Today the Associated Press reported that shortly after the Abbottabad raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011, Special Operations Command commander Admiral William McRaven ordered military files about the operation to be transferred from Defense Department computers to the CIA, where they are more difficult to access via Freedom of Information Act requests.
On the one hand, Thomas Blanton of the National Security Archives when he describes this as a "shell game in place of open government."
On the other hand, however, I think that given the potential threat to the SEALs who conducted the operation, as well as the need to protect SOCOM's tactics, techniques, and planning considerations for future operations, these files deserve unique protection. Considering how quickly elements of the operation leaked from other sources in DOD, McRaven's actions seem not only to be justified, but also prescient.
The problem is that the Obama Administration, which promised to be "the most transparent in U.S. history," has gone to such extreme lengths in the past to create smoke screens (i.e. the Caribou Coffee meetings to avoid signing guests into the Executive Office Building; the EPA chief and other senior officials conducting Administration business on fake personal accounts to avoid scrutiny; the refusal to share the legal justification for drone strikes against U.S. citizens with Congress; the firing and failure to replace Inspectors General, etc.) has rendered even perfectly reasonable actions suspect.
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