Access Denied!

"Press Office," chirped the Defense Department voice on the phone.

"Yes, good morning. My name is Bill Fisher. I write for TruthOut. I have a couple of questions about the Biscuit Program. Would you be able to help me?"

"What are Biscuits?" said a confused voice.

"They are military shorthand for Behavioral Science Consultation Teams," said I.

"Let me connect you with the person who knows about that program," said the helpful voice.

Pause.

Then came an answering machine. "This is Jane Doe (I am not using her real name because I might get her in trouble). Please leave your name and phone number and the nature of your question, and I'll call you back," said the disembodied voice mail message.

I did, adding that I wanted to file a story today. Then I waited. And waited. And waited some more. From midday Friday until 7 p.m. Monday.

Altogether, I called three times, each time being referred either to a different person (who was away from his/her desk), or to another automated voice mailbox, where I left the same message.

The questions I never got to ask anyone at the DOD were:

"I'd like to know whether BISCUIT units are working at Abu Ghraib and Bagram and other US-controlled detention centers as well as at Guant¡namo," and "Some folks who are in the medical and other health-provider fields have been critical of the BISCUITS at Guant¡namo Bay, saying they have been using doctors and nurses and psychologists to help the interrogators get information out of the detainees, and advising about how best to keep people alive who are on hunger strike there."

Now, if my name happened to be Bob Woodward or Jane Mayer or Sy Hirsch or Walter Pincus or Jim Risen, I suppose I could have called a "high level official close to the Bush administration," who might speak, "on condition of anonymity."

But I wanted to discover whether a plain vanilla working-stiff journalist - and taxpayer - could actually get some information on a sensitive subject from a famously secretive government.

I guess I got my answer. The silence was deafening.

This is why blogs are so important, this is why we all do what we do. We cannot live in a world where the government only talk to people who will report the news in the way that they would like - or risk being cut out of the government's loop.

Even Bush recently admitted the importance of blogging, by calling on all Republicans to blog. Granted he did so because, at this point in time, even the right wing press are finding it hard to explain his incompetence; but the point still holds.

We cannot accept, as truth, facts which are handed down with conditions attached.

The truth is the truth.

There are no riders on the contract.

There is a phenomenal responsibility, on all of us, to accept that the internet is the greatest advancement of freedom the world has experienced since the discovery of the printing press.

With one major difference. We are all now publishers.

We MUST make that count.