Why We'll Never Get a Full Account of the War in Iraq

[deminks]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/why-well-never-get-a-full-account-of-the-war-in-iraq/273255/

Hubris, an MSNBC documentary aired Monday night and hosted by Rachel Maddow, reexamines the war in Iraq and the salesmanship that went into the invasion. The film is based on a provocative account of the war by David Corn and Michael Isikoff, and features interviews with policymakers who were in power at the time. Ten years after "shock and awe," it still seems like we know very little about the decision to invade.

What we do know is that former Vice President Dick Cheney would like to keep it that way.

While writing our upcoming book Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry, Marc Ambinder and I spoke with J. William Leonard, former director of the Information Security Oversight Office, an agency charged with overseeing the security classification system of the United States. The ISOO, which is part of the National Archives, advises the president on secrecy policy. It works to ensure that information is classified only when necessary for national security, and declassified the moment circumstances allow.

Cheney's office, according to Leonard, took secrecy to excessive lengths -- attempting to classify as much as possible, and often bypassing the system altogether by inventing classification markings. Even documents as ordinary as Cheney's talking points were marked Treated as Top Secret/SCI or Treated as Top Secret/Codeword.

(snip)

In one instance, the marking appeared on notes from a 2003 meeting of Cheney and his staff. They were discussing Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. diplomat, who had just written an editorial in the New York Times. In the piece, Wilson argued that there was no evidence that Iraq had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger. That same year, Cheney's office stopped filing annual reports on its classification activities. When the ISOO moved to inspect his office -- as it was authorized and compelled to do by executive order -- Cheney's people argued that because the Office of the Vice President has duties with both the executive and legislative branches, the executive order on classified material doesn't apply. (The White House counsel, unsurprisingly, concurred.)

(end snip)