Bookends
First Ashcroft declassifies a memo just in time to use it to try to slime a 9/11 commission member.
Now they classify information that's been in the public domain for two years.
That's the knowledge we need to make a accurate assessment of government activities caught up in the middle, you know.
Material Given to Congress in 2002 Is Now Classified
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, May 19 - The Justice Department has taken the unusual step of retroactively classifying information it gave to Congress nearly two years ago regarding a former F.B.I. translator who charged that the bureau had missed critical terrorist warnings, officials said Wednesday.
Law enforcement officials say the secrecy surrounding the translator, Sibel Edmonds, is essential to protecting information that could reveal intelligence-gathering operations. But some members of Congress and Congressional aides said they were troubled by the move, which comes as critics have accused the Bush administration of excessive secrecy.
"What the F.B.I. is up to here is ludicrous," Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said in an interview. "To classify something that's already been out in the public domain, what do you accomplish? It does harm to transparency in government, and it looks like an attempt to cover up the F.B.I.'s problems in translating intelligence."
