Security secrets

PRESIDENT BUSH'S overweening efforts to consolidate executive power should come into sharp focus today as Congress begins hearings on the program of warrantless eavesdropping by the National Security Agency.

All administrations know that information is power, but no president has worked harder -- certainly not since Richard Nixon -- to gain information surreptitiously, even illegally, while withholding basic information from the public, as has George Bush.

Both aspects should receive healthy exposure in the hearings. Bush has admitted signing an executive order shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks claiming unilateral power to wiretap calls between the United States and foreign locations. The order did not give him the power to make new wiretaps; it only freed him of the requirement -- set out clearly in a 1978 law -- to get a warrant from a court within three days to continue the surveillance. Even Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee cannot be pleased with a president overriding so specific a statutory mandate so cavalierly.

Yet the administration has stonewalled the committee's requests for Justice Department documents that would reveal various arguments over the rationale for the executive order. Instead, the administration would like to focus on the New York Times story revealing the eavesdropping, as if public exposure of this probably illegal activity was worse than the power grab itself.

While the warrantless eavesdropping will draw attention this week, it is hardly unique. The Bush administration strongly supports provisions of the Patriot Act that are so excessively intrusive that they are opposed by some conservative Republicans. In 2002, Admiral John Poindexter's proposal for a truly Orwellian program of massive snooping, called Total Information Awareness, was shunted aside only after a public outcry.

As for withholding information, the list is endless. From judicial nominees to congressional probes of prisoner abuse to documentation about detainees, the administration has balked at supplying pertinent information. Even the highly respected 9/11 Commission had to fight to get basic information and was only allowed to interview top officials, such as Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, with severe strictures.

On a variety of scientific subjects, including global warming, Bush's agents have put the lid on information they didn't like and muzzled professionals who had the temerity to point out policy consequences.

Yet more astounding has been the gall of the administration to withhold information on its response to Hurricane Katrina, even though Bush himself pledged explicitly to cooperate in a full examination of that response. Information is power, and in the Bush administration it moves in one direction.