Issa's Investigations →

In an alternate universe in which Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the new Chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee were a rational person with his country's best interests at heart, the news that he was going toaggressively pursue investigations would be welcome. Issa is interested in investigating a range of issues including corruption in the war in Afghanistan, WikiLeaks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Food and Drug Administration. The American people deserve to know whether or to what extent corruption has become a problem in the war in Afghanistan, how a security lapse allowed WikiLeaks to get the documents it recently leaked and just how government agencies contributed to the mortgage and economic crises. This kind of accountability in essential to the functioning of a democracy; and investigations of this kind can be an important means of ensuring that accountability.

Blaming WikiLeaks

The WikiLeaks story has unified the political elite in the U.S. elsewhere to a startling degree. It is as almost as if a readiness to strongly criticize WikiLeaks is the not so secret password to be part of this elite. Based on the barrage of attacks on WikiLeaks and its leader Julian Assange, one would think that Assange is single-handedly responsible for the difficulties the U.S. faces all over the world.

WikiLeaks and the Power of Secrecy

The WikiLeaks incident raises some bigger question about secrecy as well. While we bemoan WikiLeaks for revealing state secrets, it should be recognized that some of this information is not exactly earth shattering or needed to be kept secret in the first place. For example, the fact that some American diplomats think German Chancellor Angela Merkel is “risk averse” and uncreative and areaware that the Afghan government is riddled with corruption, should not come as news to anybody who is even a casual consumer of news related to international affairs. Much of the secret information in these cables could have been gathered from spending twenty minutes online reading blogs about the countries or issues in question.

Lincoln Mitchell