The details vary of course, but the story line is becoming too familiar. Information into or out of the Bush administration is either manipulated toward a desired outcome or completely hidden.

The latest incident is a decision by the State Department to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism, according to Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service. The decision to halt the report came as the figures for 2004 were the highest in the 19-year history of the publication. Last year, the 2003 report had to be revised because the number of incidents was undercounted.

Publication of "Patterns of Global Terrorism" was apparently a nasty counterpoint to administration claims of progress in the war against terrorism.

Officials who collected the data had been asked by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's office to use alternative methodology to produce the report, which would have lowered the numbers. They refused and the report was canceled.

This sorry tale is a public example of a theme running through the half-dozen examinations of U.S. intelligence failures prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Information that did not fit the administration's needs was disregarded and reports that supported the White House were received without challenge.

Efforts to reshape the U.S. intelligence community and invest powerful authority into a single intelligence chief are already being challenged by Pentagon attempts to control the gathering and dissemination of information for defense needs.

The fight over the nomination of John Bolton to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is grounded in a pattern of bullying subordinates over contrary intelligence data. In addition, stories have circulated in advance of a scheduled Senate vote today that he delayed or withheld information from two secretaries of state.

Democracies depend on the free flow of information to decision-makers, legislators and the public. More and more, there is a sense of information being massaged, manipulated or withheld.

Let the public weigh how the administration is doing against terrorism. Part of drawing that conclusion is access to statistical data gathered and shared since the Reagan years.