During the past eight years, but especially since the 9/11 attacks, we have seen the federal government’s perpetual penchant for secrecy grow beyond justification. Librarians in Connecticut received a National Security Letter and couldn’t even tell their spouses. Documents long available to the public in the National Archives have been reclassified and are no longer available to researchers. The White House “misplaced” thousands and thousands of emails. And on and on...
Several days before we meet in Denver in January 2009 at the Midwinter Meeting a new president of the United States will take the oath of office. For my President’s Program in Denver I plan to have a speaker who is an expert on openness and secrecy in government. That speaker will recap the growth of secrecy in recent years and offer a prescription for restoring open access to government information that has unreasonably been withheld from the people that government should serve.