CIA Secretly Reclassifying Documents

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.)"

Route around that censorship.

For interested Americans, the 'big boom' video censored by Google [google.com] may be viewed here [youtube.com].

Re:Route around that censorship.

"you're not entitled to tell anyone it's been read to you and they are fully authorised to kill or imprision for life anyone who does not do exactly what they say, how they say it."

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_1989000 6_en_1.htm [opsi.gov.uk] has the official legal wording of the act.

Re:Route around that censorship.

When you upload a video to Google, you pick the countries it is viewable in. The reason Google has this in place is because Google Video was originally meant to be a video store and not just another YourTube. When selling video, it's sometimes important that only certain regions are allowed to view the video, as the rights to distribution in other regions might not be yours.

This is not Google censoring anything, the person who uploaded the video just indicated that it should not be viewable in the USA.

Re:What other War Footage ..

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].

Re:Route around that censorship.

This is NOT interesting, and is it not censorship.

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.

Re:Route around that censorship.

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.

Re:Route around that censorship.

Damn, now I'll have to put all my guns away. I was SO looking for an excuse to rise up against government censorship.

Re:Route around that censorship.

Look, you don't have to lose the indignation. What you felt is exactly what people in China feel everytime they use the internet, and what any kid in the US feels any time they try to access a website on homosexuality from a public school. These are real problems affecting billions. The fact that you had to momentarily share their subjugation should serve to remind you of what they're going through. Use the indignation to speak on their behalf. Yes, it's possible the video was blocked from US audiences just to make a point. So what? The point is made.

Article Text - Fuck NYT registration

U.S. Reclassifies Many Documents in Secret Review
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

I too find registration a PITA, and worrisome because there are no guarantees about how the information will be used. But I'm growingly worried about NOT registering. Here's why...

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.

Re: Fucking registration

skilled investigative reporters with the resources to pursue stories in depth.

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?

Re: Fucking registration

Poster1: "skilled investigative reporters with the resources to pursue stories in depth"

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.

Re: Fucking registration

"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."

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.

For as long as Governments ..

.. are given cart-blanche to declare their own secrets, they will forever be out of control.

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 ..

the fact is, the establishment of a secret intelligence agency without public oversight (and there is *zero* with the CIA) is a grand trojan horse designed to introduce a hidden control mechanism into a society

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.

Re:For as long as Governments ..

There's simply no way the "American public" could remove the CIA inside a couple of elections. The public doesn't set policy all they do is elect politicians whose propaganda appeals to them most. Democracy is government by the people. Nobody has a truly democratic society, opting for the more manageable solution of electing officials to vote on their behalf. The political system in the US is too entrenched to do anything radical and too invested in itself to allow that to change.

Re:For as long as Governments ..

That should have been obvious to even casual media observers, when the media became more rabid over not hearing gossip about the VP's accidental shooting spree [a lawyer shot with many pellets in one blast], than they were about the President's obviously illegal wiretappings of Americans. Geeze, what does a president have to do these days to get impeached when breaking an enshrined value in the constitution, and a law isn't enough?

Re:For as long as Governments ..

Geeze, what does a president have to do these days to get impeached when breaking an enshrined value in the constitution, and a law isn't enough?

Get a blowjob from an intern.

take it for what it is.

Everyone is always worried about governments "rewriting history" i.e. from the post "Are our intelligence agencies rewriting history, stupidly paranoid, or both?" This here is not an example of that. The government is not rewriting history, just denying access to it. Whether that is as bad is debatable.

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.

The government is not rewriting history, just denying access to it. [...] This here is not some Orwellian nightmare.

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.

Re:You miss the parent's point...

I think YOU missed your parent post's point. He was giving an analogy, and wasn't literally referring to rewriting individual documents. If you look at the body of documents as a whole, they present a story. You can create a different story by releasing some documents and holding others. He analogizes sentence fragments to entire documents.

LS

Re:take it for what it is.

Denying access to history is the same as rewriting it. While we may remember what happens today and we might have some vague guess as to what went on internally, what about two generations from now? Assuming the USA is still standing and the spy agencies still have their way; what exactly do our grandchildren know happened historically? Nothing, just hearesay from their crazy grandparents. I think it's a bit worse than you make it out to be. Of course I could just be paranoid.

Re:take it for what it is.

You are absolutely correct. We've always been at war with Eurasia.

Selective omission

The government is not rewriting history, just denying access to it.

Or selectively deleting it. Either way it is possible rewrite history with a few key omissions or abiguities here and there. It's not necessarily the intelligence agencies, more like orders from within the current regime itself.

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.

Secret?

Doesn't sound very secret to me. Isn't secret when nobody knows about it? And why does slashdot assume the only possible explanations are A) the government is evil and rewriting history or B) the government is stupid or C) the government is evil? Watch out! Sounds as big as the wiretap scandal! Oh wait, nobody cares about that anymore either.

Re:Secret?

Yeah! I mean, what's the big deal. It's just super powerful government agencies flagrantly breaking the law. It's not like this is a bad thing. How could it be bad? The CIA is good. The government is good. They can't do bad things. It's just impossible. This is not bad. Ergo, it is good.

Gammas are the best class. I sure wouldn't want to be one of those Alphas or Betas.