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Location: Nashville, Tennessee, United States

3/28/2003

Keeping Secrets
The Bush administration is tightening rules governing classified government documents and giving the government more power to keep secrets that involve "vulnerabilities or capabilities of systems, installations, infrastructures, projects, plans or protection services relating to the national security, which includes defense against transnational terrorism."

The Knoxville News Sentinel doesn't like it one bit:

The White House cited concerns about national security - intelligence methods, details of weapons of mass destruction - being compromised, but these disclosures are protected by existing exemptions. The Clinton order gave the benefit of doubt to disclosure. The Bush order will have the effect of reversing that: When in doubt, keep it secret. President Bush issued an executive order, amending a 1995 order by President Clinton that automatically declassifies most government documents after 25 years. Those documents, especially those having to do with the departments of State and Defense, are of intense interest to historians, scholars and journalists. Bush delayed that effective date until the end of 2006. That means documents from the mid-point of the Carter administration will not be available for another three years. One has to wonder: Exactly what is he trying to protect?

What is Bush trying to protect? I'm guessing he's trying to protect the American people - a possibility that apparently didn't occur to the Knoxville editorialists. And I suspect Bush, who gets national security and intelligence briefings daily, knows far more about the threats America faces than do the members of the editorial board of the Knoxville News-Sentinel.