Secrecy no basis for democracy
By Michael A. Smith
The Daily News
Published November 14, 2009
Disappearing people has become so fashionable among government agencies in this country we may soon be forced to pull down the Stars and Stripes and choose some other flag; one modeled after Argentina’s or Bulgaria’s perhaps.
Take two recent examples.
First, former federal Judge Samuel B. Kent, who was convicted in May of obstructing justice and sentenced to 33 months in prison, was moved last week from Devens Federal Medical Center in Ayers, Mass., to somewhere in Florida. Citing security, Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman Joellyn Rackleff refused to provide details about where Kent is housed.
The people of United States convicted Kent. The people will pay his room and board for the 33 months. The people have a right to know whether he’s being kept at the bottom of a dry well with a bag over his head, at a country club mocked up to look vaguely like a prison or at some place between those extremes.
It has gotten far too easy for even fourth-tier bureaucrats to deny such fundamental rights by invoking some ephemeral security concern. None of our rights is safe when that’s allowed.
Even more troubling, a pair of FBI agents appeared in Galveston early this week and disappeared with Clayton Eric Claflin, 37, a homeless man who had been locked up for criminal trespassing and had sent some weird letters to a judge and an official at the housing authority.
In response to such reasonable questions as “Where did you take Claflin, why and under what authority?” Darrell Foxworth, a San Diego FBI spokesman, offered answers as creepy as anything George Orwell might have dreamed up.
“It is not appropriate for the FBI to confirm or deny the existence of investigations, absent certain circumstances,” Foxworth said in an e-mail.
“Our investigations are conducted in accordance with Department of Justice guidelines to ensure fairness, confidentiality and integrity of all aspects of investigations as much as possible.”
That translates to: Trust us, we’re from the government.
That’s good enough for some people. They assume themselves to be among the chosen, forever and ever, amen.
Students of history know that’s a risky assumption.
Other people demand better. Those like the country’s founders who preferred guaranteed rights over the crap-shoot variety, for example.
Government’s instinctive desire to operate secretly seldom has anything to do with legitimate security concerns. It more often is in service to the strongest bureaucratic instinct of all, self preservation.
Secrecy is handy. It allows governments to hide their mistakes and highlight their successes. It’s good for everything except the maintenance of democracy.
Copyright © 2009 The Galveston County Daily News
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