Jacob Weisberg: Cheney and the public right to ‘No’

Jacob Weisberg: Cheney and the public right to ‘No’
By Jacob Weisberg
Published: February 15 2006 19:49 | Last updated: February 15 2006 19:49. Copyright by the Financial Times

The Bush administration’s aversion to openness reached the proportions of parody last weekend when Dick Cheney, US vice-president, accidentally shot a man while hunting quail in Texas. The White House revealed nothing about the accident when it occurred, and it is entirely possible that this near-manslaughter would have gone unreported had the host of the shooting party not told a local reporter about the incident a day later.

Must one really argue the case that when the US vice-president shoots someone – intentionally or unintentionally, fatally or otherwise – the public has a right to hear about it? It is true that there is historical precedent for Mr Cheney’s attempted cover-up. When the vice-president Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804, Burr’s second used an umbrella to obscure the wounded man from potential witnesses. Burr went home and mentioned nothing to his luncheon guest about the incident. After Hamilton died, a public cry went up and Burr fled to an undisclosed location in Georgia.

A somewhat stronger American tradition, however, suggests that high officials are obliged to inform the public not just about the rare violent encounter, but also about their financial interests, the condition of their health and above all about the workings of government. In this regard, Mr Cheney’s role model appears to be not Burr, but the belligerent and contemptuous Spiro Agnew. Even before the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 provided an all-purpose excuse for his subterranean instincts, Mr Cheney, like the president he serves, had made clear his disdain for the kind of disclosure and freedom of information that democracy demands.

Like the right to privacy and the separation of church and state, the public’s “right to know” is nowhere stated in the constitution. But like those other rights, access to information about the government was both assumed and implied by the founding fathers. For the right to elect leaders to have meaning, citizens must be able to find out what the people they elect actually do in office. Similarly, the right to criticise the government presumes having something to criticise other than government secrecy.

From the earliest years of the republic, an unprecedented degree of disclosure and openness were distinguishing features of the American system. But not until after the second world war did the now-familiar phrases “freedom of information” and “the people’s right to know” come into broad use. These terms appear frequently in cold war-era discussions of the balance between government openness and national security. It is impossible to read those historic considerations of how a free society can protect itself without sacrificing its values and not experience a feeling of déjà vu.
In 1956, for instance, the Coolidge Committee on Classified Information made recommendations to the defence secretary about mitigating what it depicted as the related evils of excessive classification and government “leaks”. The movement to provide greater public access to documents was codified in the 1966 Freedom of Information Act. In the post-Watergate era, the reach of the act was greatly extended and supplemented by a host of “sunshine” laws mandating public access to meetings. In the internet age, the expectation of openness and the availability of documents have expanded further, even as Mr Cheney and George W. Bush have indulged their urge to purge.

To be sure, every president has fenced with the press and Congress over access to information. But no modern administration other than Richard Nixon’s has so vigorously slashed away at legislative oversight and public scrutiny.

Another episode, as shocking in its way as Mr Cheney’s suppressed shooting, is the White House’s refusal to answer questions about the White House meetings of Jack Abramoff, the notorious Washington lobbyist. This week, Time magazine finally obtained some of the photographs the administration has been suppressing. One shows Mr Abramoff lurking in the background as Mr Bush pumps the hand of a since-indicted tribal chief whose Indian name means “black buffalo”. Beside the president stands “white buffalo”, Karl Rove, senior presidential adviser, blessing the encounter. This and other photographs of Mr Abramoff and Mr Bush are public property, taken by government-paid photographers. They raise no questions of national security or personal privacy. But the pictures are embarrassing to the president and on that basis, Mr Bush has refused to release them. At a rare press conference, the president offered the rationale that if shared, the Abramoff photos would be used for “political purposes” by Democrats. On the same theory, Mr Bush could refuse to open his mouth ever again in public – which, come to think of it, has been pretty much Mr Cheney’s approach.

One could recount dozens of examples in which Mr Bush and Mr Cheney have spurned legitimate requests for information from all kinds of groups. In sum, these episodes represent more than the familiar tug and pull of the branches of government, mere hostility to the press, or the challenges to freedom in wartime. They are the arrogant expression of a deaf, imperial presidency that hears the phrase “the public’s right to know” as the public’s right to “No”.

The writer is editor of Slate.com