Friday, July 30, 2010

PDD.135: Government Secrecy & Wikileaks

Consider the case of U.S. vs. Reynolds (1953) involving the "state secrets privilege" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Reynolds. In this case, the government lied; the classified material contained no secret information. But, oh, how this decision changed our democracy!

I am a child of the 60's. I remember books, like The Pentagon Papers and The CIA Cult of Intelligence. The contents of both embarrassed the U.S. Government.

Secrecy, the classifying of information, undermines our democracy (actually our representative democracy). For the most part, our government operates under a cloak of secrecy. Elites in Congress are privvy to this information. We, the People, are supposed to trust our leaders. That train has left the station a long time ago.

Consider the secrecy surrounding the failure to disclose the Public Duty Doctrine. Crime victims are not warned of this, nor does state-approved textbooks include this information, either specifically or generally.

So, is it any wonder that, according to AP, "WikiLeaks.org, a self-described whistle-blower organization, posted 76,000 of the reports [battlefield reports] to its website Sunday night"? It was just a matter of time.

Whistleblowers, like me, are fed up with the U.S. Government's behavior. The day of disclosure is at hand. So, buckle-up.

No comments:

Post a Comment