Friday, March 26, 2004
The Clarke debate, secrecy, and slime
One thing that's clear from the Clarke affair is that the Bush admin is secretive only when it suits their political interests, and not for the sake of national security. Hence they released Valerie Plame's identity to (clumsily) smear her husband, and now they release background briefings, identify Clarke as author of anonymous memos, and plan to release classified Congressional testimony, all to attack an opponent.
I'm not a huge believer in secrecy myself; I tend to think openness allows for scrutiny and accountability, while secrecy is all to easy to extend to cover up incompetence and malfeasance. For example, if we knew more about the CIA budget, we could better judge whether it was using its resources efficiently (and it almost certainly is one of the least efficient agencies). Secrecy has its uses: no one is suggesting we should reveal our agents, our contacts, our information gathering sources, military plans, and knowledge of other's plans. But internal political documents grow stale after awhile, and the only reason to hide them in the end is to protect their creators from the wrath of the public.
But instead, the Bush admin is in full slime mode, releasing info only to damage its enemies, not to establish its side of the argument. Is there anything they could say, if they had the guts? Brad DeLong takes a stab at how Condi Rice might exlpain herself to Congress, if she were willing to testify. It's much better than anything the admin has come up with, though it still doesn't answer the Iraq obsession critique.
I'm not a huge believer in secrecy myself; I tend to think openness allows for scrutiny and accountability, while secrecy is all to easy to extend to cover up incompetence and malfeasance. For example, if we knew more about the CIA budget, we could better judge whether it was using its resources efficiently (and it almost certainly is one of the least efficient agencies). Secrecy has its uses: no one is suggesting we should reveal our agents, our contacts, our information gathering sources, military plans, and knowledge of other's plans. But internal political documents grow stale after awhile, and the only reason to hide them in the end is to protect their creators from the wrath of the public.
But instead, the Bush admin is in full slime mode, releasing info only to damage its enemies, not to establish its side of the argument. Is there anything they could say, if they had the guts? Brad DeLong takes a stab at how Condi Rice might exlpain herself to Congress, if she were willing to testify. It's much better than anything the admin has come up with, though it still doesn't answer the Iraq obsession critique.
