Our Great 'Secretocracy'

Seeing as how the big time reporters and columnists like George Will can't seem to come up with questions to ask the presidential candidates that actually matter, I'm going to suggest a line of inquiry that doesn't frolic in the frivolity of flag pins and pastors.

What do the candidates think about our "secretocracy?" And, if elected, will he or she work to strengthen the virtually toothless Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) -- the legal key to an open society?

Former staff writer for the Washington Post and Time Magazine, Ted Gup, uses the term "secretocracy" to describe our post-9/11 society. You may not have heard of this because reporters generally don't report on it, except maybe during Sunshine Week. Rarely are there stories about information journalists did not get. That's not sexy.

Over the weekend, Gup, who is now a journalism professor at Case Western Reserve University, explained to me what he means by "secretocracy."

First, noting that "secrecy is as old as power itself," Gup described the paradigmatic shift toward hyper-secrecy after 9/11, which should be fairly obvious to anyone who hasn't been in a coma since the dawn of the new millennium. But journalists, whose stock and trade is information, have come to know official secrecy intimately.

Virtually everything was considered a target after 9/11 -- the entire infrastructure of the country. It brought out the opportunists who've always thought there was too much transparency."

For example, Homeland Security instructed state governments to take bridge maintenance reports off their Websites. After the Minneapolis bridge collapsed, when reporters went to find out if other bridges were safe on behalf of those who drive over them everyday, they hit a wall of "security" secrecy, despite it being more likely for a bridge to collapse than for it to struck by terrorists.

The two bridges (built in the 1930s) that are the only vehicular way on and off Cape Cod are controlled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -- perhaps the most secretive federal agency outside the traditional national security apparatus, as people seeking post-Katrina information about the Army Corps' role in the New Orleans levee failures learned.

Another alarming manifestation of our "secretocracy" can be found in the federal court system. Did you know that fewer than two percent of federal court cases go to a full and open trial, as more and more cases are settled through "alternative dispute resolutions" and are sealed?

In researching his latest book Nation of Secrets: The Threat to Democracy and the American Way of Life, Gup discovered that the software system used in all federal courts is specifically designed to spit out "No Such Case Exists" when a query is made of sealed cases. It's one thing for the courts to say: you can't have access to a particular case file but to deny that a case exists when it's actually sealed is officially-sanctioned lying by an institution that is supposed to be candor and fairness incarnate.

But, even aside from America's entire civilian infrastructure being drawn into the secretive military-industrial nexus, we've seen an opportunistic Bush administration, with the help of a compliant Congress and Supreme Court, consolidate power under the "unitary executive" theory. (Funny how Busheviks get all hot and bothered about the theory of evolution -- "it's just a theory; not an indisputable fact!" -- but apparently have no problem with a legal theory that undermines Constitutional checks-and-balances).

The quickest way to consolidate power and disenfranchise those who would challenge it is to deprive people of information. Secrecy. You can't challenge something without good information," Gup rightly observed.

Though 9/11 is the symbolic start of America's "secretocracy," this creeping fascism is inextricably linked to deregulation, which, among other things, "reduced the reporting requirements (of private companies) and created a laissez-faire atmosphere where the government is seen, not as a regulator, but as a partner."