Quoted: So why has a legal policy statement been classified and withheld for five years? The answer to that question is now clear. The memorandum would have produced reactions of ridicule and outrage from throughout the professional community—as indeed it has. The author and the classifier knew that. They used classification as a political tool to keep something which is a quintessentially public document out of the reach of the public. Moreover, this classification reflects a regular pattern of abuse by the Bush Administration, a fact to be kept in mind when considering Attorney General Mukasey’s harsh and factually unfounded criticisms of pending legislation designed to reign in the use of state secrecy claims to cloak corruption and criminal conduct by state actors.