There is such a thing as too much information. If nothing else, the uproar over the new face of Facebook has taught us that.
However, there is also such a thing as too little information, and the Bush administration has done a stellar job of proving this.
A new Freedom of Information Act controversy is brewing. The plaintiff is suing for information about a foreign citizen who lived in the United States for a time and was accused of plotting against the government. However, in this case the man in question was planning to use the insidious forces of rock and roll as his weapons and has been dead for more than 25 years.
In 1971, a threat to the U. S. government was detected in the form of John Lennon after he planned what was basically a Rock the Vote tour against Richard Nixon. Nixon, rather than succumb to the forces of democracy, had him deported.
While this is hardly one of our shining moments, it seems difficult to believe the release of the final FBI files on Lennon would compromise national security 35 years after they were created. However, this is just what the FBI is asserting, even after being ordered to release the files by a federal judge.
The question that leaps to my mind in this case is: why? What possible good does it serve to protect the American public from the shocking revelations that John Lennon smoked some dope and had a few crazy ideas about imagining there are no countries? My guess would be that, unless those files reveal Dick Cheney’s undisclosed location, there is no public good here.
I bring this instance up because it is illustrative of what worries me most about the aftermath of Sept.11. I wonder what is being done in the name of the American people that we will never hear about because it might compromise national security. I wonder how much official wrongdoing gets classified to cover for people in power. Basically, I wonder if we are getting the information we need to be citizens and make our decisions in the voting booth.
I don’t need a news feed to tell me when George W. Bush joins the group “I heart ‘My Pet Goat'” or when the station chief in Kabul removes “hunting Osama bin-Laden” from his interests. But the occasional honest revelation from the government wouldn’t be a bad place to start.
For more information, check out the U.S. Department of Justice Web site at www.usdoj.gov