Colonel Ian Henderson was a British official dubbed the Butcher of Bahrain" because of atrocities he repeatedly committed during the 30 years he served as chief security official of that Middle Eastern country. A 2002 Guardian article reported that "during this time his men allegedly detained and tortured thousands of anti-government activists"; his official acts "included the ransacking of villages, sadistic sexual abuse and using power drills to maim prisoners". Col. Henderson was never punished in any way. For years, human rights groups have fought to obtain ... a 37-year-old diplomatic cable, relating to British responsibility for Henderson's brutality in Bahrain. Ordinarily, documents more than 30 years old are disclosable. Now, a governmental tribunal ruled ... that most of the diplomatic cable shall remain suppressed. The tribunal's ruling was at least partially based on "secret evidence ... that the release of such information could jeopardise Britain's new military base in the country." This is the core mindset now prevalent in both the U.S. and U.K. for hiding their crimes from their own populations and the rest of the world: disclosure of what we did will embarrass and shame us, cause anger toward us, and thus harm our "national security." This is exactly the same mentality driving the Obama administration's years-long effort to suppress photographs showing torture of detainees by the U.S.. Obama insisted that to release the photos "would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in danger."