A federal appeals court in Cincinnati last week ruled that the Bush administration unlawfully held over 1,200 deportation hearings in secret since the terrorist attacks of last September. That means that more than 750 people were deported – their lives were brutally interrupted – in hearings that excluded friends, family and the press, in violation of the basic rights guaranteed by our Constitution.

The current administration has made a policy of keeping its actions free from public scrutiny, assuring the American people that Bush knows best – and that anyone questioning executive actions is a traitor or unpatriotic. In fact, Mrs. Cheney personally and publicly has kept a black list of public dissenters since the early stages of the war on terrorism.

Why hide so much from the American people?

Uncensored news footage of the war in Afghanistan was virtually absent in the United States, while foreign journalists kept their people informed about American troop movements and showed actual war footage on the evening news. Here, independent accounts from the ground were rarely considered essential to a news report on the war.

Was the U.S. censorship campaign really aimed against terrorists (in the case of Al Qaida, concentrated in the Middle East where information was available), or rather against possible critics at home?

In another alarming move, hundreds of people disappeared here at home after Sept. 11, a style of justice that reminds one of Communist China, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, not democratic America. In response to court demands for oversight, Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered that detention facilities not release any information about who was imprisoned within their walls, on what charges and how long they had been there.

But the secrecy in this administration extends beyond the war on terrorism to domestic issues. Dick Cheney does not want anyone asking how much influence Enron executives had in formulating energy policy. In fact, he is fighting tooth and nail to keep that information secret.

Thus, in what would otherwise seem a surprising move, the Bush administration is fighting a court battle to keep information about Clinton's pardon of former business partner Marc Rich a presidential secret. They hope to establish a precedent.

"Democracies die behind closed doors," declared the judges in Cincinnati in their unanimous ruling against the secret meting out of justice. It's true, just think. Without the pressure of an informed public, Watergate would never have come to light, and the Vietnam War might have ended years later.

Perhaps the biggest long-term danger of the current Bush policy is that the executive will shield itself, through secrecy, from the checks and balances provided by informed legislative and judicial branches.

• Secrets hurt