More lack of transparency in the USA: In the Public Interest?

I covered this earlier, but Archaeolaw has an interesting sidelight: "U.S. Government Declines to Disclose How It Obtained 10,000 Illegally Exported Iraqi Artifacts" 1st August 2013.

Ten thousand of those stolen artifacts surfaced in the US following the 2003 invasion. Iraqi and US government officials have now reached a deal for those artifacts to be returned to Iraq by August 2014, an announcement made by Iraq’s senior ministry advisor Baha al-Mayahi. The catch? The artifacts must all be registered in an electronic archive at Cornell before their return. The other catch? Nobody’s going to talk about how the artifacts got here. Really? Is that good enough? Is Iraq’s consent to non-disclosure by the U.S. government enough? Or does the public have any interest in knowing why 10,000 stolen artifacts have resurfaced here?