Molly: The Great Bush Reclassification Project

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" Zepp " <zepp

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 08:06:08 -0700

[Zepps_News] Molly: The Great Bush Reclassification Project

 

 

 

Molly Ivins: The Great Bush Reclassification Project

 

 

Molly Ivins, TruthDig, April 27, 2006

 

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060426_molly_ivins_bush_reclassification/

 

 

 

It's nice to know that the investigative reporter Jack Anderson is

still under investigation, although seriously dead.

 

Anderson died last year, and for 19 years before his death he suffered

from Parkinson's disease and was increasingly less active as a reporter.

Now that he's safely deceased, the Federal Bureau of Investigation

wants to go through nearly 200 boxes of his files to see if there are

any classified documents in there. If it's classified, they want it

back - even though Anderson was in the habit of printing anything he

ever got that was of any interest.

 

This is apparently part of the Great Bush Reclassification Project, in

which government information that has previously been declassified and

offered for public consumption is now being reclassified as secret so

nobody can find out about it. Those who saw government documents

between declassification and reclassification are just going to have

to forget what they saw. That, or some Man in Black will be sent

around to zap your memory with a little thingamajig.

 

For some reason, the FBI thinks Jack Anderson, despite Parkinson's

disease, had some papers involving two employees of the American

Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) who have been criminally

charged with receiving classified information. That case is a crock in

itself, and to use it to dig through Anderson's archived stuff is just

ludicrous.

 

Among Anderson's targets of old was the Federal Bureau of

Investigation itself - gee, still worried he might have photos of J.

Edgar Hoover in a dress after all these years?

 

Anderson was a hardworking investigative reporter. Among his scoops

was exposing the CIA's plots to kill Fidel Castro and breaking details

of the Iran-Contra affair. I always liked him because he was so

un-Establishment, a Mormon with nine kids. Anderson never had time for

the Washington dinner party circuit and never gave a damn about it.

 

Even some other journalists looked down on him - he was never part of

D.C.'s " cool " in-group. But the proof was in the work, and although he

made a few memorable mistakes, he was consistently so far ahead of the

pack he made his detractors look like the lazy snobs they were.

 

Anderson's son Kevin said family members are willing to go to jail

rather than let Anderson's papers be confiscated. " It's my father's

legacy, " he told The New York Times. " The government has always, and

continues to this day, to abuse the secrecy stamp. My father's view

was that the public is the employer of these government employees and

has the right to know what they're up to. "

 

Meanwhile, the Bush administration is so hopelessly confounded by the

problems of secrecy, it has now fired a CIA agent for allegedly

leaking the truth concerning a gulag of " black site " prisons we keep

in Eastern Europe (remember when only the Soviets did that?). And of

course Bush claims he has the right to instantly declassify anything

in order to back up a phony charge against a political opponent. How

lovely.

 

I listened to that pompous self-righteous blowhard Bill Bennett saying

the other day that several reporters who won Pulitzers this year

should be in jail. I guess the responsibility of being the Virtue Czar

has finally driven Bennett daffy. If he can't see that the problem is

an administration that runs torture programs, gulags and illegal

domestic spying programs, rather than reporters who find out about

these programs and print the truth, then I say it's time for a new

Virtue Czar.

 

Jack Anderson was right: The people in government work for us. What

they do is our responsibility because they do it in our name and with

our money - that's why we have a right to know about it.

 

The other day I heard a young man say, " I have an issue with torture. "

Turns out he was offended by some scenes in a movie he'd been to. I

have an issue with torture, too. I get upset when it's real and it's

my country doing it. I guess I wouldn't make a good Virtue Czar.

 

 

 

--To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other

Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators

Syndicate web page

at www.creators.com <http://www.creators.com>.

 

--

 

 

" Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government

talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court

order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about

chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order

before we do so "

-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004

 

Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.

 

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