Transcript
Press Freedom
September 6, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: As the government seeks to choke off the flow of information to potential terrorists, press freedom activists are concerned that these efforts to preserve secrecy may go too far. For instance in mid-October, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a memo telling government officials that if there were any sound legal basis for denying Freedom of Information Act or FOIA requests, the Justice Department would support them. And now the House and Senate are debating whether to exempt another class of information from disclosure under the act. Joining me now to discuss this is Scott Armstrong, a Washington journalist and founder of the National Security Archive which indexes and makes available declassified documents. Scott, welcome back to the show.
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: It's good to be here again.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And Justice Department spokesperson Barbara Comstock. Barbara, welcome to the show.
BARBARA COMSTOCK: Good to be here.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: There was a time when the government's default mode was to release information unless they could prove that disclosure would harm national security. Now it seems to be up to the person who wants the information to prove that it won't! So, Barbara, what did Ashcroft intend with that memo?
BARBARA COMSTOCK: Sure. Well, it's important to understand that that memo did not change anything in the FOIA Law. We are fortunate to have experts who have been here for 20 years and watched the operation of FOIA, and I think they would tell you that there's no marked difference in the day to day disclosure; that there is not a fundamental change in what is being disclosed. All we are asking people is -- you know, in light of the circumstances now - and in - just in general to consider, you know, the impact that this might have on government operations, and that's some-- it's just sort of a, a caution, and, and it really goes to discretionary disclosures.
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: I think Barbara's brought us to, to exactly the point which is: government disclosure and openness is a discretionary matter. It takes-- a very patient person to get anything under the Freedom of Information Act by litigating for it. You get it because there's a tendency in the government at career levels to want to let the public know what they're doing. Our concerns have to do with the normal governmental food chain of information where the public and public interest groups and the press are allowed to ask questions and get more information and begin to make the government accountable. That's where we're beginning to develop our concerns. Part of it came from where - what happened recently in the Homeland Security Act.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Okay, you're talking about the debate now on Capitol Hill over whether to include in the Homeland Security Act a measure that would allow people to report voluntarily any kind of weakness in our infrastructure -- dams, pipelines, power plants -- without that information being subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. It's exempted.
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: Yes. The House has passed a version that has fairly sweeping provisions that would allow industry, local officials, state officials --a wide variety of people -- to report information which would them be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. It's the first time we've really had a situation where the Freedom of Information Act doesn't apply to a category of material like that doesn't get compared to some standard --to see whether or not it can be released. We don't want a terrorist to know that if you put one stick of dynamite in this particular spot at the chemical plant, you can blow up the plant and cause an entire city to be wiped out. Obviously we don't want that. On the other hand, if everything that's dangerous becomes something that can be withheld, then we don't learn about the Love Canals; we don't learn about these toxic brews. Superfund sites become things we don't know about. The unscrupulous factory foreman who's dumping pollutants into the river can say well, I can't tell you any more about that because if people knew how easy it was to dump pollutants in the river, then the terrorists could come dump pollutants in the river. Everything becomes rationalized as being secret.
BARBARA COMSTOCK: Well I think in, in that -- my understanding of that and, and I - since it is Homeland Security [...?...] don't have the knowledge as much as our own department, but-- if a company or people were going to voluntarily turn these things over, they don't want then this voluntary action that they're taking to then somehow be used against them in some type of way.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Well Barbara we've seen that state and local governments have been taking cues from the federal government and, considering anti-terrorism legislation that would exempt all sort of quote/unquote "sensitive information." If that's the case, how can the watchdogs, namely public interest groups, do their job if information about water supplies and utility plants is suddenly off limits?
BARBARA COMSTOCK: Well I think they're always going to be taken on a case by case basis. What you have going on here in all these situations is -- just be careful out there. There's always been a national security exemption on FOIA, and hopefully people were being careful with those things before.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Scott?
SCOTT ARMSTRONG:The, the fact of the matter is that most environmental activities that become the subject of a change in policy or get cleaned up are brought to the attention of the government by citizens who are monitoring what plants and local facilities do. That's precisely the kind of information which could easily be hidden by a voluntary disclosure. Now eventually that'll be considered an abuse, and you're going to get something. But there could be years involved! When you start creating this kind of a-- fabric of secrecy that you're weaving and allow other people to weave, it could be woven by any particular part of the bureaucracy or any, any of the many corporations that have things that are dangerous. So the equation becomes anything that's dangerous is potentially used by terrorists; therefore anything relating to it -- and you could be very creative and make that very broad -- can be held as a secret.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay. Thanks to you both.
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: Thank you.
BARBARA COMSTOCK: Okay. Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Journalist Scott Armstrong is the founder of the National Security Archive and Barbara Comstock is spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice. [MUSIC]