“William Leonard, who was entrusted with ensuring proper treatment of state secrets by government agencies in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, said that over the past decade both the Obama and the previous Bush administrations had manipulated their classification authority to create new executive powers without congressional oversight or judicial review. Leonard, the former head of the Information Security Oversight Office from 2002 to 2007, said that what was at stake was ‘the abuse of the very form of government we are operating under, as unilateral executive powers go unchallenged.’”
