Obama Administration Backs Bush White House on Cheney Interview

Obama's justice department recently drew up a justification for indefinite detention. Obama's justice department has delayed the release of the CIA's torture report. And now Obama's justice department is continuing to use Bush rationales to further secrecy in the Obama administration. Peacenik guesses that Obama is discovering openness and transparency is a little messy. Peacenik guesses that Obama is becoming very comfortable in an imperial presidency. And Peacenik guesses that Obama is looking at his own, and his administration's behaviour in the various financial bailouts, and is thinking a little bit of secrecy might help in case there is any criminal liability. But Peacenik doesn't know why Obama is bothering. The U.S. stopped being a country governed by the rule of law long ago.

by David Corn

WASHINGTON - When it comes to the Bush White House's decision to withhold from the public Dick Cheney's interview with FBI agents investigating the CIA leak case, the Obama administration says its predecessor did the right thing. And it's fighting hard to do the same.

On Wednesday night, in another move that puts the administration on the side of secrecy over openness, Obama's Justice Department filed a memo supporting its ongoing opposition to a lawsuit requesting the release of the Cheney interview. This memo included a declaration from Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who said that if the Cheney interview is made public it could cause public officials in the future to not cooperate with criminal investigations.

Breuer, who heads the department's criminal division, noted:

Read on...

Secrecy is a nasty virus that can lay low the body politic

by Lloyd Axworthy

Global Research,

theglobeandmail.com

Canada's former Minister of Foreign Affairs Speaks Out

There is a disturbing virus settling into Ottawa. Let's call it the Spreading Northern Security Plague, a variation of a virulent strain of illegal counterterrorism practices imported from the Bush White House. Its symptoms were first detected in the Maher Arar case, where a Canadian was sent off to be tortured in a Syrian jail. Only years later was an inquiry established, presided over by a courageous judge who blew the whistle on such nefarious practices by our security forces.

But by then, the disease had become embedded in the body politic of successive governments with all the signs of a well-established syndrome in which security trumps human rights, international covenants can be disregarded, commissions of inquiry can be secretive and dismissive of rule and procedure, and vital information on crucial issues such as the transfer of Afghan detainees is deliberately withheld.

And now, we learn of Abousfian Abdelrazik, a Sudanese Canadian who was imprisoned in Khartoum, allegedly at the request of CSIS, and who has been stranded in the country for nearly five years. That the Canadian government, knowing full well the egregious human-rights record of the Sudanese regime, would leave one of its citizens marooned in the Sudan, is inexplicable.

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punditman says...

As soon as the State has the right to apprehend you without charges or a fair trial, as soon as they can act in the name of "national security" without oversight or transparency, as soon as they can send you on a "rendition" flight, well, you have lost your freedom, buddy boy. And here's an elementary civics lesson: a violation to one is a violation to all. Too bad they don't teach this in Canadian schools, because we now see the result: where there should be outrage and solidarity, there is mostly silence.

Good for Mr. Axworthy for speaking up.