From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

Brooke Gladstone is off this week.

I'm Bob Garfield.

For a long time now, there's been too much secrecy in this city.

The old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the American people, then it should not be disclosed.

That era is now over.

Barack Obama's very vocal denunciation of what watchdog groups called an obsession with secrecy

during the Bush era was a common refrain into January of this year.

Candidate Obama emphasized repeatedly that a President Obama would do better.

That was then, this is now President Obama's Justice Department, now not just defending Bush officials from lawsuits surrounding national security agency domestic crime.

Even talking about this case in court, even with sensitive information excluded, would jeopardize national security.

I think once you start governing, it's very different than when you're running.

Or maybe not.

First recognized by the Supreme Court in 1953, the state secrets privilege empowers the executive

branch to effectively scuttle a lawsuit against the government on national security grounds,

which President Bush did some two dozen

times. Much to the dismay of civil libertarians who had hoped otherwise, the Obama administration

has so far stayed the course, arguing that a number of cases involving the illegal wiretapping

and rendition activities of the early 2000s should be dismissed.

Under Obama, the Department of Justice has invoked the privilege three times in as many months,

most recently last week, in Jewel v. the NSA. In that case, five plaintiffs sued the National Security Agency

and several Bush administration officials after their phone company, AT&T, provided information about their telephone calls.

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