Government Secrets - A threat to democracy

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The people's right to self-determination is directly compromised by the large numbers of governments that keep secrets - secrets designed to simply protect some official from being embarrassed or found out, or secrets which shield government employees from rightful prosecution for criminal activity.

First Nations people, African-Americans, and all other North Americans suffer directly from the withholding of data about the CIA's involvement in the drug trade, or secrecy about the Interior Department's misuse of Native trust funds.

In a democracy, "state secrets" are subversive, being a direct threat to tribes, communities and citizenry. That is because they deprive us of information we need to obtain justice, to vote wisely, and to defend ourselves from criminal or oppressive activity on the part of government officials. It is crucial that all secrets that shed light on criminal activity of any kind be available for public scrutiny. This applies whether that activity is carried out, in the U.S., by employees of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or by any other group of employees.

We must have access to every single CIA document that in any way relates to the smuggling of drugs into this country, by way of example. Anyone blocking the release of such "secrets" can be suspected of wanting to cover up illegal government activity, or of being in cahoots with the drug trade.

Drugs have damaged many indigenous and other communities. We need to know how this has happened.

We also need to know the names of the employees, operatives, and contractors who have participated in killing and torturing hundreds of thousands of indigenous people in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and elsewhere, as well as the names of the FBI employees who seem to have conspired to frame Leonard Peltier and other domestic victims of the FBI, the CIA and so on.

Victims of torture and relatives of victims of CIA-sponsored terrorism need to be able to sue specific persons for the crimes they have committed. For example, victims of the Contra terrorism in Nicaragua need to be able to sue all those CIA agents and other U.S. employees, operatives and contractors who conspired, aided and abetted, or committed felonies that took place there. It is simply unacceptable that the U.S. maintains secrets that may protect torturers, participants in terrorism, and perhaps drug dealers.

Here is a proposal relative to a new statute or constitutional amendment to open up the secret archives of the United States (or Canada) to legal scrutiny:

1. It shall be the settled law of the United States that there shall be no state secrets kept from its citizens; however, documents may be classified as secret if the military defence of the United States is directly endangered by their release. Also, small portions of documents may be kept secret to protect the identity of sources of information, except as hereinafter provided, and for no other purpose.

2. No documents, whether electronic or hard-copy or any other form, may be classified as secret if they contain information about illegal acts committed by any employee, operative, representative or contractor of the United States. Portions of a document may be redacted, though, if its release would endanger the defence of the United States or would reveal the name of any informant - provided, however, that if the informant is the one carrying out the illegal act revealed in the document, then that portion may not be redacted.

3. Prosecuting attorneys for any relevant civil jurisdiction of the United States, attorneys for defendants being charged with a crime, and attorneys for victims of any crime shall have timely access to all documents held by any agency of the United States government or by any employee, operative, representative or contractor of the United States, if the document contains any information whatsoever reating to the criminal or civil case involved.

4. It shall be a felony punishable by a minimum sentence of 10 years in federal prison for any person to knowingly destroy, alter, hide, or refuse to surrender any document or documents as covered above, except under procedures established by the National Archives and Records Service, under congressional direction for the disposal of materials of no historical or legal significance.

5. The violation of any law (except misdemeanors) by employees, operatives, representatives or contractors of the United States government, during their period of service or connection with the government, shall not be covered by any statute of limitations, since such an act constitutes a violation of the oath of office andor a fraud against the people and the government of the United States.

I hope that this proposal will stimulate people to think about ending the protection of criminals and the obstruction of justice by governments. The subversion of our constitutions and our democratic forms of government must be halted.

Professor Forbes is the author of Red Blood, Only Approved Indians, Columbus and Other Cannibals, Africans and Native Americans, and other books.