Hill-White House secrecy battle continues

By Max Cacas
FederalNewsRadio

Ever since 9/11, the White House and Congress have been locked in a tug of war over legal opinions from the Justice Department regarding matters of surveillance, detention, and national security. A D.C.-based watchdog group that keeps a close eye on secrecy in the Nation’s Capital is out with a status report on that struggle.

The Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy has a new report, posted on their website, FAS.org, noting that access to legal opinions from the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) are still the most hotly sought after pieces of paper in Washington by Congressional watchdogs, and they are still the most tightly held by the White House.

As an example: the Justice Department has only recently released a copy of a 2001 opinion issued by the OLC called “The Legality of the Use of Military Commissions To Try Terrorists”, a document that reportedly lays the legal groundwork for the Bush Administration’s much-criticized decision to use military tribunals to determine the guilt or innocence of enemy combatants captured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The document has been promised to the Senate Judiciary Committee for years. Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy (D.), the chairman of the panel, had originally requested that opinion in a June 2004 memo to then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Chairman Leahy minces no words in charging that the Justice Department “went back on its word” that they would make the OLC documents public. Instead, he says, they are offering committee staff an opportunity to review the documents at the Justice Department.

The Washington Post recently reported that on December 3rd, Attorney General Michael Mukasey issued a ruling saying that OLC opinions may be withheld from the Obama transition team until the new Administration takes office on January 20th, 2009, because the documents are, as they call them, “privileged”, or “because of their high classification level”.

For his part, Senator Leahy says “the Bush Administration talks about working together, but they care more about continuing their secretive practices.” And he tells the FAS Secrecy Project that he looks forward to “having a Justice Department team in place as soon as possible so we can peel back the layers of secrecy that have defined this administration.”

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On the Web:
Federation of American Scientists – Project on Government Secrecy blog
Justice Dept. – The Legality of the Use of Military Commissions To Try Terrorists (pdf)
FAS – Senator Leahy’s response to the release of the Justice Dept. 2001 opinion.

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