Weekly column: "In the name of national security"

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://news.com.com/2010-1028_3-5101121.html

In the name of national security
November 3, 2003, 6:37 AM PT
By Declan McCullagh

Nobody likes to be criticized in public, especially all those politicians 
in Washington who fervently hope to be re-elected.

But the Bush administration has taken the desire to avoid critical 
commentary to an extreme. In incident after troubling incident, federal 
agencies have been quietly censoring information that previously had been 
available on their Web sites and otherwise curbing public oversight.

About a week ago, the U.S. Army surreptitiously pulled the plug on one of 
its more popular Web sites, call.army.mil, after The Washington Post wrote 
about a report that had been posted on it.

The Post's October 25 article said "the U.S. military intelligence 
gathering operation in Iraq is being undercut by a series of problems in 
using technology, training intelligence specialists and managing them in 
the field," citing the report prepared by the Center for Army Lessons 
Learned at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. The report, which the Post had the 
foresight to mirror on its own Web site, talked about the "poor quality" of 
mission planning and "marginally effective" training for certain reserve 
troops.

The report was not classified. It was merely a sober analysis of the Army's 
problems in Iraq. It had the ring of truth to it, unlike Defense Secretary 
Donald Rumsfeld's appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, which he 
used to blandly reassure viewers. "We can win this war. We will win this 
war," he said.

[...]
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