Rumsfeld on Openness

From WSJ via FAS Secrecy News is the following:

"I have long believed in the importance of granting the public greater access to information about their government–the good and the bad," wrote Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a Wall Street Journal opinion article this week, noting that he had co-sponsored the Freedom of Information Act as a member of Congress in 1966.

He wrote of the challenges of informing the public in "this new Information Age," and observed that "a healthy culture of communication and transparency between government and the public needs to be established."

"This openness, however, does not obviate the necessity of protecting the secrecy of confidential information that, if revealed, could harm the security of the U.S."

"While I have long believed that too much material is classified across the federal government as a general rule, an increasingly cavalier attitude towards sensitive information in various quarters can put the lives of our troops at correspondingly increasing risk."

During Secretary Rumsfeld’s tenure, a growing quantity of formerly public information has been withdrawn from public access.

MediaChannel.org has the complete 18 July 2005 article.