Secrecy out of control

The federal government is classifying documents at a rate of 125 per minute.

Some choice examples include the deletion of the fact that the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was interested in “fencing, boxing and horseback riding” from a Defense Intelligence Agency report along with CIA budgets from the 1950’s and 60’s. What is that all about?

It costs taxpayers nearly $8 billion a year to make sure that they aren’t aware of what is in the reports their government creates. It is a priority that the public not know about a possible milk supply contamination — or maybe that is a dairy industry priority?

Even the man in charge of making sure what we say is secret needs to be and stays that was thinks things are growing out of control. J. William Leonard, the head of the Information Security Oversight Office says, “I’ve seen information that was classified that I’ve also seen published in third-grade textbooks.”

Of course, the administration would like us all to think that it hasen’t classified a single document without an obvious cause, in fact it would like us to believe that it is actually a very open government. This despite having classified 15.6 million documents last year, a record and double the number classified in 2001.

With the customary newspeak, Frederick L. Jones II, a National Security Councel member, claims that the administration is “proud of its record of openness.” Meaning that being the most closed govnerment in America’s history is not a problem, but in fact a virtue.