Secret documents deserve scrutiny

[struggle4progress]

By DALE McFEATTERS
Scripps Howard News Service
12-APR-06

WASHINGTON -- ... After having its arm twisted through the Freedom of Information Act -- and doesn't that law sound quaint now -- by the Associated Press and a nonprofit research group, the National Archives confessed to being complicit in surreptitiously removing previously public records from its shelves and reclassifying them as secret.

And here's where the "double super secret" part comes in: The fact that the Archives was doing this was itself secret.

Before this dodge was discovered, the Archives had pulled and reclassified 10,000 records containing about 55,000 pages, some of them dating back to the 1940s. (Pssst! Remember World War II? We won. Keep it to yourself.) ...

I think we'll all sleep better at night knowing the government has clammed up _ in this case, reclammed _ about 58-year-old fracases in South America. On the other hand, we may not sleep so well knowing that our intelligence on Chinese nukes was coming from a Serbian newsstand. (You can see why they might want to keep that secret. Congress might whack somebody's intelligence budget down to a single subscription to Glas Javnosti ) ...

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