Tap Secret
The Bush administration has made no secret of its determination to clamp down on leakers. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has called for "a comprehensive, coordinated, governmentwide, aggressive, properly resourced and sustained effort" against them. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has accused leakers of costing "the lives of Americans" and called for leakers to be ...
The Bush administration has made no secret of its determination to clamp down on leakers. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has called for "a comprehensive, coordinated, governmentwide, aggressive, properly resourced and sustained effort" against them. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has accused leakers of costing "the lives of Americans" and called for leakers to be sent to jail. The administration’s "information discipline," though, goes far beyond stemming leaks. It includes the decision to withhold all documents whenever there is any legal basis to do so, a shift away from the previous policy of releasing all documents unless "foreseeable harm" would result from their disclosure.
The Bush administration has made no secret of its determination to clamp down on leakers. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has called for "a comprehensive, coordinated, governmentwide, aggressive, properly resourced and sustained effort" against them. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has accused leakers of costing "the lives of Americans" and called for leakers to be sent to jail. The administration’s "information discipline," though, goes far beyond stemming leaks. It includes the decision to withhold all documents whenever there is any legal basis to do so, a shift away from the previous policy of releasing all documents unless "foreseeable harm" would result from their disclosure.
One might therefore expect the administration to be incandescent about Bush at War, the blockbuster book by Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward, which reveals the innermost workings of Bush’s war cabinet as it responded to the events of September 11. Woodward boasts that the information he obtained for the book included "contemporaneous notes taken during more than 50 National Security Council [NSC] and other meetings where the most important decisions were discussed and made." Foreign Policy phoned up the NSC to see if we too could get hold of the notes from these meetings: The request reduced Michael Anton, an NSC spokesman, to wild laughter. "You’re joking, aren’t you?" said Anton. "Those meetings are all classified and highly secret." One might expect that a huge leak inquiry is under way — with the goal of sending the guilty party, or parties, to the prison cell where Ashcroft and Rumsfeld believe they belong. Anton told us that no leak inquiry "is being contemplated or planned," before rather rapidly hanging up. Woodward confirmed he had not been questioned about how he got hold of these notes by the government: "To my knowledge there has been no investigation of how I obtained my information." He was also unconcerned about any of his sources going to jail, pointing out that the president himself had discussed these documents with him on the record. Guess that some classified information deserves more protection than others. Or perhaps the only leakers who are traitors are those who betray the administration.
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