon interrogators to claim self-defence in sidestepping laws against torture, was made public earlier this month.
J William Leonard, who directed George Bush's information security oversight office until last year, today told Congress that the document never should have been classified in the first place.
"To learn that such a document was classified had the same effect on me as waking up one morning and learning that after all these years, there is a 'secret' article to the constitution that the American people do not even know about," Leonard said.
~snip~
Democratic senator Russell Feingold, who chaired today's hearing, revealed that he and some colleagues had reached a deal with Bush aides to receive limited access to secret legal briefs on interrogations.
Read more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/30/usa.guantanamo
Secret Law Debated in Senate HearingSecret law that governs the conduct of government activities but is inaccessible to the public is “a particularly sinister” phenomenon that is “increasingly prevalent,” said Senator Russ Feingold today at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution.
The hearing produced a particularly rich record on the subject of secret law from a broad and diverse set of perspectives (including one view that “there is no such thing” as secret law).
~snip~
“If the rule of law is to prevail, the requirements of the law must be clear and discoverable,” I suggested. “Secret law excludes the public from the deliberative process, promotes arbitrary and deviant government behavior, and shields official malefactors from accountability.”
The classification of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memorandum of torture authored by John Yoo was “one of the worst abuses of the classification process I have seen during my career,” testified J. William Leonard (pdf), the former director of the Information Security Oversight Office.
more:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2008/04/secret_law_deb.htmlACLU Commends Senator Feingold for Hearing on Secret Law (4/30/2008)FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: (202) 675-2312 or media@dcaclu.org
Washington, DC – The American Civil Liberties Union today applauded a Senate subcommittee for holding a hearing on the Bush administration’s use of secrecy to institute government policy. During the hearing, entitled "Secret Law and the Threat to Democratic and Accountable Government," the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and its chairman, Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI), heard testimony from legal experts and open government advocates. The hearing focused on the administration’s broad interpretation of the law as it relates to government secrecy and counterterrorism policies – including a legal opinion written by former Justice Department Official John Yoo on the use of torture in interrogations. That memo was made public through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made by the ACLU.
"Government transparency is the cornerstone of democracy," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "This administration has been rewriting the Constitution memo by memo. From what we’ve seen of the self-serving opinions issued by the Office of Legal Counsel, we can only believe that those that remain secret must equally distort the law in favor of President Bush’s agenda. An agenda built on secrecy and overclassification is antithetical to our country’s ideals."
The ACLU noted that the Bush administration’s track record on government secrecy has been dismal at best. Memos from the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) outlining legal opinions on torture and wiretapping remain classified despite several congressional calls for disclosure. The administration has also frequently issued executive orders only to amend those policies without publicly acknowledging the changes, removed public documents from the National Archives and created an unusual system of retroactive secrecy by reclassifying previously public information. One of the most public debates on executive power and secrecy has been rooted in the executive’s ability to conduct surveillance. Since the revelation of the president’s warrantless wiretapping program by the New York Times in December of 2005, that debate has been held publicly in Congress. However a missing piece of that debate is a still-secret OLC memo.
more:
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/35106prs20080430.html
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