By Christopher H. Schmitt and
Edward T. Pound "Democracies die
behind closed doors."
--U.S. APPEALS COURT
JUDGE DAMON J. KEITH
At 12:01 p.m. on Jan.
20, 2001, as a bone-chilling rain fell on
Washington, George W. Bush took the oath of office
as the nation's 43rd president. Later that
afternoon, the business of governance officially
began. Like other chief executives before him, Bush
moved to unravel the efforts of his predecessor.
Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, directed
federal agencies to freeze more than 300 pending
regulations issued by the administration of
President Bill Clinton. The regulations affected
areas ranging from health and safety to the
environment and industry. The delay, Card said,
would "ensure that the president's
appointees have the opportunity to review any new or
pending regulations." The process, as it turned
out, expressly precluded input from average
citizens. Inviting such comments, agency officials
concluded, would be "contrary to the public
interest."
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Ten months later, a former U.S.
Army Ranger named Joseph McCormick found out just
how hard it was to get information from the new
administration. A resident of Floyd County, Va., in
the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, McCormick
discovered that two big energy companies planned to
run a high-volume natural gas pipeline through the
center of his community. He wanted to help organize
citizens by identifying residents through whose
property the 30-inch pipeline would run. McCormick
turned to Washington, seeking a project map from
federal regulators. The answer? A pointed
"no." Although such information was
"previously public," officials of the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission told McCormick,
disclosing the route of the new pipeline could
provide a road map for terrorists. McCormick was
nonplused. Once construction began, he says, the
pipeline's location would be obvious to anyone.
"I understand about security," the rangy,
soft-spoken former business executive says.
"But there certainly is a balance--it's
about people's right to use the information of
an open society to protect their rights."
For the past three years, the Bush administration
has quietly but efficiently dropped a shroud of
secrecy across many critical operations of the
federal government--cloaking its own affairs from
scrutiny and removing from the public domain
important information on health, safety, and
environmental matters. The result has been a
reversal of a decades-long trend of openness in
government while making increasing amounts of
information unavailable to the taxpayers who pay for
its collection and analysis. Bush administration
officials often cite the September 11 attacks as the
reason for the enhanced secrecy. But as the
Inauguration Day directive from Card indicates, the
initiative to wall off records and information
previously in the public domain began from Day 1.
Steven Garfinkel, a retired government lawyer and
expert on classified information, puts it this way:
"I think they have an overreliance on the
utility of secrecy. They don't seem to realize
secrecy is a two-edge sword that cuts you as well as
protects you." Even supporters of the
administration, many of whom agree that security
needed to be bolstered after the attacks, say Bush
and his inner circle have been unusually assertive
in their commitment to increased government secrecy.
"Tightly controlling information, from the
White House on down, has been the hallmark of this
administration," says Roger Pilon, vice
president of legal affairs for the Cato Institute.
"Veil of Secrecy," a 
