[iwar] [fc:Information.Lockdown]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-30 18:03:24
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 18:03:24 -0800 (PST)
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COMMENT | November 12, 2001

Information Lockdown

by Bruce Shapiro  

Viewers of the old spy spoof Get Smart will remember the Cone of
Silence--that giant plastic hair-salon dryer that descended over Maxwell
Smart and Control when they held a sensitive conversation. Today, a Cone of
Silence has descended over all of Washington: From four-star generals to
lowly webmasters, the town is in information lockdown. Never in the nation's
history has the flow of information from government to press and public been
shut off so comprehensively and quickly as in the weeks following September
11. Much of the shutdown seems to have little to do with preventing future
terrorism and everything to do with the Administration's laying down a new
across-the-board standard for centralized control of the public's right to
know. 

The most alarming evidence of the new climate emanates from the Justice
Department. Investigators still hold in custody 150 of the 800 people
rounded up in the aftermath of the attacks. (One detainee died in custody in
New Jersey.) No charges have been filed, no hearings convened. The names of
nearly all those still held remain classified, as do the reasons for their
incarceration. Lawyers for some of the hundreds cleared and released have
told reporters of questionable treatment of their clients--food withheld,
attorneys blocked from access. Of the 150 who remain detained, only four
presumed Al Qaeda suspects have been publicly named. FBI agents frustrated
at the lack of progress in their interrogations of those four now mutter in
the Washington Post about using sodium pentothal, or turning the suspects
over to a country where beatings or other torture is used. The government's
stranglehold on information about other arrests makes it impossible to know
just how far agents have already gone down that road, or whether the dragnet
was mainly a public-relations exercise.

Just as damaging as these detentions is an October 12 memo from Attorney
General John Ashcroft reversing longstanding Freedom of Information Act
policies. In 1993 then-Attorney General Janet Reno directed agencies to
disclose any government information upon request unless it was "reasonably
foreseeable that disclosure would be harmful." Ashcroft reverses this
presumption, instead calling on agencies to withhold information whenever
the law permits: "You can be assured that the Department of Justice will
defend your decisions," he writes. Ashcroft is in effect creating a "born
secret" standard; in the words of the Federation of American Scientists, the
order "appears to exploit the current circumstances" to turn FOIA into an
Official Secrets Act.

One after another, federal agencies are removing public data from their
websites or restricting access to their public reading rooms. Caution is
understandable, but OMB Watch and Investigative Reporters and Editors have
both documented egregious examples that seem at best tangentially related to
terrorism and more likely designed as butt-coverage for mid-level
bureaucrats. The Energy Department has removed information from its
web-posted Occurrence Reporting Program, which provides news of events that
could adversely affect public health or worker safety. The EPA removed
information from its site about the dangers of chemical accidents and how to
prevent them, information the FBI says carries no threat of terrorism. More
relevant than Al Qaeda, it appears, was hard lobbying by the chemical
industry, which found the site an annoyance. The FAA pulled the plug on
long-available lists of its security sanctions against airports around the
country--depriving reporters of their only tool for evaluating the agency's
considerable failures to enforce its own public safety findings. At the
Pentagon, news has been reduced to a trickle far more constricted than
anything during Kosovo, which in turn was more restrictive than during the
Gulf War. So comprehensive is the shutdown that on October 13, presidents of
twenty major journalists' organizations declared in a joint statement that
"these restrictions pose dangers to American democracy and prevent American
citizens from obtaining the information they need."

In the short run, the Cone of Silence did most damage at the Centers for
Disease Control. Could the two (at this writing) Washington, DC, postal
workers who died of inhalation anthrax have been protected by earlier
treatment? Did any of the CDC's doctors or scientists recommend a course of
antibiotics for postal workers along the trajectory of anthrax-laden
letters? Who knows? With the CDC's staff muzzled, the public and postal
workers alike were left with politicians as the conduits for contradictory
and inadequate information about the risk.

The uncertain dimensions of the Al Qaeda threat make equally uncertain which
information the government publishes might contribute to another attack and
what to do about it. But it should be noted that the World Trade Center and
Pentagon attacks apparently involved data no more confidential than an
airline schedule. The Administration's response has been to treat all
information and press access as suspect--an approach that will subvert
public confidence and undercut legitimate media scrutiny more than it will
damage Al Qaeda. During Vietnam, the famous credibility gap resided at the
Pentagon, with briefings and Congressional testimony at odds with
battlefield evidence. Just weeks into this war, the Bush Administration is
risking a new credibility gap roughly the size of the District of Columbia.

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