WP: A Clash on Classified Documents [View All]

Politics Drives Some Releases, Critics Say

The Bush administration's uneven decision-making on which sensitive documents it declassifies has prompted criticism that the White House is selectively releasing information to bolster its foreign policy agenda and respond to political pressure.

Before the war, for example, the administration kept classified the intelligence community's significant dissents to the overall assessment that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It later released those dissents, however, after the CIA was criticized for failing to accurately assess Iraq's weapons -- a reversal cited by those who argue such decisions are being based on politics, not national security.

To make its case for war at the United Nations, the White House also released recent audiotapes of intercepted conversations -- usually among its most highly guarded secrets -- between Iraqi military officers.

Last week, in the most recent case under scrutiny, the CIA began reviewing for declassification testimony that former White House counterterrorism czar Richard A. Clarke gave last year to the congressional panel investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The CIA launched the effort at the White House's request, after Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, asked it to do so.

Goss said his staff made the request after he "was absolutely sure there was going to be a huge uproar" over Clarke's claims that Bush had ignored terrorism before September 2001. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) also asked for the declassification.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37357-2004Mar30.html