Another case in in point: An image of and quote from Harriet Tubman was removed from a National Parks Service webpage about the Underground Railroad. The Washington Post was early in reporting that Tubman’s photograph was disappeared. “In its place,” the Post noted, “are images of Postal Service stamps that highlight ‘Black/White cooperation’ in the secret network and that feature Tubman among abolitionists of both races.”
CNN reported that “The National Parks Service webpage for the ‘Underground Railroad’ used to lead with a quote from Tubman, the railroad’s most famous ‘conductor,’ a comparison on the Wayback Machine between the webpage on January 21 and March 19 shows. Both the quote and an image of Tubman have since been removed, along with several references to “enslaved” people and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.”
While an outcry caused the restoration of Tubman’s image and quote, its removal was one amongst many Trump-ordered website deletions. Trump’s executive order “Ending Radical Government DEI Programs,” led federal agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, State Department, and Department of Homeland Security to remove documents and guidance related to diversity, equity, and inclusion from their websites.
Environmental information? Removed! Scientific information? Removed! Health-related information? Removed! Who really knows how much information has already been erased?
Info-cleansing is not a new weapon for Republican presidential administrations. In April 2003, I wrote a piece titled “Operation Info-scrub: Team Bush reviews, rewrites and/or removes information it doesn’t like.” The story detailed ways the George W. Bush administration was tinkering with history, and with the truth. My lede graph read “While Americans are focusing on a looming war with Iraq, increasing threats to privacy, a depressed economy and the permanent war on terrorism, the Bush Administration has been removing information from government Web sites for what appears to be strictly political reasons. Information conflicting with administration policy, the image of government officials, or is just plain objectionable to the president’s conservative constituents has been reviewed and revised or removed altogether.”
A March 2002 memo by President Bush’s Chief of Staff Andrew Card titled “Guidance on Homeland Security Information Issued,” was sent to the heads of all federal departments and agencies. OMB Watch, a Washington, D.C.-based government watchdog group, reported that the “guidance” suggested that agencies review “its classified, reclassified and declassified information,” and to be aware of a new type of information called “sensitive but unclassified.” The “guidance” stated that “the need o protect such sensitive information from inappropriate disclosure should be carefully considered, on a case-by-case basis,” and that Freedom of Information Act requests should also be considered under these guidelines.
OMB Watch pointed out that a substantial amount of information was removed from the Web sites of a number of agencies including: the Agency for Toxics and Disease Registry, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Department of Energy, Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Internal Revenue Service, National Archives and Records Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Imagery and Mapping Agency, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Geological Survey. (For examples of what was cleansed, see the OMB’s “Access to Government Information Post September 11th” ).
It is clear that the Trump administration wants to erase the public’s knowledge of the darker parts of our history. It has no interest in the public’s right-to-know. Not only is the administration messing with American history by deleting factual information sources, it is putting up huge barriers preventing journalists from investigating its actions.
The post Trump’s Info-Scrubbing Threatens the Public’s Right-to-Know Our History first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Berkowitz.