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CIA Secretly Reclassifying Documents
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Tue Feb 21, 2006 10:03 AM
from the can-i-get-my-file-yet dept.
from the can-i-get-my-file-yet dept.
SetupWeasel writes "The New York Times is reporting that the CIA is secretly reclassfying documents. How did we catch on? Historians have some of the documents. From the article: "eight [of the] reclassified documents had been previously published in the State Department's history series, 'Foreign Relations of the United States.'" Are our intelligence agencies rewriting history, stupidly paranoid, or both? We do know that they are ignoring a 2003 law that requires formal reclassifications. It puts that whole Google censorship thing in a whole new light. (Americans aren't allowed to see that video.)"
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Route around that censorship. (Score:5, Informative)
For interested Americans, the 'big boom' video censored by Google [google.com] may be viewed here [youtube.com].
Re:Route around that censorship. (Score:5, Informative)
It's some dork who uploaded a video with the "play in all countries except the united states" option turned on. It's just a stupid google feature.
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Re:Route around that censorship. (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Route around that censorship. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it is true, but without knowing the motives of the submitter in banning access to the U.S., it's as erroneous to dismiss the issue as it is to execute the standard Slashdot knee-jerk reaction to censorship.
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Re:Route around that censorship. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Route around that censorship. (Score:5, Informative)
This is not Google censoring anything, the person who uploaded the video just indicated that it should not be viewable in the USA.
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Re:Route around that censorship. (Score:4, Informative)
I think you've been reading to many spy books.
Under no circumstances are "they" (the government, MI5 or anyone) allowed to kill you or anyone for not following the official secrets act. Both UK and EU law expresses forbides the killing of anyone for any reason outsite military conflict (which is a whole different thing) and even then they can't kill you for not following the official secrets act. Also, no-one in the past 50 years (i.e. apart from during the world wars) has been sentanced to anywhere near life imprisonment.
There is no part of the act which states you are not allowed to disclose the fact it's been read to you (except possibly in very specific circumstances where such disclosure in itself would endanger national security i.e. in the middle of a war-zone although even for this situation I cannot find a single test-case). There is also an independant commissioner who advises on any convictions under this act to prevent abuse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Secrets_Act [wikipedia.org] has more information.
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1989/Ukpga_198900
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Cruel and Unusual... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What other War Footage .. (Score:5, Informative)
I say you should post it. I expect that some will use it for perverted entertainment or humour. But I suspect many more people in the US just don't have much idea what is really happening out there. People can't form valid opinions with nothing to form them from.
I can't off any videos (for which I'm thankful), but if you want good factual reporting from non "embedded" reporters, I can recommend the Indpendent [independent.co.uk]. If you google through their site for Iraq or Robert Fisk (their correspondent), you'll find plenty. Here [google.co.uk].
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Article Text - Fuck NYT registration (Score:5, Informative)
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: February 21, 2006
WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 -- In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.
The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassified pages began in 1999, when the Central Intelligence Agency and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Bill Clinton. It accelerated after the Bush administration took office and especially after the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to archives records.
But because the reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy -- governed by a still-classified memorandum that prohibits the National Archives even from saying which agencies are involved -- it continued virtually without outside notice until December. That was when an intelligence historian, Matthew M. Aid, noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been withdrawn from the archives' open shelves.
Mr. Aid was struck by what seemed to him the innocuous contents of the documents -- mostly decades-old State Department reports from the Korean War and the early cold war. He found that eight reclassified documents had been previously published in the State Department's history series, "Foreign Relations of the United States."
"The stuff they pulled should never have been removed," he said. "Some of it is mundane, and some of it is outright ridiculous."
After Mr. Aid and other historians complained, the archives' Information Security Oversight Office, which oversees government classification, began an audit of the reclassification program, said J. William Leonard, director of the office.
Mr. Leonard said he ordered the audit after reviewing 16 withdrawn documents and concluding that none should be secret.
"If those sample records were removed because somebody thought they were classified, I'm shocked and disappointed," Mr. Leonard said in an interview. "It just boggles the mind."
If Mr. Leonard finds that documents are being wrongly reclassified, his office could not unilaterally release them. But as the chief adviser to the White House on classification, he could urge a reversal or a revision of the reclassification program.
A group of historians, including representatives of the National Coalition for History and the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations, wrote to Mr. Leonard on Friday to express concern about the reclassification program, which they believe has blocked access to some material at the presidential libraries as well as at the archives.
Among the 50 withdrawn documents that Mr. Aid found in his own files is a 1948 memorandum on a C.I.A. scheme to float balloons over countries behind the Iron Curtain and drop propaganda leaflets. It was reclassified in 2001 even though it had been published by the State Department in 1996.
Another historian, William Burr, found a dozen documents he had copied years ago whose reclassification he considers "silly," including a 1962 telegram from George F. Kennan, then ambassador to Yugoslavia, containing an English translation of a Belgrade newspaper article on China's nuclear weapons program.
Under existing guidelines, government documents are supposed to be declassified after 25 years unless there is particular reason to keep them secret. While some of the choices made by the security reviewers at the archives are baffling, others seem guided by an old bureaucratic reflex: to cover up embarrassments, even if they occurred a half-century ago.
One reclassified document in Mr. Aid's files, for instance, gives the C.I.A.'s assessment on Oct. 12, 1950, that Chinese intervention in the Korean Wa
Re: Fucking registration (Score:5, Informative)
A friend of mine is an editor for a large newspaper in a major US city. He tells me that newspapers are in serious trouble financially, significantly because of decreased ad revenue. People are reading paper newspapers less and online news sources more. From what I can tell he's not just bellyaching - newspapers are laying off lots of reporters.
I'm afraid that if newspapers get poorer and poorer, we citizens lose one of our country's main forces against political evils - skilled investigative reporters with the resources to pursue stories in depth. By not registering for sites like the NYT, we make it harder for that newspaper to get ad revenue, which ultimately jeopardizes its ability to investigate the Bushs, Rumsfelds, and Nixons of the world.
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Re: Fucking registration (Score:5, Insightful)
Errr? We actually had those at one time?
Not trying to knock your friend or anything, but if the "quality" of reporting I'm seeing in any one of the major metro papers in my area are any indication of the "skilled investigative reporters" of which you speak, I'd be better off with some tin cans, some string, and those X-Ray glasses I got in a box of Cracker Jack as a kid. That way I could investigate them myself with the same level of "thoroughness". The only way to get decent coverage of any story is to use five or six different sources and try to piece together a coherent image of what the actual story should be.
People are stupid, sensationalism sells, and the people who are looking for actual news are being disenfranchised by things such as the Jackson trial and the latest political "scandal". If the papers want money, maybe they should improve the quality of their stories, eh?
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Re: Fucking registration (Score:5, Insightful)
Poster2: "Errr? We actually had those at one time?"
Yes, we did, but the 1990s were a hallmark in the die-off of investigative journalism. Several books have been written about the subject. The 1990s produced a corporatized media system that tipped over a hump in concerns of financial controls, corporate ownership, and the vast background hum of elite influence. The end product is that major media outlets are streamlined to produce consumerist news (HappyNews{tm}), not anything else. Investigating financial topics, for instance, not only takes a while, but tends to cross some corporate donor or owner somewhere.
The (in)famous meta-story of the Fox News / Monsanto story is an outstanding example of how highly-corporatized ownership of news (and in fact all industries, as well as corruption of government) kills investigative journalism.
An American is much more likely now to find investigative journalism from independents like Greg Palast, and foreigners (notably, the BBC). His domestic media otherwise has been completely subverted and simply cannot be trusted.
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Re: Fucking registration (Score:5, Insightful)
But we lost that years ago when newspapers found that parrotting PR guff is a lot cheaper that employing real reporters. The dearth in solid investigative reporting is not just due to the Internet - the decline began long before the net was in everyone's home.
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For as long as Governments .. (Score:3, Insightful)
America: your country has been usurped by your CIA and its masters. The American Public no longer control that agency.
Re:For as long as Governments .. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:For as long as Governments .. (Score:5, Insightful)
Get a blowjob from an intern.
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Re:For as long as Governments .. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:For as long as Governments .. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you are making a false assumption. Most Americans want the CIA. The reason the CIA exists and continues to exist is because Americans see a need for that agency. If most Americans wanted the CIA to be axed, it would be.. because politicians "pandering" for votes would be lobbying for it. Your post seems
Re:For as long as Governments .. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the fact is that you've watched too many cheesy shows on TV. The people that run the CIA are appointed. By elected officials. You'll recall the recent tossing-out of the guy that was put in there by the last president, primarily because he did such a lousy job stewarding the agency's prediction of events like 9/11. So he does a crappy job, and he and his crew get the boot. He's replaced by a new guy (with a new team) that are in line with the currently elected administration. The current administration doesn't set the agency's budget, either. That's done by congress. The members of the intelligence oversight committees are very aware of the cash flow and the programs they fund.
But everything they do can't be publicly chewed on, any more than everything your local police department does to catch bands of car theives, church arsonists, or kiddie porn shops is discussed openly in the press... because doing so undermines the ability to accomplish the tasks. If you don't like the tasks, then you put forth a lucid, compelling case that causes enough people to think like you and elect representatives and executives that put the agency to more/different/fewer missions.
'national security' in this case, being, the desire of the American public to revolt against its politicians and create conditions ripe for civil war.. you do know that 99% of the time, when a politicians says 'national security' he means "we can't tell the public about this because we believe it might cause another civil war..."
Wow! 99%, huh? You, sir, are a BS-ing, twaddle-headed, paranoic, twit with a rudderless, nonsensical agenda. At least I don't have to worry about you actually being persuasive enough with enough voters to see your vision of things displace a more rational, however imperfect, one that takes reality into account.
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take it for what it is. (Score:5, Insightful)
This poster in no way agrees with what the CIA is doing, just pointing out an oft made error. This here is not some Orwellian nightmare.
Re:take it for what it is. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:take it for what it is. (Score:3, Insightful)
"This here is not some Orwellian nightmare."
No, I guess it's not.
Ignorance is strength.
Re:take it for what it is. (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, read this:
"John Doe died in 1942 after being shot in the face by the president of the united states for looking at him funny. The president attended his funeral and pissed on his grave."
Now, I won't rewrite history, I will simply deny access to a part of it:
"John Doe died in 1942. The president attended his funeral."
P.S. Any ressemblance between my example and real persons or events is purely coincidental. Use of "president" is made to give the anecdote a sense of historical relevance. No animals were hurt in the making of this comment.
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Re:You miss the parent's point... (Score:5, Insightful)
LS
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Re:take it for what it is. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:take it for what it is. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Selective omission (Score:5, Interesting)
The head of the national archives and records administration (NARA), a supposedly independent administration, has been replaced at the request of top levels of the Bush regime [gcn.com]. Not only is that rather unusual, but there are some big issues with the new appointment, Weinstein [hnn.us]. All that means is that NARA now has a politcal appointee at its head, unlikely to stand up for freedom of information.
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Secret? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Secret? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gammas are the best class. I sure wouldn't want to be one of those Alphas or Betas.
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Re:Secret? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't limit those explanations to just Slashdot. Almost everywhere you go in the US, you will find a natural distrust of government. After all, remember back in the Clinton Administration, there was a large number of conservatives that truly believed the US Government was secretly collaborating with the United Nations in order to allo
Re:Secret? (Score:3, Interesting)
What an amazingly bad messure of importance... If the American Public still care must be important, vs. no longer cares = Unimportant.
So American Idol's next round is the next critical thing facing this country.
The average american's lack of focus, concern, and ability to understand an issue in no way alters its significance.
And your point that Doesn't sound very secret to me. Isn't secret when nobody knows a
Re:Secret? (Score:3, Insightful)
which is why my fellow americans terrify me.
i think for the most part our government is both evil and stupid. not necessarily on purpose or design. but it is bound to happen when you create a huge beuracracy and give it unchecked power.
i mean seriously, the thing that annoys me most about this is it implies they have nothing better to do? these idiots can't adequately describe the nuclear capability of a hostile nation because they're too busy reclassif
Re:Secret? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Secret? (Score:3, Informative)
You're talking about FISA, of course, and I completely agree with you on that subject. However, the article that we are obstensibly discussing (CIA secretly reclassifying documents) notes that this began in 1999 while Clinton was still in
I don't get that video (Score:4, Interesting)
"Detonation of Improvised Explosive Device used against Coalition forces. We found this one before they could use it against us."
Are Americans actually not allowed to see it? Doesn't make much sense.
Re:I don't get that video (Score:5, Informative)
Settle down everyone, and read this [slashdot.org].
It is a feature when you upload a video to say who can and cannot watch a video, not "US Government Censorship"
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Eep.. (Score:3, Insightful)
In some ways I'm glad that my civil rights can't be screwed because such lax idiots are in control, but at the same time I fear all my personal information is being held by people I wouldn't trust with my TV remote.
It's an old problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
While I think most will agree that classification is important to basic security - protecting sources and methods saves lives - there is little doubt that the US government uses it too much and always has. There is always a fear that even a slight mention in a report or stating information that we shouldn't know and only know through a secret source or method will blow the program and potentially waste millions or, worse, put someone's life in danger.
Most of the time this is unwarranted and, in the case of these specific documents, one has to wonder a great deal about it. That said, from time to time, it's absolutely necessary. (Following is an anecdote from a professor I had who worked for Senate Intelligence Committe for a while and, yes, was a Democrat) In the late 1970's, an FBI author of a book on the Rosenburg incident, for example, was angered by what he believed to be censorship regarding important information on the case. After going through the motions to allow him to print that part what he wanted, he found the reason - the information he wanted to print came from a source who, after more than 30 years, was still reporting from the USSR. Putting it in his book would have, without doubt, led to his death.
The "missile gap" of the late 50's - early 60's is another example - it existed only in public perception, and this had been confirmed by secret intelligence programs. But, rather than divulge this information and risk intelligence-gathering the programs, Kennedy was allowed to use it as a political plank.
Don't get me wrong - the government absolutely over classifies data, something I know perfectly well from experience. But, from time to time, it has been extremely important to keep what we know under wraps.
That's why there's Cryptome! (Score:5, Informative)
Bill of rights re-classified (Score:5, Funny)
In the latest step to protect us all from terrorists, the bill of rights has been re-classified.
Dick Cheney revealed that he has been given the executive power by the president to classify specific portions of the constitution. "If they know their rights, it will give them an edge in the war on terror. Agents have shown time and again that they can move much faster and more effectively without any constitutional entanglements. Americans understand that this is a necessary measure."
Rumors that a secret house-to-house gun collection program is underway have been vehemently denied by Whitehouse spokesman Scott McCleanone. Mr McC also deflected a question about the house's mysterious inability to find procedural documents relating to the drawing of articles of impeachment.
Orwell is here (Score:4, Insightful)
This is part of a larger trend that is developing at a rapid pace in the US which embraces secrecy in place of open government, and propaganda instead of news. To think we used to scold the old USSR for this very same bullshit. It's shameful that so many Americans are comfortable with this new form of 'freedom'. It really is true: You don't really appreciate what you have until it's gone.
Ignorant or un-informed? (Score:3, Informative)
Patterns are the Key (Score:5, Insightful)
However, real-world intelligence does not come in discrete units but rather it arises from an analysis of broad patterns. It comes from data mining. Many separate and seemingly innocuous pieces of information are stitched together to create a picture of something hidden. The reason that the military (or even corporations) "over-classify" is to prevent the data mining of otherwise trivial items. The 1947 balloon program sounds historic and trivial but that program fit into a budget and organization somewhere and that effected the form of other, perhaps more interesting and relevant, programs.
Only someone from the inside, with a broad picture of how all the pieces fit together, could possibly judge whether the classification of any particular piece of information is justified or not. Anyone else is doing so based on ignorant hubris.
Re:Patterns are the Key (Score:4, Insightful)
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The ministry of truth (Score:4, Funny)
Time to start reading kiddies (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can control what people know, you control what they beleive, and thus how they act. Right to the point where they're not even aware that they're being played.
The Iraq Invasion is a wonderful demonstration of the US Ministry of Truth. There are people in the US currently running around thinking the US invaded Iraq to "liberate" the people, not go after WMD which wasn't there.
You 1st worlders can't see it firsthand, it is so scary to watch.
To quote Orwell (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Tempest in a teapot (Score:5, Insightful)
If the government will stop proving on a regular basis that it deserves to be thought of in that way, we'll stop.
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Re:Your comments betray your knowledge of history (Score:3, Insightful)