GOVERNING BY SECRECY AND DECREE

While waging its War on Terrorism, the Bush administration expanded government secrecy in ways hardly imaginable only a few years before. Information has been sequestered away from the public and the Congress while law enforcement agencies were allowed to operate in the shadows.

And this was not all in response to the 9/11 attacks. Well before September 11, Bush kept secret some 4,000 pages related to presidential pardons granted by President Clinton as he was leaving office. The administration shielded Vice President Cheney by keeping secret the members and minutes of an energy policy task force headed by Cheney.

Shortly after 9/11, as previously noted, Bush held up the release of presidential papers from the Reagan administration in which his father played such a big role.

Unfortunately, such machinations continued through the “change” of the Obama administration. An editorial in the Baltimore Sun questioned Obama's campaign promises, stating, “Let's see. Is Guantanamo Bay closed? No. Any action on disclosures on lobbying or restricting role of lobbyists? No—all the happy talk about closing the revolving door was just that, talk. Transparency for government agencies, posting bills on-line before signing? Nope. Increased protection for whistleblowers? No, actually he's acted against whistleblowers. Overhaul of immigration? Nothing there. Increased oversight on surveillance? No, in fact the opposite. And does anyone buy that the war in Iraq is over? Tell that to the widows of the men killed in action within days of that premature celebration.

“Meanwhile, the Obama administration has been extending executive privilege and increasing the culture of secrecy at a pace that puts his predecessor's efforts to shame. Oh, and we got to see him hand pots and pots of money to the financial services industry—notice how many ex-employees of Goldman Sachs work for him—then watch while these companies had banner years and paid out humongous bonuses.”

However, secrecy decreased somewhat in the first months of the Obama administration, according to the Federal Times. The Washington publication reported that the government's backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests dropped more than 40 percent from 133,295 in fiscal 2008 to 77,377 in fiscal 2009 and that government classification of document decisions decreased to 183,224, the lowest number since fiscal 1999.

But this lessening of secrecy remained sporadic in Obama's Washington with some 73 percent of federal advisory committee meetings closed to the public, an increase of about 5.5 percent from fiscal 2008. Federal Times reported that 16 percent—or $35.2 billion—of the Defense Department's fiscal 2009 weapons acquisition budget remained classified in “black” budgets, up from 14 percent in fiscal 2008. This report covers the last months of the Bush administration and the first months of the Obama administration.

Among Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush's many secrets included the fact that he has gathered around him one of the most wealthy circle of government officials in the history of the United States, earning mention in the Guinness Book of World Records, 2000.

According to Guinness, “George W. Bush (inaugurated as the 43rd US president on January 20, 2001) has assembled the wealthiest cabinet in American history by appointing more multimillionaires to the top rank of his government than any of his predecessors. Of the 16 full government members at the heart of the Bush administration, 13 are multimillionaires, seven of them own assets more than $10 million. His cabinet has acquired the nickname ‘tycoon's club.’ Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and [then] Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill each have declared assets of at least $61 million, while [then] Secretary of State Colin Powell has at least $18 million.”

Information such as this seeped into the public's consciousness during 2001 despite the distraction of the terrorist attacks and the subsequent bombing of Afghanistan and the war talk against Iraq. A mid-2002 poll by the New York Times and CBS News found that out of 1,000 adults polled by telephone, 58 percent—a clear majority—thought that big business had too much influence on government and Bush himself. The poll also showed that a majority of respondents felt Bush was hiding some things about his own corporate past and that the national economy was in its worst shape since 1994. By more than two to one, respondents said the Bush administration was more interested in protecting the interests of large companies than those of ordinary Americans.

And Bush was only slightly ahead of Cheney when it came to belief in their word that they had not done anything wrong while in the business sector. Of those surveyed, only seventeen percent thought Bush was telling the truth about his dealings at Harken Energy, while only eleven percent thought Cheney was truthful about the accounting practices of Halliburton while under his control.

Of course, this means that the majority in both cases thought the two top national leaders were hiding something or outright lying about their business dealings. And no one was asked about Halliburton's under the table dealings with Iraq despite US sanctions.

This public distrust in the presidency was reflected in a 2010 CBS News poll showing President Obama's job approval rating has dropped to its lowest point since taking office in 2009. The poll showed a 44 percent approval rating compared to 41 percent who voiced disapproval, with 15 percent undecided. That compared to a 49 percent to 41 percent approval rating in March 2010, 50 percent to 40 percent in January, and 68 percent to 23 percent in early 2009. The numbers dropped further on the issue of health care. The poll showed 55 percent disapproved of Obama's plans compared to 34 percent who approved. Many felt that lobbyists from Big Pharma and the giant insurance companies had unduly influenced the health care issue.

Such public concern over big business exerting undue influence over the government is fully supported by a brief survey of recent administrations and their connection to multinational corporations, especially oil companies, not to mention secret societies. Consider that through the past four administrations cabinet-level posts have largely been held by members of the Trilateral Commission and its predecessor the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

From 1989–1993 during the administration of George H. W. Bush, all cabinet members were members of the CFR, except for Vice President Dan Quayle, Secretary of State James Baker and Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan.

In the Clinton administration, from 1993–2001, all cabinet members were CFR except for Secretary of Defense William Perry.

In the George W. Bush administration, CFR members included Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, later Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, later Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao and EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman.

President Barack Obama, elected in 2008 largely due to public indignation over the excesses of the Bush II administration, offered “Hope” and “Change.” Such hope dwindled as more Americans became aware that little had changed. The Obama cabinet read like a roster of the CFR, including Bush holdover Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Commerce Bill Richardson, UN Ambassador Susan Rice, National Security Advisor James L. Jones, Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner, Director of National Economic Council Larry Summers, and Economic Advisor Paul Volcker. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, though not a registered CFR member, nevertheless was an attendee of the secretive Bilderberg meetings.

To view the never-changing reach of the globalists, consider that Obama's national security advisor, Gen. James L. Jones, told attendees at the 2009 Munich Security Conference, “As the most recent national security advisor of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr. [Henry] Kissinger, filtered down through General Brent Scowcroft and Sandy Berger, who is also here. We have a chain of command in the National Security Council that exists today.” Kissinger, who served under the Republican Presidents Nixon and the elder Bush, is one man widely viewed as the architect of a US foreign policy that has turned foreign extremists into implacable enemies. In October 2010, Jones resigned and was replaced by former Fannie Mae lobbyist Thomas E. Donilon.

The evidence is clear. The idea that America today is run by corporate executives for corporate executives is no conspiracy theory; it is a fact. And they are doing their best to see that it all operates in secrecy. In Nazi Germany, the state took over the corporations. In modern America, the corporations have taken over the state. The end result is the same.

And while Bush has claimed meager experience with the corporate world, his 2000 campaign contributions list tells a different story. According to Sierra Magazine, the president received almost $1.9 million from the gas and oil industry, $203,000 from the mining industry and $300,000 from the timber and forest-products industry. The Republican Party got more than $20 million from the gas and oil industry, $4.7 million from the mining industry and $5.4 million from the timber and forest-products industry.

Enron's former CEO, Kenneth Lay, along with another officer, Jeffrey Skilling, was convicted on May 25, 2006, of conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud. Lay, a “Bush Pioneer,” personally raising more than $550,000 for the Bush 2000 campaign. Lay was also convicted in a separate non-jury trial of bank fraud and making false statements to banks—charges related to his personal finances.

On July 5, 2006, a little more than a month after Lay's conviction, at a time when he must have been pondering whether to serve his time or implicate others in the Enron scandal, he suddenly died of a massive heart attack. Some researchers claimed that the unaccounted for millions missing from Enron were used to pay operatives to manipulate the 2000 presidential election in favor of Bush.

More than 30 former energy executives, lobbyists and lawyers served in high-level jobs for the Bush administration. “The people running the United States government are from the energy industry,” acknowledged Peabody Energy executive Fredrick Palmer. If the close corporate connections aren't enough to raise questions about conflict of interest, some have even raised the specter of nepotism, a word apparently forgotten by today's “watchdog” media. Although apparently a non-issue to the corporate mass media, George W. Bush's first administration was filled with family and relatives.

Another troublesome aspect of both Bush terms is president's contention that he must defend his office from the loss of power. This is blatantly untrue. The American president today carries far more power than ever imagined by our Founding Fathers or even more modern chief executives like Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Bush's secretive manner of drawing ever more power unto himself by issuing “signing statements” drew criticism from credible legal sources. Jennifer Van Bergen, a journalist with a law degree, explained that “signing statements” are statements by the president issued upon signing a bill into law. Van Bergen noted that from 1817 until the end of the Carter administration in 1981, only 75 “signing statements” were issued. From the Reagan administration until the end of the Clinton administration, this number had grown to 322. But in the first term alone, Bush issued at least 435 “signing statements, many noting his concept of a “unitary executive.” Such “signing statements” convey a President's view toward the law and his own power. Bush's use of the term “unitary executive,” according to Van Bergen, is merely a code word for a doctrine “that favors nearly unlimited executive power.”

“In his [Bush's] view, and the view of his administration, that doctrine gives him license to overrule and bypass Congress or the courts, based on his own interpretations of the Constitution—even where that violates long-established laws and treaties, counters recent legislation that he has himself signed, or (as shown by recent developments in the Padilla case) involves offering a federal court contradictory justifications for a detention,” Van Bergen wrote on an Internet legal site.

She took particular note of Bush's “signing statement” while signing into law legislation curtailing torture on prisoners. “When President Bush signed the new law, sponsored by Senator [John] McCain, restricting the use of torture when interrogating detainees, he also issued a presidential signing statement,” said Van Bergen. “That statement asserted that his power as Commander-in-Chief gives him the authority to bypass the very law he had just signed.”

The use of signing statements did not end when Bush left office. By mid-2010, President Obama had signed 10 such documents.

Civil libertarians historically have heeded the statement of patriot Thomas Paine, who wrote in Common Sense, “In America, the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”

Yet, Bush argued that such actions, allowing him to ride roughshod over the Congress, the courts and the Constitution are somehow necessary to preserve the presidency. “I have an obligation to make sure that the presidency remains robust and that the legislative branch doesn't end up running the executive branch,” Bush argued in mid-2002. He either ignored or didn't realize that by preparing an attack on Iraq, he was preempting the power of Congress. When he and his appointees rammed the USA PATRIOT Act through a Congress, which had had little or no input, he likewise took powers from the representatives of the people.

Bush's first press secretary, Ari Fleischer, also failed to study recent history when he stated that presidential powers have been diminished “in multiple ways” as part of a “long-standing, gradual process.”

Perhaps this effort to take power away from legislators was the reason that Bush announced his legal advisers had told him he did not need to consult Congress before ordering a strike on Iraq, despite the fact that war-making powers are explicitly granted to the Congress by the US Constitution.

“What the president is claiming is legally and historically absurd and politically stupid,” stated Bruce Fein, a former Justice Department official who worked for several past Republican administrations. “[The US] has never had a more imperial presidency, at least since Roosevelt during his conduct of World War II.”

Bush argued that he must work in secrecy to regain open dialog with his advisers and various experts. Bush-appointed chairman of the Republican National Committee, Mark Racicot, explained that, “the ability of the president to carry on communications and get unvarnished advice has eroded over a period of time.”

Many Washington insiders, including Fein, scoffed at this argument. “I’ve been around this town a long time, almost 30 years, and I’ve never encountered one individual who told me he's not going to the Oval Office unless he's promised confidentiality. It's the biggest hoax in the world. Why he's making up all this stuff is utterly and completely baffling.” President Bush wrapped the Oval Office in more secrecy than any previous president. President Bill Clinton's White House looked absolutely transparent compared to Bush's.

But in the matter of executive privilege, Bush was two faced: documents which placed President Clinton in a bad light were released with impunity, while documents which might have put Clinton in a more favorable light were withheld using executive privilege. For example, in summer 2001, congressional investigators requested transcripts of three discussions between Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak concerning a Clinton pardon for Marc Rich, the financial wizard who stiffed the IRS for $48 million and claimed citizenship in the US, Israel and Spain. The Bush White House promptly turned them over with the explanation that they were not classified.

“Given the secrecy that the Bush-Cheney administration has pursued, it's inconceivable that they would turn this information over if it affected President Bush,” commented Democratic staff director for the House Government Reform Committee Phil Schiliro.

On November 1, 2001, with the nation still in turmoil following the 9/11 attacks, Bush signed an executive order “reinterpreting” the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which provided for the public release of former presidents’ documents after they left office. Bush claimed the executive privilege to veto the release of any such documents and thereby establish a “process that I think will enable historians to do their job and at the same time protect state secrets.”

Historians were so unimpressed with Bush's logic that before the month was out a group had filed a lawsuit to stop his executive order. Parties to the suit included the American Historical Association, the National Security Archive at George Washington University, the Organization of American Historians, Public Citizen, the Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press and history professors Hugh Graham and Stanley Kutler.

“The Presidential Records Act of 1978, which specified that after January 20, 1981, all official presidential and vice presidential records became the property of the federal government, was meant to shift power over White House documents from former presidents to professional government archivists, and ultimately, to the public,” said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archives. “But the Bush order attempts to overturn the law, take power back, and let presidents past and present delay public access indefinitely.”

Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, charged that Bush's decree “violates not only the spirit but the letter of the law.” “We will not stand by while the administration tramples on the people's right to find out about their own government,” she added.

The group's attorney Scott Nelson summed up the feeling of many people when he said, “It's interesting that the first beneficiary of this new doctrine would be the father of the man who announced it.” He referred, of course, to Bush's father who served as vice president and virtually ran the government for some time after Ronald Reagan was seriously wounded in March 1981.

“This administration is the most secretive of our lifetime, even more secretive than the Nixon administration,” said Larry Klayman, chairman of Judicial Watch, the conservative group that sued the government for release of the names of Cheney's energy task force. “They don't believe the American people or Congress have any right to information.”

Just after the 9/11 attacks, Attorney General Ashcroft sent a memo to all government agencies urging them to turn down more Freedom of Information requests in favor of “institutional, commercial and personal privacy interests.”

This represented a dramatic reversal of decades of open government. “We are moving from a right to know to a need to know society,” observed Gary Bass of OMB Watch, a private group that monitors government spending and legislation.

Since 9/11, thousands of pages of documents have vanished from the Internet. Some that might have a direct impact on security measures are understandable, others less so. But the new heightened security has proven a boon to corporate despoilers who would like their sordid track records on safety and environmental pollution kept from the public. Activists and newsmen can no longer gain information on polluting chemical plants or locate hazardous waste dumps.

“There is a pattern of secrecy that is a defining characteristic of the Bush administration,” noted Steven Aftergood, who heads government secrecy research for the Federation of American Scientists. “It resists even the most mundane requests for information.”

By 2006, with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still raging with no end in sight, the economy slumping and multiple charges of domestic spying, President Bush saw his approval rating dip as low as 35 percent, one of the lowest in recent history.

In February 2006, Vice President Cheney shot a companion while hunting for birds in Texas. Hunting accidents are not that unusual. What was unusual was the day and a half lag time between the shooting and Cheney's appearance before authorities. Even though the local sheriff ruled the shooting an accident, rumors began to fly. According to Doug Thompson of Capitol Hill Blue, a written report from Secret Service agents guarding the vice president stated that Cheney was “clearly inebriated” when he shot Texas lawyer Harry Whittington on the hunting outing. The report stated that agents observed several members of the hunting party, including the Vice President, consuming alcohol before and during the hunting expedition and that Cheney exhibited “visible signs” of impairment, including slurred speech and erratic actions. Thompson concluded that the time lag offered all members of the hunting party time to sober up.

Even the conservative U.S. News & World Report voiced concern over this time lag and the secrecy surrounding the incident. Addressing the time lag between the shooting and Cheney's appearance, editors asked, “Would the average Joe have gotten such a pass?”

One editorial noted, “Cheney has constructed something very unusual for a vice president: a world that is almost beyond public and media scrutiny, with little accountability. He hasn't held a full-fledged news conference for nearly four years. He doesn't talk about his advice to the president, even though his influence is by all reports extraordinary. He travels without letting people outside his orbit know what he's up to. He doesn't even disclose his travel expenses, arguing that the law applies to heads of agencies, and he isn't one…He has done an amazing thing—creating a ‘zone of privacy’ unique in the modern era. President Bush has adopted many of his ideas, presiding over one of the most secretive White Houses in recent history. It sure makes things easier that way. And since the public doesn't seem to care, future leaders are likely to follow Cheney's example.”

Taking a cue from President Clinton, Bush turned to executive orders, many activated without fanfare or publicity, to strengthen his rule.