By William Fisher, t r u t h o u t
Amid claims of executive privilege by President Bush in the firing of US attorneys, a bipartisan coalition of civil liberties groups has published a new report charging that the administration’s stonewalling is simply part of a six-year pattern of unprecedented government secrecy.
The report – “Government Secrecy: Decisions Without Democracy 2007” – was prepared by two advocacy groups – OpenTheGovernment.org and People For the American Way Foundation. It documents how executive power has dramatically expanded while executive accountability has diminished.
The report charges that “Over the past six years, President Bush has used executive orders to limit use of the Freedom of Information Act and Presidential Records Act, expanded the power to classify information for national security reasons, and created a range of new categories of “sensitive” information. In some cases, the government has gone so far as to reclassify documents that had been available to the general public for many years.”