Forget the emails. Release the files!

David Brock is right. The "eGhazi" controversy is really just a way to restoke the dead fires of the nonsensical Benghazi accusations. Yet the congressional Republicans who have wasted so much money and time looking into that particular unscandal are keeping secrets of their own...

They should release all their e-mail — public and private — unless, of course, they are the ones hiding something — perhaps their partisan motivations and strategic leaking to the media.

A good start, that. But I'd like a great deal more transparency -- from Congress and from the executive branch, from this administration and from its predecessors.

The Obama administration can start by releasing the 50 page legal memorandum about the killing of the American-born Anwar Awlaki. This document no doubt contains references to classified sources and methods -- but surely a redacted version would clarify the legal basis for Obama's outrageous action. Why can't we see any part of this memo?

Another example: Did you know that there was a 1991 SEC probe of Dubya's sale of Harken energy stocks? There was reason to believe that he might have been guilty of insider trading -- yet all documents surrounding that investigation remain under wraps. The SEC assured the nation that those suspicions were groundless -- but unless we see the documentation, how can we be sure?

And what about the notorious 28 pages excised from Congress' inquiry into 9/11? Those pages detailed Saudi involvement. To be specific:

“There’s nothing in it about national security,” Walter Jones, a Republican congressman from North Carolina who has read the missing pages, contends. “It’s about the Bush Administration and its relationship with the Saudis.” Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, told me that the document is “stunning in its clarity,” and that it offers direct evidence of complicity on the part of certain Saudi individuals and entities in Al Qaeda’s attack on America. “Those twenty-eight pages tell a story that has been completely removed from the 9/11 Report,” Lynch maintains.

You may recall the minor brouhaha (which should have been a major brouhaha) which erupted in the press when Cheney and Bush refused to testify before that very same congressional inquiry. The two men finally gave in, but they demanded that there be no video or audio recording of their testimony. Tellingly, they also refused to testify under oath. There was a note-taker present, but those notes remain secret to this day. Why?

There is excellent reason to believe that the public has seen only a small portion of the famed Presidential Daily Brief which warned that Osama Bin Laden was poised to attack the US. When may we see the rest?

The Bush administration never released the memos in which the White House gave its approval for CIA torture. And Dick Cheney has found some rather clever ways to circumvent to Records Act which was supposed to make his papers public.

There are lots of files concerning "Poppy" Bush that I'd like to see. For example, the Secret Service has records which could prove or disprove the allegation that the elder Bush (then a Vice Presidential candidate) was in Paris on October 19, 1980, brokering the final stages of the October Surprise deal. Why can't we see those records? (You know damned well that if a Democrat were involved, every Fox pseudojournalist would have howled to see that documentation.) Strong witnesses claim that they saw him in Paris. If Bush really were in DC on that date, as he has always claimed, I suspect that the files would have been released ages ago.

In 1993, the Bush administration issued National Security Directive 79, which is so heavily classified that we cannot even know the title of the document. More than two decades have passed. Isn't it time we saw the damned title of the thing?

Isn't it fair to ask Jeb Bush to release all records concerning his scandalous relations with Medicare swindler Miguel Recarey?

A CIA historian named Cleveland Cram wrote a 4000 page investigation of James Jesus Angleton's reign of madness at the Agency. I believe that this document contains extremely important information, and might well force a rewrite of much of our recent history. Alas, we can't read those pages. (Cram also wrote a watered-down 81-page document for public consumption. Though much is left out, it remains a very interesting read.)

How can I avoid mentioning the CIA documents on the JFK assassination which remain classified five decades later? Word has it that the files concern David Atlee Philips, a CIA operative seen in Oswald's company. Philips worked directly for Angleton. Shortly before he died, Philips tearfully confessed to his brother that he had been in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.

Those are just some of the files that ought to be released. I could go on. And on and on and on on on on on ON.

Hillary's emails? Pfft. Who cares about that? Nobody has given me reason to believe that those letters contain explosive material.