Give Obama a Break

One of last week’s headlines reported that President Obama has found that Washington’s culture of secrecy continues. Give the man a break! Either the left is providing the new administration with cover so it can move decisively in a direction it already has taken, or the inexhaustible news cycle is reaching for some complaint to register against the administration’s well-earned good press coverage.

But secrecy? The article I read noted that the very first second of the new administration, 12:01 p.m., Jan. 20, 2009, the White House website promised open government, and on his first day in office the president himself promised an era of government transparency. Not a bad start. Even if there have been some disappointing positions — its tentative adoption of the Bush state secrets position in pending extreme rendition cases (let’s hope that position is tentative), for example — in its first few months the Obama government has emphasized its commitment to open government.

As this blog has emphasized, and my new book, In Confidence: When to Protect Secrecy and When to Require Disclosure, published last month by Yale University Press details, there is a profound need for oceanic changes in government procedures regarding secrecy. As prestigious blue-ribbon, non-political commissions have repeatedly concluded in recent history, our government’s classification system is seriously overused. Despite these studies, a vast, undemocratic system has grown into what one author called A Nation of Secrets.

• Three million government officials are authorized to classify government records confidential.

• It costs the public $7 billion a year to run this machinery.

• Over 17,000 documents a day are classified, about 15 million a year.

• In the last administration, the number of classifications rose; there were fewer declassifications; reclassifications rose, as did derivative classifications.

• The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process — a hoped-for cure of this phenomenon — was slower and less effective than ever before.

The attorney general recently issued a memorandum to all executive agencies stating that its FOIA policies must shift emphasis — from for to against the preservation of secrecy. That’s a good start.

To energize the attorney general’s policy pronouncement, the Obama administration ought to appoint an administrator-coordinator of its open government programs. That person should synchronize a government-wide effort to shift age-old policies toward openness in every situation in which there is not a demonstrable legal impediment. Those existing rules that provide an inappropriate cover of secrecy should be eliminated within two years.

In addition, a related policy of clear language in all government regulations should be implemented to make all administration procedures and rules comprehensible. Many are not, as anyone who has read, say, the IRS regulations lately can attest.

I will say more about these points in subsequent commentaries.

See Clear Understandings: A Guide to Legal Writing by Ronald L. Goldfarb and James C. Raymond; Random House, 1982

Visit www.RonaldGoldfarb.com.