- Viewers of the old spy spoof Get Smart will remember
the Cone of Silence--that giant plastic hair-salon dryer that descended
over Maxwell Smart and Control when they held a sensitive conversation.
Today, a Cone of Silence has descended over all of Washington: From
four-star
generals to lowly webmasters, the town is in information lockdown. Never
in the nation's history has the flow of information from government to
press and public been shut off so comprehensively and quickly as in the
weeks following September 11. Much of the shutdown seems to have little
to do with preventing future terrorism and everything to do with the
Administration's
laying down a new across-the-board standard for centralized control of
the public's right to know.
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- The most alarming evidence of the new climate emanates
from the Justice Department. Investigators still hold in custody 150 of
the 800 people rounded up in the aftermath of the attacks. (One detainee
died in custody in New Jersey.) No charges have been filed, no hearings
convened. The names of nearly all those still held remain classified, as
do the reasons for their incarceration. Lawyers for some of the hundreds
cleared and released have told reporters of questionable treatment of their
clients--food withheld, attorneys blocked from access. Of the 150 who
remain
detained, only four presumed Al Qaeda suspects have been publicly named.
FBI agents frustrated at the lack of progress in their interrogations of
those four now mutter in the Washington Post about using sodium pentothal,
or turning the suspects over to a country where beatings or other torture
is used. The government's stranglehold on information about other arrests
makes it impossible to know just how far agents have already gone down
that road, or whether the dragnet was mainly a public-relations
exercise.
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- Just as damaging as these detentions is an October 12
memo from Attorney General John Ashcroft reversing longstanding Freedom
of Information Act policies. In 1993 then-Attorney General Janet Reno
directed
agencies to disclose any government information upon request unless it
was "reasonably foreseeable that disclosure would be harmful."
Ashcroft reverses this presumption, instead calling on agencies to withhold
information whenever the law permits: "You can be assured that the
Department of Justice will defend your decisions," he writes. Ashcroft
is in effect creating a "born secret" standard; in the words
of the Federation of American Scientists, the order "appears to
exploit
the current circumstances" to turn FOIA into an Official Secrets
Act.
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- One after another, federal agencies are removing public
data from their websites or restricting access to their public reading
rooms. Caution is understandable, but OMB Watch and Investigative Reporters
and Editors have both documented egregious examples that seem at best
tangentially
related to terrorism and more likely designed as butt-coverage for
mid-level
bureaucrats. The Energy Department has removed information from its
web-posted
Occurrence Reporting Program, which provides news of events that could
adversely affect public health or worker safety. The EPA removed
information
from its site about the dangers of chemical accidents and how to prevent
them, information the FBI says carries no threat of terrorism. More
relevant
than Al Qaeda, it appears, was hard lobbying by the chemical industry,
which found the site an annoyance. The FAA pulled the plug on
long-available
lists of its security sanctions against airports around the
country--depriving
reporters of their only tool for evaluating the agency's considerable
failures
to enforce its own public safety findings. At the Pentagon, news has been
reduced to a trickle far more constricted than anything during Kosovo,
which in turn was more restrictive than during the Gulf War. So
comprehensive
is the shutdown that on October 13, presidents of twenty major journalists'
organizations declared in a joint statement that "these restrictions
pose dangers to American democracy and prevent American citizens from
obtaining
the information they need."
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- In the short run, the Cone of Silence did most damage
at the Centers for Disease Control. Could the two (at this writing)
Washington,
DC, postal workers who died of inhalation anthrax have been protected by
earlier treatment? Did any of the CDC's doctors or scientists recommend
a course of antibiotics for postal workers along the trajectory of
anthrax-laden
letters? Who knows? With the CDC's staff muzzled, the public and postal
workers alike were left with politicians as the conduits for contradictory
and inadequate information about the risk.
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- The uncertain dimensions of the Al Qaeda threat make
equally uncertain which information the government publishes might
contribute
to another attack and what to do about it. But it should be noted that
the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks apparently involved data no
more confidential than an airline schedule. The Administration's response
has been to treat all information and press access as suspect--an approach
that will subvert public confidence and undercut legitimate media scrutiny
more than it will damage Al Qaeda. During Vietnam, the famous credibility
gap resided at the Pentagon, with briefings and Congressional testimony
at odds with battlefield evidence. Just weeks into this war, the Bush
Administration
is risking a new credibility gap roughly the size of the District of
Columbia.
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- © 2001 The Nation Company, L.P.
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