{"id":1993,"date":"2005-04-06T18:02:20","date_gmt":"2005-04-07T01:02:20","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2005-04-06T18:02:20","modified_gmt":"2005-04-07T01:02:20","slug":"the-open-society-and-its-enemies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2005\/04\/06\/the-open-society-and-its-enemies\/","title":{"rendered":"The Open Society and Its Enemies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Matt Welch <a href=http:\/\/www.reason.com\/hitandrun\/2005\/04\/trust_but_pleas.shtml#009066>notes a most interesting trend for the Bush years<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>Number of documents classified by the Executive Branch, annually:<br \/>\n2001: 8.7 million<br \/>\n2002: 11.3 million<br \/>\n2003: 14.2 million<br \/>\n2004: 15.7 million<\/p>\n<p>Number of documents declassified by the Executive Branch, annually:<br \/>\n2001: 100 million<br \/>\n2002: 44 million<br \/>\n2003: 43 million<br \/>\n2004: 28 million<\/ul>\n<p>For those keeping score, that&#8217;s an 80% increase in annual classifications and a 72% decrease in annual declassifications in one term. Given that this administration has already attempted to <a href=http:\/\/www.google.com\/custom?q=cache:tUZXcIaDyigJ:www.antiwar.com\/edmonds\/%3Farticleid%3D5055+%22retroactively+classify%22&#038;hl=en&#038;ie=UTF-8>retroactively classify<\/a> publicly available documents, I expect mandatory mass amnesia by 2008.<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE 3:45 CT: Some interesting comments in the <a href=http:\/\/www.reason.com\/hitandrun\/2005\/04\/trust_but_pleas.shtml#comments>Hit &#038; Run thread<\/a>. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>One commenter includes the following figures for Clinton&#8217;s second term:<\/p>\n<ul>Number of documents classified by the Executive Branch, annually:<br \/>\n1997: 6.5 million<br \/>\n1998: 7.3 million<br \/>\n1999: 8.0 million<br \/>\n2000: 11.1 million<\/p>\n<p>Number of documents declassified by the Executive Branch, annually:<br \/>\n1997: 204 million<br \/>\n1998: 193 million<br \/>\n1999: 127 million<br \/>\n2000: 75 million<\/ul>\n<p>Score: a 71% increase in classifications and a 63% decrease in declassifications. Hey, I never said Clinton was great, either.<\/p>\n<p>Other commenters point out that since there are a finite number of classified documents, and many of the earliest declassifications were probably of the oldest, least exciting material lying around, a steady decrease in declassifications might be perfectly natural. So analyzing declassifications on numbers alone may not reveal that much.<\/p>\n<p>But as for classifications, I think it&#8217;s important to look not only at rates of increase, but also at absolute differences. Yes, Clinton&#8217;s classifying increased significantly during his second term, but it still peaked at 11.1 million. Bush was at 15.7 million by the end of his first term. That&#8217;s a lot of ass-covering for both, but for Bush especially. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Matt Welch notes a most interesting trend for the Bush years: Number of documents classified by the Executive Branch, annually: 2001: 8.7 million 2002: 11.3 million 2003: 14.2 million 2004: 15.7 million Number of documents declassified by the Executive Branch, annually: 2001: 100 million 2002: 44 million 2003: 43 million 2004: 28 million For those [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1993"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}