Tobacco and food conglomerate Philip Morris wants to change its name to Altria, perhaps because the Latin-esque moniker connotes "altruism," as in the millions and millions of dollars the company donates each year to arts, culture and social welfare groups to whitewash its evil image. Now the whitewashing includes an alias. Philip Morris has waged perhaps the most successful, expensive and deadly PR campaign of the past century, misleading the public to prevent regulation of its addictive tobacco products.

"Taken individually, each of the new national security policies adopted by the Bush Administration in recent weeks has its pros and cons, its potential excesses and mitigating factors," observes the Secrecy News, a publication of the Federation of American Scientists.

"Not since Richard Nixon went to work in the Oval Office has there been so concentrated an effort to keep the real work of a president hidden, revealing to the public only a scripted leader," observes former White House Counsel John W. Dean, whose testimony to Congress helped blow the lid off the Watergate scandal. "Such secrecy invites us to wonder what is being hidden, and why. I know from first-hand experience that a president acting secretly usually does not have the best interests of Americans in mind. Rather, it is his own personal interests that are at stake."