Yesterday, Harold Koh, former legal advisor to the State Department, criticized President Obama for the use of secrecy to cover up the truth about his drone program.  He said that Obama Administration should let the public and Congress know details of the program to rebut the perception that the program is not lawful. 

He was particularly critical of the decision made not to permit testimony before Congress by officials familiar with the program.  Earlier this year, Jeh C. Johnson, former top Pentagon lawyer, made the same criticism noting however, that “It is much easier to classify something than to declassify it.” 

Harold Koh is not any old lawyer.  He is the former Dean of Yale Law School and a one time member of Human Rights Watch.  A civil libertarian, he was put in the awkward position of approving Obama’s drone program. 

Obama’s resistance to lifting the veil of secrecy on the drone program, follows a pattern of his previous actions on national security secrets and their disclosure.  For example,  He has indicted six leakers for leaking classified information.  In the previous history of this country there had been only three such indictments. 

In 2010, Obama classified an astounding 30 million documents.  Presidential obsession with secrecy always ends badly.  In the case of Richard Nixon, his obsession with secrecy led to his break-in of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist.  This is turn led to Nixon’s downfall.

The same can be said of the Pentagon Papers case where his over-zealous desire to keep information secret resulted in a stunning defeat for his presidency from which he never recovered.

Ex Lawyer in State Department Criticizes Drone Secrecy: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/world/former-top-lawyer-in-state-dept-criticizes-drone-secrecy.html?_r=0

It’s a bad time for press freedoms:http://www.cjr.org/critical_eye/qa_with_goodale_obama_press_fr.php

Pentagon Papers lawyer on Obama, secrecy and press freedoms: ‘worse than Nixon’:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/19/goodale-obama-press-freedoms-secrecy-nixon

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