Updated for Sunshine Week 2012. An oldie but a goodie. I wonder if President Obama is beginning to feel a bit like Dr. Kissinger. At any rate, a “meta-tribute” to the power of FOIA. In 1975 Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told the Turkish Foreign Minister, “Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, ‘The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.’ [laughter] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I’m afraid to say things like that.”
He then explained how he would facilitate the illegal circumvention of a Congressional arms embargo.
This bombshell of a quote (even for Kissinger) comes midway through his conversation with Turkish Foreign Minister Melih Esenbel. The vast majority of the fifty-minute conversation –held in Turkey at the Foreign Minister’s office– focused on the FM’s displeasure with the US Congress’s decision to pass an arms embargo against Turkey’s 1974 invasion of Cyprus. Read More
