A secrecy obsession can ruin the powerful / Bush's bashing of N.Y. Times mirrors Nixon's

It must, or we will have anything but a Democracy, as we do, even now.

Secrecy is one of the most danngerous enemies of a Democracy. How can the electorate cast an intelligent vote when they do not have the facts about their government and what it is doing in their name?

A secrecy obsession can ruin the powerful / Bush's bashing of N.Y. Times mirrors Nixon's:

"On June 1, 1972, White House Counsel Charles Colson wrote a memo to President Richard Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, saying, 'I hate the (New York) Times as much as anyone else and would like to be in the first wave of Army shock troops going in during the second term to tear down the printing presses.'

Colson and Haldeman hated the Times because the newspaper had more credibility than Nixon did. 'The press is the enemy,' Nixon said many times, according to his speechwriter, William Safire.

Americans need not feel sorry for the press today, no more than they did during a similar beat-the-press episode more than three decades ago. History seldom repeats itself, but obsession with secrecy can be fatal.