Transparency in Our Government

Transparency in Our Government Government secrecy has occurred over time from the 1960’s to the present. Government secrecy is harmful to all citizens in the United States because it has been a reoccurring theme for a far too long time, citizens have the right to know the information the government is withholding about their country, and be aware of the choices our government is making to fix this problem. Since the Cold War the lack of transparency in our government has effected the population as a whole. “Some agents could provide information about communist activities. The others were more suited to taking action.

For example, what the KGB called, ”agents of influence” might need to be recruited: those who could influence decision making either directly (if he was a politician or a government official, for example) or indirectly (like a journalist willing to print propaganda in his newspaper). ” (Grey 11). They would use this technique to get information out there to the general public without them knowing what they were hearing. This would make it extremely confusing what our government was doing with the Soviet Union. The KGB to Russia is like the CIA to the US. This covert action was dangerous, but required president approval.

This means that the government has been perfecting there technique for holding on to important information. The rights of an American citizen were established for a reason. After the Watergate scandal, President Gerald R. Ford put forth the effort to put the Privacy Act Amendments of 1974 into effect. Patrick Martin said that the bush administration pressured the media to cover up the adversaries of the war drive in Central Asia. It is unacceptable that a president would abuse his power by keeping a whole country in the dark over information that could change the outcome of our country.

W. Bush was protecting the country from terrorists, but indirectly expanding the power of the FBI to spy on wireless phone calls. The FBI surveillance of vast areas of American life has no conceivable relation to the September eleventh terrorist attacks. The Bush administration was all for secrecy. They were almost as secretive as the Watergate scandal. “…engaged in arbitrary arrests and detentions without trial on a scale not seen by America for more than 80 years. ” Bush did not even want America to know about the terrorist that have been sent to prison.

In Martin’s article he wrote referring to Bush. You may ask, what is being done in our government to fix these problems? On this topic, “Obama … issued an executive order and an accompanying presidential memorandum directing executive agencies to make more information public when possible and eliminate unnecessary government secrecy. ” This executive order would stop most agencies from watching over us like they were prior. Although this is a strong way to stop this spying from happening, the CIA is still withholding crucial documents relating to Bush secrecy acts towards terrorism.

This is all leading up to say that there was too much information being kept away from the eyes of all American citizens. To conclude, Secrecy in the United States government hurts our country by being a reoccurring theme for a far too long time, which citizens have the right to know the information the government is withholding about their country, and be aware of the choices our government is making to fix the problem. It is known that the president is trying to fix this problem. It will never be known what he is doing to help. It is a secret.