Secrecy

The Los Angeles police officer who fatally shot 13-year-old Devin Brown publicly released transcripts Friday from a meeting in which a disciplinary panel cleared him of wrongdoing. The panel's decision, reached earlier this week, outraged some city leaders because it was made in secret and rejected the civilian Police Commission's finding that the shooting by Officer Steven Garcia was unjustified.

Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton likes to stress the importance of "transparency" in conducting police work. Such transparency, he argues, reassures the public that police are performing honestly and professionally. But last week, Bratton was thrust into what amounts to a case study on the perils of government secrecy -- and into the uncomfortable position of having to defend himself against a cascade of criticism that his department was talking one game and playing another.

Kimberly Edwards boarded Majesty of the Seas for her 40th birthday expecting a vacation to remember. But three days into the five-day Bahamas cruise that was a gift from her fiance, a drunk passenger followed Edwards into a women's bathroom and sexually assaulted her, groping her through thin stretch pants, she said.

In response to growing secrecy surrounding police misconduct, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday urged the Civil Service Commission to stop excluding the sheriff's civilian watchdog from deputy disciplinary hearings.

The videos started popping up last month on YouTube. In one, secretly videotaped by a student, a teacher at Malibu High School loses control of the class and raises his voice while students laugh at him. In another, teenagers make fun of fellow students, who also appear to be taped without their knowledge. The videos have roiled the high school and sparked a debate among students, parents and administrators about what to do.

The CIA held suspected Al Qaeda militants in secret prisons in Poland and Romania, enlisting top officials in those countries to create and conceal the facilities, a European intergovernmental agency alleged Friday.

The location of the new U.S. embassy in Iraq is no secret. It's pretty difficult to camouflage 104 acres in the middle of Baghdad -- particularly 104 acres over which canary-yellow construction cranes have been hovering for months. And thanks to reports from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and various news outlets, we know the embassy compound on the west bank of the Tigris River will cost $592 million and include 27 buildings behind a series of protective walls.

As most students at Eastern Michigan University were heading home for the holidays in December, the school put out a news release announcing that student Laura Dickinson had unexpectedly passed away in her dorm room. There was no foul play, the school said. Staff members assured worried students they were safe. The campus fell into mourning, with candlelight vigils for the lanky 22-year-old member of the crew team.

An internal investigation that the House Intelligence Committee has refused to make public portrays the panel as embarrassingly entangled in the Randy "Duke" Cunningham bribery scandal. The report, a declassified version of which was obtained by the Los Angeles Times, describes the committee as a dysfunctional entity that served as a crossroads for almost every major figure in the ongoing criminal probe by the Justice Department.

For 23 years, without second thought, Bliss Broyard checked off boxes that would best describe her to herself as well as to the world: Upper middle class. Connecticut born. Prep school educated. White.