“Bush and Cheney have made the Freedom of Information Act their number one target, more fervently pursued for elimination than Osama Bin Laden. No sooner had he come to office than George W. Bush set out to eviscerate both FOIA and the Presidential Records Act. He has been determined to protect his father’s secrets when the first Bush was Vice President and then President – as well as his own. Call it Bush Omerta.”<\/span><\/p>\nThe speech further reveals that BushCo’s zeal to dismantle FOIA has roots that go back to the Ford Administration when Ford was talked out of signing legislation that would have strengthened the act. This feat of persuasion was carried out by his chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld, and his deputy chief of staff, Dick Cheney (with additional help from Justice Department lawyer, Antonin Scalia).<\/p>\n
Ford’s brain trust has ascended to even higher plateaus of power and their penchant for secrecy has not abated. Rumsfeld’s Pentagon was recently exposed for having paid Iraqi news outlets to publish positive stories written by American PR consultants. Cheney successfully defended his efforts to keep secret the names of corporate energy honchos whom he met with to craft energy policy. That defense included a Supreme Court victory partly decided by his other hunting pal, Antonin Scalia (with whom he was hunting just weeks before Scalia would rule on his case).<\/p>\n
The administration is getting help from outside its own coven. The White House’s exposure to the NSA wiretapping scandal is being protected by friendly committee chairs in Congress who have agreed not to initiate oversight hearings. And the scandal itself was hidden from the public by the New York Times, who sat on the story for over a year at the President’s request. This may be the most forboding aspect of the whole affair. When the press joins the conspiracy to keep Americans in the dark about government initiatives conducted in their name, we are truly approaching the end of our brief experiment in the rule of the people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The legacy of the Bush administration may turn out to be that its greatest contribution to American productivity is its unparalleled production of secrets. It has long been readily observed that BushCo wants nothing more than to keep its own affairs private while, ironically, digging more into the affairs of private citizens. After having opposed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-free-press","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-1H","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":839,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=839","url_meta":{"origin":105,"position":0},"title":"Passport-Gate: Secrets In The House Of Bush","author":"Mark NC","date":"3\/21\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"In less than 24 hours, a story that began with the disclosure that State Department employees were peeking into the passport records of Barack Obama, it has come to light that the snooping also extended to Hillary Clinton and John McCain. While there is still much that is unknown, these\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":201,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=201","url_meta":{"origin":105,"position":1},"title":"Journalism Profs Protest Bush","author":"Mark NC","date":"8\/7\/2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) represents academics in journalism and media studies. At their annual convention last week, they passed a resolution to \"Object to the Bush Administration's Anti-Press Policies and Practices.\" From the preamble: The relationship between the presidency and press has always been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":734,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=734","url_meta":{"origin":105,"position":2},"title":"OPEN Government Act Signed In Near Secret By Bush","author":"Mark NC","date":"1\/2\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"In an unpublicized, media-free, non-ceremony, President Bush secretly signed a bill intended to bring an end to much of the secrecy that has surrounded this administration. The OPEN Government Act was passed by Congress with overwhelming majorities. But that was only after it had been blocked for months by a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Free Press"","block_context":{"text":"Free Press","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=14"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":571,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=571","url_meta":{"origin":105,"position":3},"title":"The New Pentagon Propaganda Pulpit","author":"Mark NC","date":"8\/24\/2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Associated Press via Huffington Post: Washington, August 24, 2007. \"Shaping the Bush administration's message on the Iraq war has taken on new fervor, just as anticipation is building for the September progress report from top military advisers.\" With news from Iraq continuing to reflect deteriorating security and a crumbling government,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9660,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=9660","url_meta":{"origin":105,"position":4},"title":"Obama’s IRS Probes Tax-Exempt Status Of Abortion Doctor’s Benghazi Tea Party","author":"Mark NC","date":"5\/14\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The media has been in a virtual orgasmic frenzy for the past 24 hours as reports come out about troubling behavior by government agencies. Make no mistake, what appears to have been done by individuals in the IRS and the Justice Department is of enormous concern to Americans who are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1307,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1307","url_meta":{"origin":105,"position":5},"title":"The Daily Show Defense","author":"Mark NC","date":"6\/21\/2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A new legal precedent has been introduced by the Obama Justice Department. If permitted by the court, defendants nationwide may have a powerful new tool to assert in pursuit of legal vindication. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents containing statements\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}