Sure, the Bush administration has taken us thirty years backward in terms of surveillance, privacy, environmentalism, and science. It fights hard against enforcing the nation’s environmental laws, even going to the Supreme Court to argue that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and shouldn’t be regulated by the EPA. It supports wrong-headed scientific opinions -- like the president’s stem cell policy and his endorsement of abstience-only education -- that are based not on science, but on the religious beliefs of a few people in positions of power. Is there anything else the Bush Time Machine can do? Turns out there is. The magic word is “secrecy.”

Let’s go back to a time when the earth and Dick Clark were young. The year was 1972 and agents of the president were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC. The break-in to the hotel was the first in a series of revelations collectively called the “Watergate scandal” that exposed the government’s role in illegal activities that ranged from surveillance to information leaks. Over the course of two years, America learned that not only was the government engaging in illegal activities against its own citizens, but it was actively covering up those activities through a combination of legal maneuvering, plausible deniability, and -- when all else failed -- the paper shredder.

The Watergate scandal resulted in a number of changes to the way government operates. The Office of Special Counsel was created to serve as an independent investigatory arm. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) prohibited the executive from spying on Americans without a warrant. The Presidential Records Act placed the National Archives in charge of the paper being shuffled around the White House: it would decide what would be classified or declassified, shredded or preserved for posterity. United States v. Nixon declared that executive privilege could not be asserted in criminal investigations. The Nixon administration tested the limits of government accountability and oversight, and perhaps thanks to Nixon, we have laws on the books preventing those same abuses from happening again.

Until now. Wiretapping, leaking, and cover-ups have become fashionable again with the Bush administration. And it has little to do with the War on Terr’ and a great deal to do with the mindset of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, who see transparency as a threat to their power. Let’s not forget that Bush fought vehemently against a committee to investigate the events of September 11, 2001. As the administration engages in surveillance for surveillance’s sake, so too does it engage in opacity for opacity’s sake.

The Bush/Cheney penchant for hiding information from the public they serve is not about national security. Recall that, in 2001, Cheney met with several unknown persons in order to churn out the the president’s energy policy. The energy policy was fossil fuel-centric, leading groups like the Sierra Club to sue the administration. They smelled the influence of energy company executives and wanted to know for sure with whom the vice president had met. The administration asserted executive privilege, and the Supreme Court agreed.

Fast forward to 2007, when the Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Harriet Miers and Karl Rove to find out how much they knew about the firing of US attorneys. The administration sent a friendly letter stating that it would be asserting executive privilege. The Judiciary Committee held both Miers and Rove in contempt, but that would prove to be pointless. It is the US attorney for the District of Columbia who files contempt charges, and the Justice Department -- then under the control of President Bush via Alberto Gonzales -- ordered the DC attorney not to file contempt charges. Problem solved! This is one of the reasons why Gonzales resigned: the public soon began to understand that he did whatever the president did, without question, regardless of its legality. By virtue of his being president, Bush could never break the law.

In that case, what was at issue was not national security information. It was the potential embarrassment of having the nation learn that what we suspected all along was true: the US attorney firings were politically motivated. The administration tends to cover up things that could be potentially embarrassing, as it attempted to do when the Jack Abramoff scandals hit the streets in 2006. Bush insisted that Abramoff may have visited the White House a few times, but refused to relinquish the White House visitor logs to prove it. The logs were normally kept by the Secret Service, but Bush ordered them sent to the White House and then destroyed. It soon became policy to destroy White House visitors logs rather than keep them. It is plain that there is no national security interest here, nor any executive privilege claim. The White House simply didn’t want anyone to know who came calling and then use that information against the executive branch. All that changed yesterday, when a federal court judge ruled that, despite what Bush may have ordered, the White House visitor logs are Secret Service records, and as a result, the National Archives has control over them.

Earlier this year, the National Archives’ investigative office complained that the president and vice president were not complying with an executive order signed by President Clinton regarding declassification of executive documents. Bush and Cheney were deciding for themselves what documents would remain classified; in fact, the authority to declassify presidential documents rests with the National Archives. The fear here was that, perhaps, the National Archives would declassify documents that did not contain information damaging to national security, but did contain information damaging to Bush and Cheney. Cheney refused to allow the inspector to even enter his office. He then asserted that he did not have to be in compliance with the law because the vice president’s office was not part of the executive branch. Bush also jumped on the bandwagon and insisted that the Office of the President was exempt from the order. We all had a good laugh for about a week, and then Bush and Cheney relented after the House of Representatives threatened to cut the Office of the Vice President out of the executive branch’s budget, since he wasn’t a member of that branch. The scary part of that week was that Bush and Cheney weren’t joking -- they even entered the realm of irreality to prevent oversight, so much was their desire to prevent anyone from knowing what was going on.

And it will continue into the future. Bush has signed orders keeping his own records, and those of his father, sealed until far into the future. The Bush conceit of secrecy is obviously an attempt to save his own behind. Whenever a scandal arises, cover it up! And if someone causes a scandal, leak something! Valerie Plame learned that the administration plays hardball with its critics. At the same time, though, it keeps information close to its chest. The attitude is reminiscent of the Nixon administration, where G. Gordon Liddy occupied an office in the basement with the name “Plumber” on the door. It was Liddy’s job to plug leaks (hence the title “White House plumber”), but it was also his job to strategically make leaks. The worlds of Nixon and Bush collided on a Fox News show where Liddy had the audacity to insist that it was okay for the Bush administration to leak Valerie Plame’s CIA status. This from a man who has the moral high ground because he went to prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. President Bush is a man deeply concerned about his legacy. With any luck, history will look back on him as the man who unearthed Richard Nixon and wore his skull around as a Halloween mask.