Secrecy

Dear Friends,

I have been traveling the last few days and unable to post.  I miss it even if the world gets along fine without it. 

In the New York Times today there were two articles (safely in back pages) one on page A12 and the other on page A20 which left me with the feeling that the Obama Administration is following the lead of the Bush Administration in terms of secrecy.

The first article is entitled "Losing Legal Fight, Britain Reveals Detainee's Treatment by the U.S." by John F. Burns.  (here)  British courts have forced the release of a summary of secret information about the American treatment of Binyam Mohamed by the United States. The article says:

In themselves, the revelations in the Foreign Office document contained little that was not already known from previous disclosures by the Central Intelligence Agency about the so-called stress techniques used by American interrogators while questioning terrorist suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
What was starkly new, however, was the Foreign Office’s conclusion that the treatment Mr. Mohamed endured, had it been carried out under the authority of British officials, would have breached international treaties banning torture. It was the first time that Britain has been so blunt about its disapproval of the interrogation techniques approved by former President George W. Bush and curtailed last year by President Obama.
“Although it is not necessary for us to categorize the treatment reported, it could readily be contended to be at the very least cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities,” the document posted on the Foreign Office Web site said.

There was nothing new in the disclosures, and we all knew that the United States had tortured.   So what is the big deal.  The Obama Administration was putting lots of pressure on the British government to keep the report secret.  The article states:

Under intense American pressure, Foreign Office lawyers had sought for more than a year to prevent publication of the information. Citing warnings from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, among others, they argued that the summary’s publication could cause irrevocable damage to intelligence-sharing between the United States and Britain — a relationship that British officials said was essential to Britain’s security, in particular to its counterterrorist operations.

When will we see the openness promised by candidate Obama.  When will the Obama Administration hold the Bush Administration responsible for violating the law and the Constitution.

The second article is entitled "Two Ex-Workers Accuse Blackwater Security Company of Defrauding the U.S. for Years" by Mark Mazzetti. (here) I was not the least bit surprise to hear that Blackwater may have been defrauding the government.  What surprised me was the following:

The documents detailing the Davises’ accusations were unsealed after the Justice Department declined to join in the case against Blackwater, which last year changed its name to Xe Services. A Xe spokeswoman did not return a message seeking comment about the case.

The Obama Administration needs to stop covering up the past and hold people accountable. 

We need to hold the Obama Administration accountable on candidate Obama's campaign promises and to shine a bright light on how things work in Washington, otherwise there will never be change.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal