The government has begun the process of shaking out the lawbreakers who were involved in the torture in Iraq. The general in charge was suspended in January; today it is reported that there have been a host of suspensions of soldiers who were not involved with torture, but who should have been involved in oversight. There are also legal charges being filed against the MPs who engaged in torture.
One set of people who may be facing charges probably did not expect to be: the people who classified the reports of torture, to give the government time to investigate before the story broke. That proves to be illegal:
But the classification may have been more than simply unnecessary. It might have been a violation of official policy, which forbids the use of secrecy to cover up crimes:That section of the order states in full:
"In no case shall information be classified in order to ... conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error [or to] prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency...," according to Section 1.7 of Executive Order 12958, as amended by President Bush (EO 13292).
Sec. 1.7. Classification Prohibitions and Limitations. (a) In no case shall information be classified in order to:Some rethinking of this law is probably in order due to the nature of the current war. This is a tricky situation. On the one hand, we need to be able to keep these kinds of problems "in-house" long enough to develop a response. The explosive nature of these charges would have been heightened if we could not point to the fact that we've been working since January to try to correct the problems. On the other, we need to prevent the government from covering up illegal activity by classifying it. It would probably be wise to alter the law to permit a short "waiting period" before an automatic declassification. That would not only prevent abuses of the secrecy system, but also light a fire under the people whose job it is to handle these investigations.
(1) conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error;
(2) prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency;
(3) restrain competition; or
(4) prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security.
(b) Basic scientific research information not clearly related to the national security shall not be classified.
(c) Information may be reclassified after declassification and release to the public under proper authority only in accordance with the following conditions:
(1) the reclassification action is taken under the personal authority of the agency head or deputy agency head, who determines in writing that the reclassification of the information is necessary in the interest of the national security;
(2) the information may be reasonably recovered; and
(3) the reclassification action is reported promptly to the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office.
(d) Information that has not previously been disclosed to the public under proper authority may be classified or reclassified after an agency has received a request for it under the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552) or the Privacy Act of 1974 (5 U.S.C. 552a), or the mandatory review provisions of section 3.5 of this order only if such classification meets the requirements of this order and is accomplished on a document-by-document basis with the personal participation or under the direction of the agency head, the deputy agency head, or the senior agency official designated under section 5.4 of this order.
(e) Compilations of items of information that are individually unclassified may be classified if the compiled information reveals an additional association or relationship that: (1) meets the standards for classification under this order; and (2) is not otherwise revealed in the individual items of information. As used in this order, "compilation" means an aggregation of pre-existing unclassified items of information.
UPDATE: The ISOO has opened an investigation into this matter. Developing (slowly, as with any gov't bureaucracy).
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