Freedom of Information and Full Disclosure

As many of my readers know, I have a special affinity for government documents and the torture debate. Today, I get to talk about both of these items in one post. Lucky me. As you may (or may not) know, the ACLU has been suing the government under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain and publicize the decision-making and policy regarding the use of torture. As a result, the feds have grudgingly agreed to release certain secret documents into the public domain. The ACLU has a directory of the ones they have received relating to torture here. Before spending too much time reviewing these documents, we must remember that the point of the FOIA is to provide transparency in government operations to the public. They work for us, after all (at least, that's what our founding documents say). With that in mind, take a look at one of the most amusing "de-classified" documents in history: Yup, it's not even fake. Exactly 6 words are readable - These enhanced techniques include: Water board. One does not need to be particularly insightful to see what is going on: the feds are hiding information. The only reason the water board part is not redacted as well is that the CIA has already publicly admitted doing it. This type of "response" is truly unacceptable. Lest we think that the above document is an outlier, see this document. It is supposed to be a memo from a CIA employee to a CIA attorney. The document is 4 pages long, and includes exactly 7 uncensored words. 3 of the pages are blatantly withheld, "Denied in Full". Or perhaps, this 10-page document that is so completely edited that we can only see that Zubaydah was captured in a raid, waterboarded, some folks were briefed and tapes were reviewed. Incidentally, I make a major assumption in using the past tense here, due to the fact that the document's date is removed, and the context of the reading does not suggest that this was written after the event. This could just as easily be a planning document, used to determine what would be done when the raid and capture of Zubaydah was enacted. Who knows?