Seattle Press on Line - Bush's Push for a Secret Government

Jim Hightower

Jim Hightower

Bush's Push for a Secret Government

By Jim Hightower

Aug 01, 2002 -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft are the Four Horsemen of Autocracy, passionate practitioners of secretive, executive government.

No surprise, since this is the way things are done in the corporate world, which all four spent their careers serving. This is a world of closed doors, where CEOs wield autocratic power and withhold as much information as they can from the public, the media, regulators, investors, workers, auditors, and even their own boards of directors. The self-serving, clandestine machinations within Enron, WorldCom, and the rest are not anomalies--such is the prevailing ethos of today's executive suite.

Secrecy also is now the prevailing ethos of the White House: There's the secret government that Bush established; the constant refusal to release public records, including the administration's contacts with Enron and Halliburton; Bush's attempts to hide his father's presidential records and his own gubernatorial papers from public view; the secret war on terrorism, complete with secret arrests and closed military tribunals; the decision to hide the results of the Pentagon's Star Wars missile tests; the refusal to make public the SEC investigative files on Bush's slippery stock deal with Harken Energy Inc.

And now there's Bush's plan for a massive Homeland Security Department, creating a new domestic police agency with sweeping powers. This bureaucracy will have more armed federal agents with arrest power than any other branch of government. Yet George W.'s plan would shroud the Homeland agency's actions in secrecy--he wants to exempt it from both the Freedom of Information Act and the Whistleblower Protection Act. Also, instead of an independent inspector general, Bush's proposal gives the new Homeland Czar veto power over any audits or investigations by the inspector general.

This is Jim Hightower saying ... It's time to stop the Four Horsemen of Autocracy.

Jim Hightower's column appears courtesy of Alternet.

Reader Comments

Discuss this article in the forums!


Chris Barker	Oct 17, 2002	Bellevue WA	System Engineer
Of course this is all false information. Replace the word "Bush" with the word "Clinton" and the corporate dealings would be a little more accurate. Enron was a frequent visitor to the Clinton White House. Remember when, after 9/11, Congressional Democrats said Bush had secretely made arrangements for a 'backup' government, in case somebody nuked Washington? That they should have been involved in the arrangements, but were not? When in fact, those same accusers had attended frequent briefings on all aspects of the arrangements. And there were fairly detailed news reports in all media. The accusers lied. They knew they were lying. They got a total pass for their lies. They lost no honor in the sight of the general media. Maybe Mr Hightower is not lying. Maybe he really believes all this is true. Maybe he even has absolute evidence. Unfortunately, his rhetoric mirrors every other liberal commentator, a great chorus of nay-sayers. That, all by itself, is enough to cast doubt on his allegations.