And fourthly there is a major shift in public opinion and attitude to accommodate to the post-9/11 mentality and the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy. I think the public has simply become increasingly accustomed to being turned away from vital information and is protesting less and less. You have some squeaky wheels out there, but I don't think they're representative of the population at large.

Every effort is made to control information. Secrecy is just one of the toggles on their control board. The mindset is in place, and they've done a lot of hiring over eight years, not just political appointees. And they've done a lot of firing or driving people out who might have countermanded or resisted. So, institutionally, it's not going to be simply a matter of flipping the switch to undo it. You're going have to bring in people dedicated to transparency, and you have to demonstrate that there are rewards for candor.

The third factor is the natural predisposition of bureaucracies, both governmental and private, to exploit secrecy to whatever degree they are licensed to do so, and in this administration they're given virtually carte blanche.

There are benefits in the sense that there's still a certain level of confidence. But there are liabilities because you can coordinate and manipulate better as the instruments of oversight are more under your control. You don't have so many rogue operations.

The SBUs have spread like kudzu and are choking off everyone's ability to see what the hell's going on in government.

I don't think that the problems or the issues relate to any single piece of legislation. I think that they really do relate to the mindset that after eight years is pretty deeply embedded. It is not going to be easy to reverse itself.

A one year study by the Washington Post has documented 620 cases in which experimental drugs have been implicated in the deaths of cancer patients....And they amount to merely a fraction of the thousands of people who in recent years have died or suffered terribly from cancer experiments.