Download or read book Secrecy in the Bush Administration written by Siegfried D. Barone and published by Nova Publishers. This book was released on 2007 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Open and accountable government is one of the bedrock principles of our democracy. Yet, virtually since inauguration day, questions have been raised about the Bush Administration's commitment to this principle. News articles and reports by independent groups over the last four years have identified a growing series of instances where the Administration has sought to operate without public or congressional scrutiny. At the request of Rep. Henry A Waxman, this report is a comprehensive examination of secrecy in the Bush Administration. It analyses how the Administration has implemented each of our nation's major open government laws. The report finds that there has been a consistent pattern in the Administration's actions: laws that are designed to promote public access to information have been undermined, while laws that authorise the government to withhold information or to operate in secret have repeatedly been expanded. The cumulative result is an unprecedented assault on the principle of open government.
Download or read book Secrecy in the Bush administration written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Reform. Special Investigations Division and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Secrecy in the Bush Administration written by United States House of Representatives and published by International Law & Taxation Pub. This book was released on 2004-12-01 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Open and accountable government is one of the bedrock principles of our democracy. Yet virtually since inauguration day, questions have been raised about the Bush Administration's commitment to this principle. News articles and reports by independent groups over the last four years have identified a growing series of instances where the Administration has sought to operate without public or congressional scrutiny. At the request of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, this report is a comprehensive examination of secrecy in the Bush Administration. It analyzes how the Administration has implemented each of our nation's major open government laws. The report finds that there has been a consistent pattern in the Administration's actions: laws that are designed to promote public access to information have been undermined, while laws that authorize the government to withhold information or to operate in secret have repeatedly been expanded. The cumulative result is an unprecedented assault on the principle of open government. The Administration has supported amendments to open government laws to create new categories of protected information that can be withheld from the public. President Bush has issued an executive order sharply restricting the public release of the papers of past presidents. The Administration has expanded the authority to classify documents and dramatically increased the number of documents classified. It has used the USA Patriot Act and novel legal theories to justify secret investigations, detentions, and trials. And the Administration has engaged in litigation to contest Congress' right to information. The records at issue have covered a vast array of topics, ranging from simple census data and routine agency correspondence to presidential and vice presidential records. Among the documents that the Administration has refused to release to the public and members of Congress are (1) the contacts between energy companies and the Vice President's energy task force, (2) the communications between the Defense Department and the Vice President's office regarding contracts awarded to Halliburton, (3) documents describing the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib, (4) memoranda revealing what the White House knew about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and (5) the cost estimates of the Medicare prescription drug legislation withheld from Congress. There are three main categories of federal open government laws: (1) laws that provide public access to federal records; (2) laws that allow the government to restrict public access to federal information; and (3) laws that provide for congressional access to federal records. In each area, the Bush Administration has acted to restrict the amount of government information that is available.
Download or read book On Restoring Open Government written by Committee of Government Reform and published by Cosimo, Inc.. This book was released on 2005-11-01 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Open and accountable government is one of the bedrock principles of our democracy. Yet virtually since Inauguration Day, questions have been raised about the Bush Administration's commitment to this principle. News articles and reports by independent groups over the last four years have identified a growing series of instances where the Administration has sought to operate without public or congressional scrutiny.[t]he Bush Administration has acted to restrict the amount of government information that is available."- Executive Summary, Secrecy in the Bush AdministrationProduced at the request of Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), this report is a comprehensive examination of secrecy in the Bush Administration. It analyzes how the Administration has implemented our nation's major open government laws - yet have worked consistently to undermine them.The information contained in ON RESTORING OPEN GOVERNMENT: Secrecy in the Bush Administration covers a wide assortment of topics from restricting the public release of the papers of past presidents to expansion of the authority to classify documents to the dramatic increase in the number of documents classified.Among the documents the Bush Administration have classified and refused to release to the public and members of Congress include: .Contact between energy companies and Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force.Communications between the Defense Department and the Vice President's office about contracts awarded to Halliburton.Documents describing the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib and the military's related actions.Information regarding what The White House knew about Iraq's weapons of mass destructionIncluded is a section relating to Restoring Open Government (H.R. Bill 5073) proposed in September 2004 by Rep. Henry A. Waxman and referred to The Committee on Government Reform.
Download or read book Absolute Friends written by John le Carré and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2004-01-12 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, Mundy is a down-at-the-heels tour guide in southern Germany, dodging creditors, supporting a new family, and keeping an eye out for trouble while in spare moments vigorously questioning the actions of the country he once bravely served. And trouble finds him, as it has before, in the shape of an old German student friend, radical, and onetime fellow spy, the crippled Sasha, seeker after absolutes, dreamer, and chaos addict. After years of trawling the Middle East and Asia as an itinerant university lecturer, Sasha has yet again discovered the true, the only, answer to life-this time in the form of a mysterious billionaire philanthropist named Dimitri. Thanks to Dimitri, both Mundy and Sasha will find a path out of poverty, and with it their chance to change a world that both believe is going to the devil. Or will they? Who is Dimitri? Why does Dimitri's gold pour in from mysterious Middle Eastern bank accounts? And why does his apparently noble venture reek less of starry idealism than of treachery and fear? Some gifts are too expensive to accept. Could this be one of them? With a cooler head than Sasha's, Mundy is inclined to think it could. In Absolute Friends, John le Carre delivers the masterpiece he has been building to since the fall of communism: an epic tale of loyalty and betrayal that spans the lives of two friends from the riot-torn West Berlin of the 1960s to the grimy looking-glass of Cold War Europe to the present day of terrorism and new alliances. This is the novel le Carre fans have been waiting for, a brilliant, ferocious, heartbreaking work for the ages.
Download or read book Secrecy in the Bush Administration written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Reform. Special Investigations Division and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Secrecy Privilege written by Robert Parry and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing investigative leads back through three decades, Secrecy & Privilege explores the mystery of how the two George Bushes rose to the pinnacle of American political power -- and what the rise of their dynasty has meant to the nation's democratic principles. [book cover].
Download or read book The Secrets of the Kingdom written by Hugh B. Urban and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2007 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Secrets of the Kingdom is the first book to critically examine the complex relationship between faith and concealment in the Bush White House.
Download or read book State of War written by James Risen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With relentless media coverage, breathtaking events, and extraordinary congressional and independent investigations, it is hard to believe that we might not know some of the most significant facts about the presidency of George W. Bush. Yet beneath the surface events of the Bush presidency lies a secret history -- a series of hidden events that makes a mockery of many of the stories on the surface. This hidden history involves domestic spying, abuses of power, and outrageous operations. It includes a CIA that became caught in a political crossfire it could not withstand, even against the wishes of the commander-in-chief. It features a president who created a sphere of deniability, in which his top aides were briefed on matters of the utmost sensitivity -- but the president was carefully kept in ignorance. STATE OF WAR reveals this hidden history for the first time, including scandals that will redefine the Bush presidency.
Download or read book Worse Than Watergate written by John W. Dean and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2004-04-06 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Former White House counsel and bestselling author John Dean reveals how the Bush White House has set America back decades -- employing a worldview and tactics of deception that he claims will do more damage to the nation than Nixon at his worst.
Download or read book Presidential Secrecy and the Law written by Robert M. Pallitto and published by Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM. This book was released on 2007-05-01 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look at how U.S. presidents from Truman to George W. Bush employed secrecy and how it has affected the presidency and the American government. State secrets, warrantless investigations and wiretaps, signing statements, executive privilege?the executive branch wields many tools for secrecy. Since the middle of the twentieth century, presidents have used myriad tactics to expand and maintain a level of executive branch power unprecedented in this nation’s history. Most people believe that some degree of governmental secrecy is necessary. But how much is too much? At what point does withholding information from Congress, the courts, and citizens abuse the public trust? How does the nation reclaim rights that have been controlled by one branch of government? With Presidential Secrecy and the Law, Robert M. Pallitto and William G. Weaver attempt to answer these questions by examining the history of executive branch efforts to consolidate power through information control. They find the nation’s democracy damaged and its Constitution corrupted by staunch information suppression, a process accelerated when “black sites,” “enemy combatants,” and “ghost detainees” were added to the vernacular following the September 11, 2001, terror strikes. Tracing the current constitutional dilemma from the days of the imperial presidency to the unitary executive embraced by the administration of George W. Bush, Pallitto and Weaver reveal an alarming erosion of the balance of power. Presidential Secrecy and the Law will be the standard in presidential powers studies for years to come. “The well-organized and clearly written book illustrates the way the president’s use of document classification and state-secrets privilege to solidify presidential control are reinforced by legal decisions sympathetic to presidential power.” —Chronicle of Higher Education
Download or read book Executive Privilege written by Mark J. Rozell and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an in-depth history and analysis of executive privilege from President Nixon to President Obama, and its relation to the proper scope and limits of presidential power.
Download or read book The President s Book of Secrets written by David Priess and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every president has had a unique and complicated relationship with the intelligence community. While some have been coolly distant, even adversarial, others have found their intelligence agencies to be among the most valuable instruments of policy and power. Since John F. Kennedy's presidency, this relationship has been distilled into a personalized daily report: a short summary of what the intelligence apparatus considers the most crucial information for the president to know that day about global threats and opportunities. This top–secret document is known as the President's Daily Brief, or, within national security circles, simply “the Book.” Presidents have spent anywhere from a few moments (Richard Nixon) to a healthy part of their day (George W. Bush) consumed by its contents; some (Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush) consider it far and away the most important document they saw on a regular basis while commander in chief. The details of most PDBs are highly classified, and will remain so for many years. But the process by which the intelligence community develops and presents the Book is a fascinating look into the operation of power at the highest levels. David Priess, a former intelligence officer and daily briefer, has interviewed every living president and vice president as well as more than one hundred others intimately involved with the production and delivery of the president's book of secrets. He offers an unprecedented window into the decision making of every president from Kennedy to Obama, with many character–rich stories revealed here for the first time.
Download or read book Family of Secrets written by Russ Baker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-05-01 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Shocking in its disclosures, elegantly crafted, and faultlessly measured in its judgments."-Roger Morris, author of Richard Milhous Nixon and Partners in Power How did the deeply flawed George W. Bush ascend to the highest office in the nation, what forces abetted his rise, and-perhaps most important-were those forces really vanquished by Obama's election? Award-winning investigative journalist Russ Baker gives us the answers in Family of Secrets, a compelling and startling new take on the Bush dynasty and the shadowy elite that has quietly steered the American republic for the past half century and more. Baker shows how this network of figures in intelligence, the military, oil, and finance enabled-and in turn benefited handsomely from-the Bushes' perch at the highest levels of government. As Baker reveals, this deeply entrenched elite remains in power regardless of who sits in the Oval Office. Family of Secrets offers countless disclosures that challenge the conventional accounts of such central events as the JFK assassination and Watergate. It includes an inside account of George W.'s cynical religious conversion and the untold real background to the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina. Baker's narrative is gripping, sobering, and deeply sourced. It will change the way we understand not just the Bush years, but a half century of postwar history-and the present.
Download or read book Unchecked And Unbalanced written by Schwarz O. and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2011-05-10 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty years after the Church Committee unearthed COINTELPRO and other instances of illicit executive behavior on the domestic and international fronts, the Bush administration has elevated the flaws identified by the committee into first principles of government. Through a constellation of non-public laws and opaque, unaccountable institutions, the current administration has created a “secret presidency” run by classified presidential decisions and orders about national security. A hyperactive Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice is intent on eliminating checks on presidential power and testing that power’s limits. Decisions are routinely executed at senior levels within the civilian administration without input from Congress or the federal courts, let alone our international allies. Secret NSA spying at home is the most recent of these. Harsh treatment of detainees, “extraordinary renditions,” secret foreign prisons, and the newly minted enemy combatant designation have also undermined our values. The resulting policies have harmed counterterrorism efforts and produced few tangible results. With a partisan Congress predictably reluctant to censure a politically aligned president, it is all the more important for citizens themselves to demand disclosure, oversight, and restraint of sweeping claims of executive power. This book is the first step.
Download or read book Presidents Secrets written by Mary Graham and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since the nation's most important secret meeting--the Constitutional Convention--presidents have struggled to balance open, accountable government with necessary secrecy in military affairs and negotiations. For the first one hundred and twenty years, a culture of open government persisted, but new threats and technology have long since shattered the old bargains. Today, presidents neither protect vital information nor provide the open debate Americans expect.
Download or read book Executive Privilege written by Mark J. Rozell and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on White House and congressional documents as well as on personal interviews, Mark Rozell provides both a historical overview of executive privilege and an explanation of its importance in the political process. He argues for a return to a pre-Watergate understanding of the role of executive privilege.
