"Democracy is supposed to be a contact sport with many and diverse
participants".The so called police and undemocratic states and governments
of the world can eat their hearts out, here comes the masters.

As someone put it, stealth and democracy do not mix, not even in wartime.
For more information about the patriot act 11 visit www.ire.org

read this!
Modou



March 11, 2003

By Charles Lewis

WASHINGTON, Feb. 12, 2003

A few days ago, the Center for Public Integrity obtained a copy of draft
legislation that the Bush Administration has quietly prepared as a bold,
comprehensive sequel to the USA Patriot Act. This proposed law would give
the government breathtaking new powers to further increase domestic
intelligence-gathering, surveillance and law enforcement prerogatives, and
simultaneously decrease judicial review and public access to information.

We took the unprecedented (for us) step of posting the entire bill on our
Web site. Why? Because democracy is supposed to be a contact sport, with
many and diverse participants, and we quickly discovered that practically no
one on Capitol Hill in either party or in the national news media had ever
even heard of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, much less read
it. Senate inquiries about the likelihood of “Patriot II” legislation have
been publicly and privately rebuffed for months, dozens of specific written
questions to the Justice Department about implementation of the first
Patriot Act simply never answered.

In a national crisis atmosphere of fear, paranoia and patriotism in the wake
of September 11th, the Bush Administration introduced and got the Patriot
Act enacted into law almost unanimously in just a few weeks, warp speed for
Congress. The Senate Judiciary Committee had an hour and a half hearing in
which Attorney General John Ashcroft testified but took no questions. In the
House, meanwhile, there was no testimony from opponents of the bill.


So now, with troops amassing on the border of Iraq, we learn that for months
the staff of Attorney General John Ashcroft has been secretly planning
another tectonic shift in the historic constitutional balance between
security and liberty, further encroachments against the hard-earned, legally
protected, right-to-know about our government in this country. Was the Bush
Administration waiting for the bombs bursting in Baghdad to spring this
latest, urgent, national security legislation on the American people and
Congress, another drive-by mooting of our customary democratic discourse and
deliberative processes? I don’t know, but it is certainly not an unfair
question to ask, given recent events.

What seemed to be merely self-serving shenanigans by the latest occupant of
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the months prior to September 11th actually now
appears to have been the dawn’s early light of a wholesale assault on access
to information in this country.

It was before the worst terrorist act on American soil that George W. Bush,
in his last hours as governor of Texas, had his official records packed up
and shipped to his father’s presidential library, attempting to remove them
from the usual custody of the Texas State Library and Archives and the
strong Texas public information law. Similarly, so was Vice President
Richard Cheney’s refusal to release basic information about his meetings
with energy company campaign contributors on government time and property.
So was the secret Justice Department subpoena of Associated Press reporter
John Solomon’s telephone records to attempt to learn the identity of a
confidential source. The Reporters Committee found that “the Justice
Department did not negotiate with Solomon or his employer, did not say why
the reporter’s phone records were essential to a criminal investigation, and
did not explain why the information could not be obtained any other way.”

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Ashcroft issued a chilling memorandum
about the Freedom of Information, advising federal officials that “when you
carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or
in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your
decisions unless they lack a sound basis or present an unwarranted risk of
adverse impact on the ability of other agencies to protect other important
records.” Just three weeks later, with no fanfare or public debate,
President Bush signed Executive Order 13233, sharply restricting public
access to the White House documents of former presidents, including Ronald
Reagan and his father.

Within six months of the September 11 attacks, in no fewer than 300 separate
instances, federal, state and local officials restricted access to
government records by executive order or proposed new laws to sharply
curtail their availability, according to the National Conference of State
Legislatures.

Separately, in March 2002, the Washington Post reported that President Bush
secretly had dispatched roughly 100 senior civilian officials from every
Cabinet department and some independent agencies in a “shadow government” to
live and work at two secret, fortified locations outside Washington. Bush
reportedly implemented and maintained this classified “Continuity of
Operations Plan” for half a year without notifying Congress or the American
people. Bush acknowledged setting up the secret operation, which he said he
had “an obligation as the President” to do “. . . This is serious business.”

So are secret trials and undisclosed detentions, DNA databanks and military
tribunals, expanded computer and other government surveillance, renewed
political spying by local police departments and preventing the
Environmental Protection Agency from distributing health and safety
information about chemical company facilities to the public. But now, with
the full text online of the new Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003,
perhaps there can actually be a public conversation about these measures.

I don’t know why this President and his appointees have such an unhealthy,
Nixonian obsession with secrecy, such disdain for providing information to
the public. Arrogantly stonewalling and stiff-arming entirely reasonable
requests for information from Congress and journalists merely stoke the
fires of skepticism, suspicion and distrust.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “I’m a firm believer in the people. If given the
truth, they can meet any national crisis. The great point is to give them
the real facts.” The Bush Administration needs to recall the advice of
America’s most revered president, the first Republican to occupy – and win
re-election – to the White House.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 2002, The Center for Public Integrity. All rights reserved

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