Transparency and accountability in a time of terror: The Bush administration's assault on Freedom of Information

In April 2006, the Bush administration launched a variety of new attacks on the press following the unauthorized disclosure of classified information. Leakers and the recipients of leaks were targeted for criticism and denunciation, and were threatened with prosecution. The very real possibility of a de facto Official Secrets Act no longer seemed unthinkable in the context of the continuing war on terror. Yet the government's obsession with secrecy did not begin with the attacks of September 11, 2001. The Bush administration's contempt for the public's right to know amounts to an organized assault on freedom of information that is unprecedented since the enactment of the Freedom of Information Act forty years ago.