President Barack Obama speaking to troops at Camp Victory in Baghdad during a past trip.

By PAUL KORING
May 14, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama, jettisoning previous pledges of openness, ordered a new court battle yesterday to keep secret photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Allowing publication of pictures of torture or abuse would “further inflame anti-American opinion and … put our troops in greater danger,” the President said, explaining that the risk of enraging millions of Muslims and creating a recruiting tool for Taliban jihadists in Afghanistan had prompted his decision.

Mr. Obama turned to an often-used excuse when presidents seek to keep secrets, saying national security was at stake.

The abrupt reversal comes less than a month after Mr. Obama trumpeted the need for openness and transparency as he ordered the release of legal memos that exposed the Bush administration’s efforts to justify so-called harsh interrogations, widely seen as torture – and it was quickly denounced by rights groups.

“The Obama administration’s adoption of the stonewalling tactics and opaque policies of the Bush administration flies in the face of the President’s stated desire to restore the rule of law, to revive our moral standing in the world and to lead a transparent government,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which had won the original freedom-of-information case for the release of the photos.

Mr. Obama’s decision means the first 44 of what were expected to be hundreds of photos showing prisoners being abused won’t be made public as planned later this month.

The ACLU vowed to fight on.

“And when these photos do see the light of day, the outrage will focus not only on the commission of torture by the Bush administration, but on the Obama administration’s complicity in covering them up,” Mr. Romero said.

The U.S. is not alone in trying to keep photographs of alleged detainee abuse secret. Successive Canadian governments have blocked the release of photographs of Afghan detainees allegedly beaten or tortured either by Canadian soldiers or after transfer to Afghan security forces.

Last January, Mr. Obama pledged, on his second day in office, “to also hold myself, as president, to a new standard of openness,” and pilloried the previous Bush administration’s attitude towards disclosure.

“The old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the American people, then it should not be disclosed,” he said, adding: “That era is now over.”

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Tags: Bush Administration, Obama, Obama Administration, Photographs

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