Southern Appeal

On Pat Tillman:

Readers need no introduction to Pat Tillman, though Southern Appeal provides one today. William at SA is wondering "why the Army withheld [information about Tillman's death by friendly fire] from Tillman's family and the American public."

It didn't occur to me at the time, but as I was reading the post and the comments, I remembered something from earlier. There's an executive order that touches on this matter:

"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...."

The first time I encountered it was in Secrecy News, which brought a formal challenge against the military for classifying the Abu Ghraib report.

As I said at SA, no one is a bigger supporter of the military than I am. However, government secrecy is a danger to the Republic.

It's a necessary danger, but we have to have clear and enforcable rules -- and robust declassification, when the time comes that the information can be released -- if we are to remain a nation where the citizens are in charge.

All of you know how strongly I feel that we must remain that kind of a nation. The road away from citizen government is very smooth and wide. There are many reasons to travel it, and there are many people who will encourage you every step of the way. Yet we know where such roads lead.

If we are to remain a government of the people, we cannot yield over to goverment by experts. We cannot let it be said that only those trusted by the government enough to have clearances have a right to information about the government. We must insist that we have a right to all the information, even if it cannot be released immediately. Delay, yes, for the good of the Republic: but in time, we must insist, all things, all of them, must be told and reported to us. In the meantime, we must insist that our representatives be informed, and we must insist that they hold the government -- even the military -- to its laws on these matters. Just as we cannot accept a government of judges, we cannot accept a government of bureaucrats and functionaries, nor even of officers.

That is the only way to preserve the Republic for the long term. Here is a matter on which you might write your representative, and suggest that they demand an answer. Was the law followed? It shows less honor to Pat to have tried to keep the truth of his death from his family, than to have built some shining tale around it.