Bush Tries to Bury Report On CAFTA

AP has an explosive report about how the White House tried to bury a government-sponsored study of labor conditions in Central America, because it would expose the lies behind the administration's claims that the Central American Free Trade Agreement will help workers.

Here are the key excerpts:

The Labor Department worked for more than a year to maintain secrecy for studies that were critical of working conditions in Central America, the region the Bush administration wants in a new trade pact...Behind the scenes, the Labor Department began as early as spring 2004 to block public release of the country-by-country reports...The department instructed its contractor to remove the reports from its Web site, ordered it to retrieve paper copies before they became public, banned release of new information from the reports, and even told the contractor it could not discuss the studies with outsiders...At the same time, the administration began a pre-emptive campaign to undercut the study's conclusions.

Bush has made an art out of burying or hiding government data. Luckily, though, his dishonesty caught up with him BEFORE the final vote on CAFTA, not after it. Let's see if it makes a difference.