Results Mixed On Bush, Obama Secrecy
A Tuesday report from transparency watchdog OpenTheGovernment.org illustrates modest decreases in secrecy across a variety of indicators in the last year of former President George W. Bush's administration. The 47-page scorecard from the coalition of more than 70 open government advocates also offered a six-month overview of the Obama administration's promise and practice on openness issues and a section on financial transparency during the economic crisis.
"Promising trends began to develop in the last year of the Bush administration, but we have a long way to go to return to the level of government openness and accountability that existed before the September 11 attacks," OpenTheGovernment.org's Patrice McDermott said in a press release. While very few quantitative indicators of secrecy exist yet to compare the Obama White House to its predecessor, the new administration "has a very mixed record on its promise of unprecedented openness," she added.
Some highlights from the report:
• In 2008, the number of original classification decisions decreased to 203,541, a 13 percent drop from 2007.
• The government spent nearly $200 maintaining secrets already on the books for every one dollar the government spent declassifying documents in 2008, a 2 percent increase in one year; 16 percent fewer pages were declassified than in 2007.
• The FY 2008 budget for the National Intelligence Program was $47.5 billion, a 9.2 percent increase over 2007.
• 19 percent of the Pentagon's FY 2008 acquisition budget is classified or "black"
• Justice Department requests for administrative subpoenas known as "national security letters" decreased from 2006 and reported invocations of the "state secrets" privilege continued to rise.
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