The Truth-Telling Project, a higher loyalty
It is becoming increasingly clear that a dominant theme of the Bush administration is cover-up on urgent matters of life and death. Cover-up of the real motives for the war in Iraq and of the foreseeable costs and problems of the occupation. Cover-up of Presidential inattention before 9/11 to warnings of imminent attacks by Al Qaeda. Above all, concealment of the judgment of the Administration�s own counter-terrorism chiefs that war in Iraq is a disaster for the war on terrorism. Illegitimate silence about these matters has cost American lives, and threatens many more. It is time for truth-telling.
Such cover-ups are both a necessity for this Administration given its past lies and errors and a vulnerability. They conceal facts that cry out urgently for policy change, and for regime change in Washington. They rely on a secrecy system supposedly intended to protect national security, but which actually operates to undermine both our democracy and security, by concealing embarrassing or incriminating information from Congress and the electorate. The latest dramatic example is the classification of investigative reports and photographs on torture at Abu Ghraib prison, which would still be unknown to the public were it not for their unauthorized disclosure
Thanks to the First Amendment, our nation does not have a broad Official Secrets Act criminalizing all leaks, including unauthorized disclosures of governmental deception, corruption, crime, cover-up, incompetence, and disregard for the Constitution and for American lives. The Project recognizes and respects the secrecy laws now in place to protect narrow areas of highly sensitive information about weapons design, communications intelligence and the identity of intelligence agents. We oppose leaks � which, incomprehensibly, Bush administration officials have made repeatedly in the past year � that violate these criminal laws.
link Ben Davies/Katherine Gun interview BBC News/Common Dreams 16.Sep.04
