I Wish I Trusted The Bush Administration More

Source: "Nuclear Pact With India: State Department Asks Congress To Keep Quiet About Details of Deal," by Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post, May 9, 2008.

Excerpts:

Washington's civil nuclear deal with India is in such desperate straits that the State Department has imposed unusually strict conditions on the answers it provided to questions posed by members of Congress: Keep them secret.

The State Department made the request, even though the answers are not classified, because officials fear that public disclosure would torpedo the deal, sources said.......

Congress passed a law, known as the Hyde Act, to provisionally accept the agreement, but some lawmakers have raised concerns about whether the implementing agreement negotiated by the administration fudges critical details......

Given the pointed nature of the questions, sources said the State Department had little choice but to be candid with lawmakers about the answers, in ways that senior State Department officials had not been in public.

Lynne Weil, a spokeswoman for the committee, said the State Department provided a lot of information, but the committee has agreed not to disclose the answers because "some data might be considered diplomatically sensitive."

Comment: I can certainly see that there could be points on a civilian nuclear power agreement with India that would be diplomatically sensitive but not matters of national security, and that the State Department and White House would have legitimate reasons to keep them confidential.

On the other hand, I recall Vice President Cheney's secret energy negotiations early in the Bush administration, and their inaccurate reading of intelligence data in the run up to the Iraq war. So I have these nagging doubts that the administration is not keeping the information from us for the wrong reason, or if not that they may have misread the sensitivity of the information that they are withholding. At least we have a skeptical Congress that is asking pointed questions.

The idea of cooperation with India on civilian nuclear power actually seems quite useful, improving our diplomatic relations with an important regional power and helping our firms develop relationships in an important technology with an important developing market. However, there is obviously lots of room for the administration to have screwed up in the negotiation. JAD