In a quiet executive order, President Obama has granted to the international police force Interpol the power to operate in the USA--beyond the powers granted to the FBI and other American law-enforcement agencies. Their files will be beyond the scrutiny of Congress, American law enforcement, the media, and the American people.

Without any presidential statement or White House press briefing, the White House Web site quietly posted the announcement on Dec. 17th, along with the one-paragraph text of Obama's Executive Order 12425.

This order grants Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization, two key privileges:

1. They can operate within the territorial limits of the United States without being subject to the same constitutional restraints that apply to all domestic law enforcement agencies such as the FBI.
   
2. Obama has exempted Interpol's domestic facilities--including its office within the U.S. Department of Justice--from search and seizure by U.S. authorities and from disclosure of archived documents in response to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by U.S. citizens.

This gives an international law enforcement organization (which, by the way, is accountable to no other national authority) the ability to operate as it pleases within U.S. borders, and he has freed it from the most basic measure of official transparency and accountability, the Freedom of Information Act.

Read more in a Washington Examiner Editorial, December 30, 2009
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