Freedom of information DIED! San Francisco Chronicle

[Guest guest]

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/01/06/ED1\

25108.DTL -

It sure looks like they were turned off!

Elaine

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John Polifronio

Gettingwell

Thursday, January 10, 2002 2:34 PM

Re: Freedom of information DIED! San Francisco

Chronicle

 

 

Elaine

It seems clear to me that the " public radar " machines have been turned off

before the information came to them.

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" Elaine121 " <Elaine121

<Undisclosed-Recipient:;>

Thursday, January 10, 2002 2:26 PM

Freedom of information DIED! San Francisco Chronicle

 

 

> Friends and colleagues:

> On October 12th, Attorney General Ashcroft wrote a memo to all federal

> agencies urging them to resist any more Freedom of Information Act

> requests. Since it was not a press release and not an executive order, it

> received no publicity. Given all the other restraints on civil liberties,

> it has therefore escaped public notice and slipped beneath the public

> radar. But it is vitally important and has not received the kind of front

> page exposure or publicity that one might have expected. I stumbled upon

> this event and the memo quite by accident, then researched it quite

> thoroughly, and have written this editorial to expose what happened.

> Please circulate as widely as possible.

> With best wishes, Ruth Rosen

>

> The original article can be found on SFGate.com here:

> -

>

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/01/06

> /ED125108.DTL -

>

> Sunday, January 6, 2002 (SF Chronicle)

> EDITORIALS/On the Public's Right to Know

> The day Ashcroft censored Freedom of Information

>

> THE PRESIDENT DIDN'T ask the networks for television time. The attorney

> general didn't hold a press conference. The media didn't report any

> dramatic change in governmental policy. As a result, most Americans had

> no idea that one of their most precious freedoms disappeared on Oct. 12.

>

> Yet it happened.

>

> In a memo that slipped beneath the political radar, U.S. Attorney General

> John Ashcroft vigorously urged federal agencies to resist most Freedom

> of Information Act requests made by American citizens.

>

> Passed in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the Freedom of

> Information Act has been hailed as one of our greatest democratic

> reforms. It allows ordinary citizens to hold the government accountable

> by requesting and scrutinizing public documents and records. Without it,

> journalists, newspapers, historians and watchdog groups would never be

> able to keep the government honest.

>

> It was our post-Watergate reward, the act that allows us to know what our

> elected officials do, rather than what they say. It is our national

> sunshine law, legislation that forces agencies to disclose their public

> records and documents. Yet without fanfare, the attorney general simply

> quashed the FOIA. The Department of Justice did not respond to numerous

> calls from The Chronicle to comment on the memo.

>

> So, rather than asking federal officials to pay special attention when

> the public's right to know might collide with the government's need to

> safeguard our security, Ashcroft instead asked them to consider whether

> " institutional, commercial and personal privacy interests could be

> implicated by disclosure of the information. "

>

>

> Even more disturbing, he wrote: " 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 legal basis or present an unwarranted risk of adverse

> impact on the ability of other agencies to protect other important

> records. " Somehow, this memo never surfaced. When coupled with President

> Bush's Nov. 1 executive order that allows him to seal all presidential

> records since 1980, the effect is positively chilling.

>

>

> In the aftermath of Sept. 11, we have witnessed a flurry of federal

> orders designed to beef up the nation's security. Many anti-terrorist

> measures have carefully balanced the public's right to know with the

> government's responsibility to protect its citizens.

>

> Who, for example, would argue against taking detailed plans of nuclear

> reactors, oil refineries or reservoirs off the Web? No one. Almost all

> Americans agree that the nation's security is our highest priority. Yet

> half the country is also worried that the government might use the fear

> of terrorism as a pretext for protecting officials from public scrutiny.

>

> Now we know that they have good reason to worry.

> For more than a quarter of a century, the Freedom of Information Act has

> ratified the public's right to know what the government, its agencies and

> its officials have done. It has substituted transparency for secrecy and

> we, as a democracy, have benefited from the truths that been extracted

> from public records.

>

> Consider, for example, just a few of the recent revelations -- obtained

> through FOIA requests -- that newspapers and nonprofit watchdog groups

> have been able to publicize during the last few months:

>

> -- The Washington-based Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit

> organization, has been able to publish lists of recipients who have

> received billions of dollars in federal farm subsidies. Their Web site,

> - www.ewg.org - has not only embarrassed the agricultural industry, but

> also allowed the public to realize that federal money -- intended to

> support

> small family farmers -- has mostly enhanced the profits of large

> agricultural corporations.

>

> The Charlotte Observer has been able to reveal how the Duke Power Co.,

> an electric utility, cooked its books so that it avoided exceeding its

> profit limits. This creative accounting scheme prevented the utility from

> giving lower rates to 2 million customers in North Carolina and South

> Carolina.

>

> USA Today was able to uncover and publicize a widespread pattern of

> misconduct among the National Guard's upper echelon that has continued

> for more than a decade. Among the abuses documented in public records are

> the inflation of troop strength, the misuse of taxpayer money,

>

> Incidents of sexual harassment and the theft of life-insurance payments

> intended

> for the widows and children of Guardsmen.

>

> The National Security Archive, a private Washington-based research

> group, has been able to obtain records that document an unpublicized

> event in our history. It turns out that in 1975, President Gerald Ford

> and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave Indonesian strongman Suharto

> the green light to invade East Timor, an incursion that left 200,000

people

> dead.

>

> By examining tens of thousands of public records, the Associated Press

> has been able to substantiate the long-held African American allegation

> that white people -- through threats of violence, even murder -- cheated

> them out of their land. In many cases, government officials simply

> approved the transfer of property deeds. Valued at tens of million of

> dollars, some 24,000 acres of farm and timber lands, once the property

> of 406 black families, are now owned by whites or corporations.

>

> These are but a sample of the revelations made possible by recent FOIA

> requests. None of them endanger the national security. It is important

> to remember that all classified documents are protected from FOIA requests

> and unavailable to the public. Yet these secrets have exposed all kinds

> of official skullduggery, some of which even violated the law. True,

> such

> revelations may disgrace public officials or even result in criminal

> charges, but that is the consequence -- or shall we say, the punishment

> for violating the public trust.

> No one disputes that we must safeguard our national security. All of us

> want to protect our nation from further acts of terrorism. But we must

> never allow the public's right to know, enshrined in the Freedom of

> Information Act, to be suppressed for the sake of official convenience.

> Copyright 2002 SF Chronicle

>

> Ruth Rosen Editorial writer and columnist

> San Francisco Chronicle

> 901 Mission Street San Francisco, CA 94103

> Phone: 415-536-3093 Fax: 415-543-7708

> rrosen

>

>

>

>

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>

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