Hoe de Overheid Geheime Wetten overgaat
Door Sean Gonsalves | Eens, ging een team van federale procureurs voor het Opperste Hof slechts ontdekken dat hun volledig geval werd gebaseerd op een herroepen uitvoerende orde en brengt daarom ter sprake.
Waar verhaal. Kijk omhoog het. Bedrijf van de Raffinage van Panama v. Ryan. De herroepen presidentiële orde werd begrijpelijk gemist door de procureurs. De herroeping was nooit gemaakt openbaar - een voorbeeld van wat de wettelijke geleerden naar als „geheime wet.“ verwijzen
De gevallen als dat veroorzaakten Congres, in de jaren '30 en de jaren '40, aan de penwetgeving die op het scheppen van orde in de verspreiding van essentiële overheidsinformatie, amid de chaotische ingewikkeldheid van staats administratieve wetten en volkomen nagemaakte registratie wordt gericht. Het congres vestigde ook statuten om een groeiend lichaam van geheime wet in controle te houden.
Zo werden wij het Federale Akte van het Register van 1935, het Akte van Administratieve Procedures van 1946 en de gouden sleutel aan open overheid (en onderzoeks rapportering) - het Akte van de Vrijheid van Informatie (FOIA).
Die wetgevende handelingen lichten één van de het bepalen eigenschappen van Amerikaanse overheid toe - het bekend maken van wetten en verordeningen. De politieke filosofie is niet moeilijk te begrijpen. De geheime wetten zijn de antithese van de vrije en open maatschappij, die waarom de eerste V.S. verklaart. Congres verplicht gesteld dat elke „wet, orde, resolutie, en stem (zal) in minstens drie van de openbare kranten worden gepubliceerd die binnen de Verenigde Staten drukken.“
Maar nooit mening - voorlopig - de daling van kranten, en de schadelijke implicaties het heeft voor democratisch bestuur. Alarmerend is underreported verhoging van unpublicized „geheime wetten,“ de laatste jaren heimelijk gecultiveerd.
Wij spreken alles van geheime interpretaties van het Buitenlandse Akte van het Toezicht van de Intelligentie en adviezen van het Bureau van Wettelijk Advies (OLC) aan de geheime Presidentiële richtlijnen en orden van de vervoersveiligheid.
En laat niet het woord „advies“ u weg werpen. Als, bijvoorbeeld, zij „adviezen“ die door OLC worden uitgegeven - als de nu beruchte Yoo martelingsmemoranda - die soort de „adviezen“ zijn zijn bindend op de uitvoerende tak.
Zo, terwijl de pers zwaar-hitters van Washington vlagspelden en pastors analyseerden, werd een Gerechtelijke subcomitéhoorzitting gehouden „Geheime Wet en de Bedreiging voor Democratische en Verantwoordelijke Overheid“.
Among the half-dozen or so witnesses to testify was the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, Steven Aftergood — one of the nation’s preeminent authorities on secret law. What should have been a top-story across the country was rendered invisible by a tsunami of triviality.
Here’s some testimony you probably missed:
“There has been a discernible increase in secret law and regulation in recent years” to the point where “legislative intervention” is required to “reverse the growth.”
Unsurprisingly, secret law really became entwined with the government during the Cold War. But today, “secrecy not only persists, it is growing. Worse, it is implicated in fundamental political controversies over domestic surveillance, torture, and many other issues directly affecting the lives and interests of Americans.”
The law that governs espionage activity has been re-interpreted by the FISA Court, the specific nature of which has not been disclosed to the public?
In August 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union petitioned the court on First Amendment grounds to make public those legal rulings, after redacting classified information. The court denied the ACLU petition, claiming it didn’t have the expertise to decide what information should be redacted.
The denial was issued despite it being evident “that there is a body of common law derived from the decisions of the (FISA court) that potentially implicates the privacy interests of all Americans. Yet knowledge of that law is deliberately withheld from the public. In this way, secret law has been normalized to a previously unknown extent and to the detriment, I believe, of American democracy,” Aftergood testified.
Other areas of concern: “there appears to be a precipitous decline in publication of OLC opinions in recent years … In 1995, there were 30 published opinions, but in 2005 there were 13. In 1996, there were 48 published opinions, but in 2006 only 1. And in 1997 there were 29 published opinions, but only 9 in 2007.”
“One secret OLC opinion of particular significance, identified last year by Sen. Whitehouse, holds that executive orders, which are binding on executive branch agencies and are published in the Federal Register, can be unilaterally abrogated by the President without public notice.”
Such orders mean “Congress is left with no opportunity to respond to the change and to exercise its own authority as it sees fit. Worse, the OLC policy … implies a right to actively mislead Congress and the public.”
Here’s something else that’s been waaaay underreported. As of January 2008, the Bush administration has issued 56 National Security Presidential Directives on a range of national security issues. Most of those directives have not been disclosed. “Texts of the directives or descriptive fact sheets have been obtained for about a third of them (19),” Aftergood testified. Only the titles have been obtained on 8 of the directives and absolutely no information is available for 10.
Congress has also gotten in on the action, having “participated in the propagation of secret law through the adoption of classified annexes to intelligence authorization of bills, for example.”
Aftergood concluded his testimony, rightly observing that “it should be possible to identify a consensual middle ground that preserves the security of genuinely sensitive national security information while reversing the growth of secret laws.”
That’s why he’s pushing for the passage of the State Secrets Protection Act – S. 2533 — which aims to balance conflicting interests of secrecy and public disclosure.
“The rule of law, after all, is one of the fundamental principles that unites us all, and one of the things we are committed to protect. Secret law is inconsistent with that commitment.”
Of course, whenever someone points out how civil liberties have taken a back-seat in the name of “national security” under Bush, what’s the typical response of true believers?
They call talk radio, blog and write letters-to-the-editor about how “liberals” and “leftists” aid and abet terrorists with a naive insistence that America’s political leaders adhere to quaint luxuries like long-established Constitutional freedoms.
The old saw — “loose lips sinks ships” — has been replaced by another now familiar brain-dead mantra: “if you’re doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about.” But the metastasizing growth of secret law pulls the rug out from underneath that flimsy argument. And for obvious reason: you can’t know what you don’t know.
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Posted: May 22nd, 2008 at 8:07 pm | Link to this
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There will be no election, The Patriot Act will be FULLY inforced, and we will be living under Busche & Military Law in the very near future and Walmart will be the only thriving store as it will be ran by the secret soon to be open government!!