Today's disclosure of 92,000 pages of documents from the war in Afghanistan could be a watershed moment in the nine-year old war, if people and our elected officials take the time to read the documents. The reports show in detail, for example, what the New York Times calls the "omnipresence of drones in Afghanistan, the Air Force’s missile-toting Predators and Reapers that hunt militants." The documents go on to describe incidents in which civilians were killed and one incident in which a drone went "rogue." This information is vital to any meaningful public debate about these policies. The ACLU believes that using unmanned drones to target and kill people outside of armed-conflict zones is wrong. The whole world cannot be a battlefield. But until today no one, outside of the government, knew that use of the drones was "omnipresent."
The documents disclosed today go on to reveal a wealth of information about the war in Afghanistan. The lawyer and blogger Glenn Greenwald compares these documents to the Pentagon Papers. Wikileaks should be commended for sharing these important documents with the world.
Unfortunately, more attention may be paid to whether the documents should have been leaked in the first place than what the documents contain.
I serve on Maine's Right to Know Advisory Committee. We meet regularly throughout the year to review the numerous exceptions to Maine's Right to Know law. Some exceptions are important. I feel strongly that the information that members of the public submit to government agencies ranging from social security numbers to health records to private financial information should be kept secret. After all, our state Right to Know laws and our federal Freedom of Access laws are designed to promote government transparency and accountability, not help us spy on our neighbors.
But too often, exceptions to the public's right to know are used to cover up mistakes or actions that the government views as controversial. How do we, the people, make informed judgments about the war, Guantanamo or any other public policy matter? Wikileaks is performing a public service, just as the ACLU has done in countless FOIAs to the Department of Defense, the FBI and other agencies overseeing operations at Guantanamo and in Afghanistan and Iraq.