Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
An update on my FOIA battle with the White House: Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) is urging his colleagues to sign on to a letter he intends to send to the US Trade Representative demanding the release of the settlement they negotiated with Canada, the EU and Japan regarding our online gambling laws. One of his aides contacted me last week and asked for a copy of my FOIA denial letter and, a few days after I sent it, the Congressman sent a letter to all of his colleagues in the House about it.
The memo to his colleagues is titled Support U.S. Sovereignty: Congress should know why the WTO ruled against US internet gambling laws and why the USTR response is classified as "national security." The memo also contains some details about the WTO settlement process that suggests that the settlement contains something other than direct payments to the three other governments. More likely it contains our agreement to allow those countries to place retaliatory sanctions on other sectors of the economy. Rep. DeFazio writes:
The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) response is to remove gambling from the GATS Treaty by offering compensatory adjustment. This process, known as Article XXI, requires the U.S to subject other business sectors to the GATS Treaty to compensate other nations for the removal of gambling. To protect U.S. laws that restrict internet gambling, the U.S. must sacrifice other businesses.The U.S. has secured an Article XXI agreement with Canada, the European Union, and Japan, but has only released vague descriptions of the compensatory adjustment. To learn which businesses the USTR is sacrificing, a Freedom of Information request was filed and subsequently denied for "national security" reasons. There is a concern that the USTR may have been ambitious in its use of a "national security" classification to avoid any publicity of which new business sectors are to be subjected to the GATS Treaty.
Those compensatory adjustments could do a great deal of harm to businesses that export to other countries by allowing the other signatories to the agreement to place higher tariffs on their goods, or possibly even allowing them to shut their markets to American goods entirely in some other sector of the economy. The government is essentially selling out the interests of one set of businesses and workers in order to preserve their authority to make it more difficult for Americans to participate in some forms of online gambling, all while refusing to say who they're selling out and why.
Rep. DeFazio does not accept the USTR's excuse for not releasing the contents of the agreement. In the letter he intends to send to the USTR after getting his colleagues to join his request, he says:
USTR has released a vague list of compensatory adjustments that include "U.S. commitments to maintain liberalized markets for warehousing services (excluding services supplied at ports and airports), private technical testing services, private research and development services, and postal services relating to outbound international letters." We do not believe that any of these compensatory adjustments could trigger a national security classification and we do not imagine a scenario in which these agreements could have national security implications.
The letter requests a complete copy of the agreement they signed. It also requests that the USTR "make clear the value of all compensatory adjustments, and fully describe all negative consequences of those adjustments upon U.S. businesses." My thanks to Rep. DeFazio for lending a hand in this fight. Stay tuned for further updates.
Comments
Does the administration have the authority to sign such an agreement without Senate approval?
Posted by: Bill Poser | March 10, 2008 5:12 PM
Great work with trying to get this document. Government should always be answerable to the people, not the other way around.
Posted by: Libertarian Girl | March 11, 2008 12:10 PM
Ed, your efforts are an interesting part of this debate. I will be interested to see the USTR's response. Having said that, I doubt that compensation will come in the form of the EU (or the others) being allowed to close their markets to US companies. Compensation usually comes in the form of the respondent (in this case, the US) offering market openings in other sectors of its market in compensation for closure of gambling and betting services. In other words, only the US would be changing its commitments and will be opening markets, not facing newly closed ones abroad.
Posted by: Sallie | March 11, 2008 12:57 PM
If the document is deemed to sensitive to release for "National Security" purposes then perhaps we shouldn't have already released it to other nations... I wonder if it would be easier to obtain by a Canadian/Japanese/European making thier equivilant of a FOIA request.
Posted by: Mike | March 11, 2008 1:02 PM
DeFazio used to be my congressman. The guy's a hoot--a first class cheeseball. But an honest one, and clearly on the right side here. I have no doubt that part of his motivation is an exteme antipathy to W--but then, whose isn't these days?
Posted by: James Hanley | March 11, 2008 5:51 PM