EDITORIAL: The Pentagon wants to withhold more information

The Pentagon has a well-deserved reputation for erring on the side of secrecy when classifying documents. Now it wants even more power to hide information from the American taxpayer. CBS News reports that Defense Department officials are asking Congress to “create a new section of federal law allowing the defense secretary to exempt certain ‘controlled unclassified information’ … from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.” The category of “controlled unclassified information” was created by a Barack Obama executive order to standardize the handling of sensitive but unclassified documents, CBS reported. But the designation itself does not allow officials to shield information. Instead, the Pentagon must still cite a statutory exemption in the Freedom of Information Act to legally