Volume 56, Number 2 · February 12, 2009
Why the Government Can Legally Lie
By Garry Wills
In the Name of National Security: Unchecked Presidential Power and the Reynolds Case
by Louis Fisher
University Press of Kansas, 282 pp., $34.95
Claim of Privilege: A Mysterious Plane Crash, a Landmark Supreme Court Case, and the Rise of State Secrets
by Barry Siegel
Harper, 384 pp., $25.95
One of the principal marks of the George W. Bush administration has been the inability to hold investigations, congressional inquiries, or trials in so many cases because evidence required for any of these processes is classified secret, or otherwise privileged. This is a growth industry. In 1997, there were three million officials with clearance to read classified documents. From 1952 to 1976, the privilege of withholding state secrets was invoked in five court cases. From 1977 to 2001, it was used sixty-two times. In the first four years of the Bush administration, it was used thirty-nine times, more than in any preceding administration, and still counting.[1]
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