Politics and Censorship

Interesting article on how the Bush administration determines what information ought to be classified in the interest of national security and what information is safe to be released.

Looks more and more like national security has very little to with what gets classified. Instead, information that backs or backed the administration's case for war is deemed okay, where information that might hurt the White House is censored for alleged national security reasons. The most obvious example is Richard Clarke's original testimony to a House committe investigating 9/11 that was critical of the White House. That testimony was once determined to be too sensitive for release. Now that the White House sees an advantage in releasing it -- namely, discrediting Clarke by revealing reported discprencies in his two testimonies -- his original testimony is suddenly hunky-dorey for public consumption.

There are other examples, too:

To make its case for war at the United Nations, the White House also released recent audiotapes of intercepted conversations -- usually among its most highly guarded secrets -- between Iraqi military officers...

... A 25-page version of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was released in October 2002. It made clear-cut statements about Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons capabilities in two pages of"Key Judgments."

"Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons. . . . [I]t will probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade," the section said, adding that"most analysts assess Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."

When a fuller, eight-page version of the key judgments section was released after the war, it contained lengthy, well-marked dissents by some in the intelligence community.

On the question of whether certain aluminum tubes were imported to Iraq for use in nuclear weapons programs, the first document said:"Most intelligence specialists assess this to be their intended use, but some believe that these tubes are probably intended for conventional weapons programs."

The second document included a dissent by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence Research (INR), which said it did not believe there was"a compelling case" that Iraq was working to acquire nuclear weapons. And INR and the Department of Energy questioned whether the tubes were well-suited for centrifuges used to enrich uranium.

The second declassification, said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a group devoted to declassifying secrets, showed the administration was not"protecting sources and methods. They were creating a document for public consumption that argued for the war."

The White House announced today that it will vet the special commission's 9/11 report"line by line" to be sure it doesn't reveal anything that might compromise national security.

Something tells me the White House will define"national security" broadly enough to include"anything that might hurt Bush's chances for reelection."