Editorial: A cool million for a ‘model’ law?
The Washington DC Examiner Newspaper, The Examiner
Jul 10, 2006 5:00 AM (5 days ago)
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WASHINGTON - A measly $1 million is insignificant in a $2.5 trillion annual federal budget. But the fact the Pentagon is paying a Texas law professor $1 million to find new ways to restrict public access to sensitive government information and data is quite significant. Nothing wrong with the idea of protecting information essential to national security, but it’s far from clear that this grant actually has anything to do with such a worthwhile purpose.

If it did, somebody other than Professor Jeffrey Addicott would likely have been the grant recipient. That is not to suggest the professor is anything but a bright guy, because he clearly is highly intelligent and a patriotic public servant. The problem is he’s likely not the right guy for this job, and we wonder why anybody thinks this job needs doing in the first place.

Addicott is a retired Army Special Forces legal advisor who is director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio. Addicott has appeared on MSNBC as a terrorism law expert, advised the Peruvian and Columbian militaries and reportedly believes the 2002 Patriot Act didn’t go far enough. His task with the federal grant is, he recently told USA Today, to create a model law that Congress and state legislatures can use to ensure that critical information “stays out of the hands of the bad guys.”

Well, there already is such a law on the books, and it just turned 40 years old July 4. It’s the Freedom of Information Act. One of its co-sponsors when it was approved in 1966 was Donald Rumsfeld, then a Republican congressman from Illinois and now Secretary of Defense.

The FOIA’s first exemption has from the law’s birth covered all information and data that could compromise national security if it became public. We have four decades of case law and administrative experience with the federal FOIA, which is also the model for most state public information statutes.

So why is the Pentagon now paying somebody whose expertise is military law, not the FOIA, to draft a new law to do what can already be done under existing law? And why does it cost $1 million to write such a model law? Who selected Addicott for this grant? Were there other grant applicants? Did this grant begin as an earmark sought by a member of Congress and if so, which one?

We are reminded of something Rumsfeld said back in 1966 about people in government who don’t like the FOIA: “Some possibly believe they hold a vested interest in the machinery of their agencies and bureaus and there is resentment of any attempt to oversee their activities, either by the public, the Congress or appointed department heads.”

Could this be why somebody in the Pentagon now wants a new anti-terror FOIA?

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