Loose lips

On the other hand, there are times when openness is not a virtue and honesty entails honoring a promise to keep a secret. President Bush has been burned by congressional leaks of classified information twice since the Sept. 11 attacks and he is justifiably hot about it.

The first leak came just hours after the attacks, when Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, passed on to reporters information about one of the suspects he had been told in confidence by FBI and CIA officials. Last week, someone in attendance at a congressional briefing spilled classified information on the potential for further attacks.

Neither leak caused any real, measurable, harm, although the first had the potential to compromise an investigation just begun and the second to cause public panic. It would be giving the leakers far too much credit, however, to suggest that they made rational assessments of the information and determined that it did not warrant secrecy. More likely, they just blabbed.

The president’s response was a directive limiting classified military and investigative briefings to the eight senior members of Congress. Given the number of committees that will deal with the myriad issues of a situation that touches nearly every aspect of government operations and daily lives, that limit, for reasons both purely practical and constitutional, cannot stand. Still, a point that needing making was made.

Having gotten Congress’ attention, a compromise was worked out Wednesday in which classified briefings will be provided to all members of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, and to full membership as necessary. The briefing given the full House that afternoon was both a gesture of good will and a test.

There is another side to this, however. Long before the attacks, the Bush administration was establishing a reputation for unwarranted secrecy – for example, the battle to keep Congress from overseeing decisions on energy and environmental policy now may be heading to court, as Congress’ investigative arm, the General Accounting Office, contemplates suing Vice President Cheney for refusing to hand over information relating to his Energy Policy Task Force. Perhaps the current uproar and its direct relation to national security and lives in jeopardy will cause the president to realize that not there are secrets and then there are real secrets.