For Congress, ‘it’s classified’ is new equivalent of ‘none of your business’

By Ali Watkins | McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reportedly gave its approval last week to an Obama administration plan to provide weapons to moderate rebels in Syria, but how individual members of the committee stood on the subject remains unknown.

There was no public debate and no public vote when one of the most contentious topics in American foreign policy was decided – outside of the view of constituents, who oppose the president’s plan to aid the rebels by 54 percent to 37 percent, according to a Gallup Poll last month.

In fact, ask individual members of the committee, who represent 117 million people in 14 states, how they stood on the plan to use the CIA to funnel weapons to the rebels and they are likely to respond with the current equivalent of “none of your business:” It’s classified.

Those were, in fact, the words Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chair of the committee, used when asked a few days before the approval was granted to clarify her position for her constituents. She declined. It’s a difficult situation, she said. And, “It’s classified.”

She was not alone. In a string of interviews over days, members of both the Senate intelligence committee or its equivalent in the House were difficult to pin down on their view of providing arms to the rebels. The senators and representatives said they couldn’t give an opinion, or at least a detailed one, because the matter was classified.

It’s an increasingly common stance that advocates of open government say undermines the very principle of a representative democracy.

“It’s like a pandemic in Washington, D.C., this idea that ‘I don’t have to say anything, I don’t have to justify anything, because I can say it’s secret,’” said Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute, a Washington-based libertarian think tank.

“Classified” has become less a safeguard for information and more a shield from accountability on tough subjects, said Steven Aftergood, the director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy.

“Classification can be a convenient pretext for avoiding difficult questions,” he said. “There’s a lot that can be said about Syria without touching on classified, including a statement of general principles, a delineation of possible military and diplomatic options, and a preference for one or the other of them. So to jump to ‘national security secrecy’ right off the bat looks like an evasion.”

Syria is not the only topic where public debate has been the exception because a matter was classified. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., spoke last week about the frustration he felt because he could not tell his constituents that he believed secret rulings from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had expanded the collection of telephone and Internet data far beyond what many in Congress thought they had authorized.

“Months and years went in to trying to find ways to raise public awareness about secret surveillance authorities within the confines of classification rules,” Wyden said at the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank. Had it not been for a leak of a secret court order on the collection of cellphone metadata by former National Security Agency contract worker Edward Snowden, the program might still be beyond discussion, Wyden noted.

But the classification barrier may not be as watertight as committee members make it out to be. Senate Resolution 400, which established the intelligence committee in 1976, has a section specifically devoted to committee oversight of the classification system, which is directed by the executive branch. If a member of the committee feels that classified information is of valid public interest, he or she can ask that it be declassified.

“The Select Committee may, subject to provisions of this section, disclose publicly any information in the possession of such committee after a determination by such committee that the public interest would be served by such a disclosure,” the resolution reads.

When Wyden was asked if he ever used that provision to attempt to get information declassified during his time on the committee, he said “I don’t know which specific provision you’re talking about.”

Certainly, trying to determine how individual committee members feel about Syria policy can be frustrating. Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Mark Warner, D-Va., refused to state a clear opinion, citing classification.

Others expressed general opinions, though they would say nothing about just what the Obama administration had proposed. Sometimes it was difficult to know from their comments if they were in favor or opposed. “I’m worried we’re behind the curve,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., “(We should get involved) only if we’re ahead of the curve.”

A rare exception was Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine. He spoke candidly about his personal views on American involvement. “We need to be involved to some extent in helping out the opposition,” he said. He called training an imperative, said anti-tank weapons need to be included in any arms shipments, and he hinted that the U.S. should consider strikes against some Syrian government resources, if that became necessary.

The answer didn’t reveal any details of the administration’s plans, but it did offer a clear picture of where he stood. Later, King explained what he thought were the rules about discussion of Syria.

“I think the specifics of the administration’s plan, and the specifics of the actions of the committee, are classified, and should remain confidential,” he said. As for members’ opinions, however, that’s not classified.

But, he said, “That’s their call” on whether to talk about it or not.

Harper, of the Cato Institute, said the tendency for lawmakers to cite classification also sheds light on a pattern of legislative deference to the executive branch, which determines what is and isn’t classified, that undercuts the concept of checks and balances.

“The government works because of a chain of oversight,” Harper said. “Secrecy gets in there and it breaks those chains. So the public can’t oversee Congress. Congress can’t oversee the executive branch. Within executive branch agencies, oversight breaks down. It’s utterly corrosive of democratic processes that we otherwise take for granted.”

Refusing to state an opinion on a classified matter robs people of the chance to objectively assess whether an elected official is representing their interests.

“Nobody’s opinion is classified,” said Aftergood. “There may be specific facts or details of either military operations or intelligence sources that are properly classified, but one’s opinion about current events or about preferred outcomes is absolutely not classified.

“And to say that it is is disingenuous or dishonest.”

I'm getting this disturbing feeling that the US is slipping towards fascism. And to think so many were concerned that Obama is a socialist.

Socialist or Fascist
Thomas Sowell | Jun 12, 2012

It bothers me a little when conservatives call Barack Obama a "socialist." He certainly is an enemy of the free market, and wants politicians and bureaucrats to make the fundamental decisions about the economy. But that does not mean that he wants government ownership of the means of production, which has long been a standard definition of socialism.

What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands. That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector.

Politically, it is heads-I-win when things go right, and tails-you-lose when things go wrong. This is far preferable, from Obama's point of view, since it gives him a variety of scapegoats for all his failed policies, without having to use President Bush as a scapegoat all the time.

Government ownership of the means of production means that politicians also own the consequences of their policies, and have to face responsibility when those consequences are disastrous -- something that Barack Obama avoids like the plague.

Thus the Obama administration can arbitrarily force insurance companies to cover the children of their customers until the children are 26 years old. Obviously, this creates favorable publicity for President Obama. But if this and other government edicts cause insurance premiums to rise, then that is something that can be blamed on the "greed" of the insurance companies.

The same principle, or lack of principle, applies to many other privately owned businesses. It is a very successful political ploy that can be adapted to all sorts of situations.

One of the reasons why both pro-Obama and anti-Obama observers may be reluctant to see him as fascist is that both tend to accept the prevailing notion that fascism is on the political right, while it is obvious that Obama is on the political left.

Back in the 1920s, however, when fascism was a new political development, it was widely -- and correctly -- regarded as being on the political left. Jonah Goldberg's great book "Liberal Fascism" cites overwhelming evidence of the fascists' consistent pursuit of the goals of the left, and of the left's embrace of the fascists as one of their own during the 1920s.

Mussolini, the originator of fascism, was lionized by the left, both in Europe and in America, during the 1920s. Even Hitler, who adopted fascist ideas in the 1920s, was seen by some, including W.E.B. Du Bois, as a man of the left.

It was in the 1930s, when ugly internal and international actions by Hitler and Mussolini repelled the world, that the left distanced themselves from fascism and its Nazi offshoot -- and verbally transferred these totalitarian dictatorships to the right, saddling their opponents with these pariahs.

What socialism, fascism and other ideologies of the left have in common is an assumption that some very wise people -- like themselves -- need to take decisions out of the hands of lesser people, like the rest of us, and impose those decisions by government fiat.

The left's vision is not only a vision of the world, but also a vision of themselves, as superior beings pursuing superior ends. In the United States, however, this vision conflicts with a Constitution that begins, "We the People..."

That is why the left has for more than a century been trying to get the Constitution's limitations on government loosened or evaded by judges' new interpretations, based on notions of "a living Constitution" that will take decisions out of the hands of "We the People," and transfer those decisions to our betters.

The self-flattery of the vision of the left also gives its true believers a huge ego stake in that vision, which means that mere facts are unlikely to make them reconsider, regardless of what evidence piles up against the vision of the left, and regardless of its disastrous consequences.

Only our own awareness of the huge stakes involved can save us from the rampaging presumptions of our betters, whether they are called socialists or fascists. So long as we buy their heady rhetoric, we are selling our birthright of freedom.

While I, too, feel that our Grand Experiment has been a failure on many fronts, that article is the biggest POS I've read in long time. Sowell makes Glenn Beck seem smart and credible, and Beck makes a fence post seem like a Rhodes Scholar.

Fish on...

Todd

Todd, you often exibit an interesting perspective. However you might consider Mr. Sowell's history and credentials before making such a rash comment, but that would be truly unexpected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell

Sowell's credentials are those of an ultra-right wing laissez-faire economist. His standing with the Hoover Institute and Chicago School of Economics is consistent with that. So Todd's characterization of Sowell as not smart is off base, but labeling the article as a POS is a fair opinion. Sowell stretches, if not distorting, the meanings to make it fit his negative opinion of Obama. Sowell asserts that Obama is moving toward government control of the economy. That's a jingoistic allegation. Obama lacks the power to generate that movement. Why? Because Obama has the exact same cadre of sonsabitches running the economy that Bush/Cheney did and Clinton, Bush, Reagan before that.

I see however, that I was mistaken about facism. I mistakenly thought facism was gov't. in bed with business, or in contemporary terms, in bed with multi-national corporate conglomorates. I find odd humor with writers like Sowell who are all about the money, and can be so anti-Obama, but so pro-Bush or Reagan, when it is the same reprobates running the national economy regardless of which puppet leader occupies the White House.

So I don't know what form of gov't. we have. It ain't a democracy. It ain't a democratic republic. And apparently it ain't facist. It looks like it is mutlti-national corporatist, where corporations are persons and can buy elections, and can steer the national, if not global, economy independent of Republicans and Democrats.

I think we in WA state should reserect the 1970s OWL party and throw the rascals out.

Sg

Interesting ultimate libertarian concept there FP.

What is a "fair opinion"?
Could a thinking, reasonable person actually believe that the essay in question is a POS.



jin·go·ism (j ng g-z m) n. Extreme nationalism characterized especially by a belligerent foreign policy; chauvinistic patriotism. jin go·ist n. jin go·is tic adj.

Perhaps you're using a colloquial interpretation.



I do not know what you mean about Sowell being "all about the money" What would you expect from an economist? The man has come from dirt poor. And I believe that Thomas Sowell, truly believes in capitalism and it's ability to bring upward mobility to those inclined to participate. In his youth he was a Marxist, and saw the problems inherent in that ideology. He had the ability to reassess his position, and now that he has seen the light, and has a stump, he uses it to bring forward the concepts that he truly believes in.

Respectfully.

I know damn well who Sowell is, and anyone with a computer and five minutes can debunk most of what he ever says.

Corporate profits are at an all time high, and continue to rise every day...it's not rash at all to say that he is completely fullofshit and that only a fool would just take what he says about Obama being "anti-business" as anything but utter drivel.

Virtually everything that Obama has done is recycled Republican policy on the business front, and goes farther than the venerable paragon of Conservatism, Ronald Reagan, ever went with it...Republicans just don't like it now because a Black Socialist Kenyan Muslim is doing it now, and doing it better than they ever did.

Fish on...

Todd

You are beating a dead horse (unless you are a Republican legislator, at least)...why didn't you post all the headlines from CA and NY where everyone was "surprised" to find that the premiums are going down, sometimes as much as 50%?

This whole conversation is just based on hate of Obama, and is virtually factless...like Sowell, and blackmouth, and you, too, Hank.

Fish on...

Todd

The single thing that has continue to be "bad for business" is that the income gap continues to make recovery slower for the very people that need to spend money with those businesses...of course it's the very owners of those businesses who are shooting themselves in the foot on that one, not the President.

How about instead of posting easily debunked stupid opinions, and changing the subject as you usually do, you post up some things that shows how Obama is against the free market, and has been bad for business.

Not opinions from partisan hacks like Sowell, but facts...you know, those things that you right wingers usually ignore when forming your opinions?

Where's corporate America losing money? Where are Obama's policies being "anti-free market"?

Fish on...

Todd

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/stories/2013/may/24/calif-health-insurance-exchange-marketplace.aspx

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-17...ndividuals.html

This conversation is not about healthcare costs for consumers (an argument that you lose handily, anyway)...it's about Sowell's assertion that Obama is anti-free market and bad for business.

That assertion is a bald-faced lie perpetuated by clowns and sheep who ignore facts and just keep saying it over and over again because they saw it on Fox News and it feeds their hatred of Obama to believe it, even if it is patently untrue and they know it.

Fish on...

Todd

Actually I posted the essay in response to the statement by Salmo g. that is quoted above, and as the title of the essay, "Socialist or Fascist" would imply, that is in fact what the essay is about.

Todd, your assertions are in fact baseless, and just plain silly, so as usual you try to lend your credence to your views by using bluster and insults.

I have a question for you. How can a seemingly intelligent man be so unreasonable?

When you were a child, how many times did you mistakenly drink anti freeze thinking it was Kool-Ade?

I'm just wondering how tuned in to the world of business Hank and the Reverend really are.

Do you guys actually know anything about business operations and what's changed since Obama took office, or are you just parroting the talking points you've heard?

You know what I've noticed for change? Hardly anything.

I hear lots of squeaking and squealing, but I haven't noticed anything significant that is different now than it was before Obama took office.

So you aren't going to answer then?

How much do you figure some economist knows about the mechanics of business operations now versus when Obama wasn't in office? I'm betting they don't have a clue.

This economist says fascism is a left wing ideology. Really?

Nice C&P Hank but there are many other sources that see it quite differently. Unlike you, I'm not going to bother with the C&Ps.I figure those who want to can look it up.

Dan S. I don't really understand how this thread morphed, but if you really want to know, here you are. I ran my own small business for 35 years, and now watching big business has become somewhat of a (hobby).

President Obama has been good for much of big business, but he is not a free market capitalist, as he wants to pick the winners and the losers.

Here is what Michael F Cannon has to say about the ACA and its effect on small business.

http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/obamacare-burden-small-business

You are half right - which is an improvement! I did NOT read what he said in an attempt to twist his view to fit reality. I do know he's full O shait when he tries to call fascism a left wing ideology.


fas·cism
/ˈfaSHizəm/
Noun
An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.
(in general use) Extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practice.