That the Bush administration is one of the most secretive in history is not news. But the breadth and depth of that secrecy is news. According to Scott Shane’s report in this morning’s New York Times, “a record 15.6 million documents were classified last year, nearly double the number in 2001, according to the federal Information Security Oversight Office.”
Bush’s federal minions are classifying documents to the tune of an astounding 7,500 per hour.
The Times presents this information visually in a series of graphic images.
The price we pay for Bush’s secrecy is considerable. “The increasing secrecy—and it’s rising cost to taxpayers, estimated by the office at $7.2 billion last year—is drawing protests from a growing array of politicians and activists, including Republican members of Congress, leaders of the independent commission that studied the Sept. 11 attacks and even the top federal official who oversees classification,” according to the Times account.
All of this secrecy flies in the face of the common-sense notion articulated by former Republican governor of New Jersey and chair of the Sept. 11 commission, Thomas H. Kean: “We’re better off with openness. The best ally we have in protecting ourselves against terrorism is an informed public.” Things have clearly gotten out of control when scientific papers, portions of a Supreme Court decision, and the CIA’s budgets from the 1950s and 1960s are being suppressed. Perhaps no one knows more about the overclassification issue than J. William Leonard, director of the Information Security Oversight Office. “I’ve seen information that was classified that I’ve also seen published in third-grade textbooks,” Leonard told Times reporter Shane.
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