"What effect must it have on a nation if it learns no foreign languages? Probably much the same as that which a total withdrawal from society has upon an individual." --G.C. Lichtenberg
Bush's talk about there being too many leaks in Washington really got me chuckling. All of his top officials are privacy fanatics.
W. hides his Texas gubernatorial papers and his father's vice- and presidential papers. His vice-president had big meetings to decide energy policy, and he won't even say who was in attendance. The most banal details of procedings are kept confidential for "reasons of national security." His attorney general gravely weakens the Freedom of Information Act and holds prisoners incommunicado from their lawyers in the name of the Security of the Homeland. His people suppress environmental reports and selectively cite economic data.
If you assume they're honest, they're calculating the possible damage to US public interest caused by too much information in the public sphere. If you don't assume they're honest, they're knowingly up to illegal things and trying to hide them. In either case, they're very private people.
Nondisclosure in their bones. (Plame was no accident.) posted by David at 10/01/2003 09:48:00 PM ::
