[ OUR OPINION ]
Lingle could tutor Bush
about open governmentTHE threat of terrorism has required that some government information be kept confidential, but the Bush administration has gone too far in putting limits on public access. Members of Congress have a legitimate beef that the federal government is being run increasingly behind closed doors.
THE ISSUE The Bush administration has tightened the lid on government proceedings and information during its two years in power.
Secrecy is not part of the Republican Party agenda. GOP Governor Lingle, who started a newspaper on Molokai in the 1970s, appreciates the value of open government. Former Democratic Gov. Ben Cayetano was seen as hostile to such openness after slashing the budget and staff of the state Office of Information Practices, which is responsible for bringing agencies into compliance with Hawaii's open-records law.
"Journalists have a right to this information, and unless it is going to jeopardize a lawsuit that is going to hurt the taxpayers, give it to them," Lingle said upon winning the governor's election. "The whole idea is openness, opening the government up ... I want a government that all people feel they have access to."
Tell that to President Bush. While some of the closed doors at the White House are aimed at heightening domestic security, others are intended to avoid public criticism. The Clinton administration instructed agencies to open records whenever they could if there was no "foreseeable harm." In contrast, Attorney General John Ashcroft encouraged agencies in late 2001 to reject public requests for documents on any legal basis they could find, and the Justice Department would defend them in court.
"Since I've been here, I have never known an administration that is more difficult to get information from," says Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt. This is not merely partisan bellyaching. Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, says White House privacy is worsening, and "it seems like in the last month or two I've been running into more and more stone walls."
In the year ending Sept. 30, 2001, most of it during the Bush administration, the percentage of federal documents that were classified rose by 18 percent from the previous year, according to The New York Times. Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services have joined the agencies empowered to stamp documents "secret."
Vice President Dick Cheney, who fought to keep records of his energy task force secret, says the administration's policy is to halt "an erosion of the powers of the ability of the president of the United States to do his job." He and other administration officials maintain that they need to protect confidential and candid advice.
Former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan points out that keeping information from public scrutiny can be harmful. He recalls that the CIA's exaggerated estimate of Soviet economic strength would have brought laughter from news correspondents in Moscow if they had known about it. Instead, the closely guarded misinformation influenced U.S. policy.
"Secrecy is a formula for inefficient decision-making," feeding the instincts of bureaucratic self-importance, Moynihan says. Lingle seems to understand that, but Bush has yet to learn.
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