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UK National Archives Divulge Secrets
Sunil Sood writes "Yes, its that time of year again - no, not the New Year but when the UK National Archives release a whole lot of previously "classified" information (many govt papers in the UK, with only a few exceptions, are classified secret for a 'standard' 30 years) As normal, you have the usual combination of the amusing: The design of a coin to mark the UK joining the EEC was changed, after Prince Philip said he did not like the 'little p', and the more serious: it was believed the USA had plans for US airborne troops to seize the oil installations in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in 1973."
We do. It's called the Freedom of Information Act.
We do.
Read, L
Here are some related links:
US ready to seize Gulf oil in 1973
Was America preparing a war for the Gulf oil in 1973?
Britain Warned of U.S. Plans After War
U.S. Mulled Seizing Oil Fields In '73 British Memo Cites Notion of Sending Airborne to Mideast
And this news item found originally on Reuters ties up nicely to the above:
U.S. OIL (Operation Iraqi Liberation) Imports Set Record in 2003, Trend Seen Up
My personal favorite 'secret' documents. Hmm. I wonder if that could be used today...?
The headline was misleading because it implied that the US was planning an attack - the reality was that Brit Intelligence thought that the US may have been planning an attack/invasion as opposed to having the actual invasion plans.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
I do not think that we are required to post the information after specific amount of time.
Actually, we are.
Documents classified by government agencies have lifetimes of 5, 10, 15, 25 or 50 years (depending on category) unless specifically exempted by provisions in the National Security regulations. There are many different categories of exemptions, but the only "eternal" ones (that I know of) are those relating to specific intelligence-gathering information or operations.
Material falling under those exemptions can remain classified indefinitely until a FOIA request for that information causes the classified info to be reviewed by a judge who decides whether it is still relevant to national security interests. But most classified documents do have finite lifetimes and I'm sure the US national archives will get all sorts of interesting stuff coming out into the public over the coming decades.
If you RTFA, you'll note the planned possible US invasion of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (and potential UK invasion of Abu Dhabi) was a potential response to the 1973 Arab oil embargo. That embargo was the Arab counterstrike against the US and Israel after the humiliating victory by Israel in the Yom Kippur War. That war, as anyone alive since then remembers, was so named after Egypt and Syria, surrounding Israel, combined in unprovoked sneak attack on Israel's holiest day, marked by national fasting and release from all work, including military. The cowardly attack was met with devastating counterforce from Israel, fighting once again for its existence (and the survival of its genome). So decisive was the Israeli recovery that disadvantageous borders, designed by the UN and exploited several times in the preceeding 25 years by hostile Arab neighbors, were pushed back into defensive border zones.
So a couple of Arab governments sacrifice many of their men to further their agenda of hatred and misdirection from their own tyranny, lose when their cowardly attempt at genocide underestimates the Israelis, and are immediately backed up by even more cowardly Arab governments with oil as a global economic tool. Which itself fails a few months later, when global economics takes the economy more seriously than the Arab vendetta, and some Arab governments break ranks.
When you look at the scenario, it's obvious that your statement is literally preposterous, turning its sights on the target of the hatred and greed: Israel. Arab governments have been flimsily uniting for over 40 years to destroy Israel for just the kind of evil you cite, coupled with a genocidal urge that was almost executed on the Israeli population immediately before the period we're discussing. Now that you know the actual facts, will you condemn the Arab countries for attempting on Israel the exact acts you found so contemptuous when portrayed in the reverse?
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make install -not war
Oh, get over it. This is information that is 30 years old.
If you want to bitch about revealing the confidences of an ally, let's talk about the detailed briefings the US forces in Afghanistan gave about SAS operations there. In one briefing the US Army disclosed more about an SAS operation in the field than the British government has ever done.
One of the reasons the SAS is so successful is that they keep their tactics very close to their chests. Certainly they never reveal specifics, such as the strength of their assault forces, enemy kills and captures, objectives achieved, casualties sustained, etc. It's so nice of the US Army to fill in the blanks and piss away the concept of operational security for them though.
And I haven't even mentioned "friendly fire" incidents and the subsequent cover-ups with which any related investigations are almost always tainted.
You were saying something about the UK letting the US down?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
"I dunno, the Brits seem to just dump out a document box after 30 years without much regard for what's in it."
Sorry not correct, there have been quite a number of times that the British Government has upped the time limit on the information due to be released (more from potential political embarrassment than because the information is sensitive for security reasons).
For those Slashdotters too young to remember, this was going on about the same time as the Saturday Massacre - where Nixon ordered Eliot Richardson to fire Archibald Cox. The anti-Nixon folks were having a field day (I was at UC Bezerkeley at the time).
There was another side of the story that didn't come out till much later. The Israelis had readied their nuclear armed missiles for launch, the Soviets were threatening Israel with retaliation in case Israel launched and the US was basically threatening the Soviets with retaliation.
After hearing about what went on during the 1973 war, it is too bad that someone from the Pentagon didn't walk over to the US Supreme Court and persuaded the Justices to tell Cox to lay low until things quited down - as this was the closest we got to nuclear war since the Cuban missile crisis.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
Sweden has fallen from a top-ten economy, in terms of per capita GDP, to a middle-of-the-pack mediocrity. They have not had a arguably higher standard of living since the '70s. The same goes for Canada. Unless a country can grow as fast as the U.S. - and lately that has been scorchingly fast - they will become a backwater.
Not exactly true. In the US, there is a time limit on classification. I believe it is current 25 years for documents classified secret. If at the end of this time period a document will be automattically declassified, unless certain steps are taken to prevent this declassification.
Basically, at the 25 year mark it goes from a default of classified until to explicitly declassified, to a default of declassified, unless explicitly classified.
Of course, you must still go through a FOIA request to get access to the documents.
The Economics of Website Security
What other outcome? Maybe that they'd actually comply with the entirely reasonable demands that they cease their war against China. Hey, it's easy to say in hindsight that the Japanese would never do that, but there was actually a debate within the Japanese government about whether to do just that in response to the threatened embargo.
The lack of radio silence (sources?) wouldn't mean all that much--the US didn't have the same signal intelligence infrastructure it does today.
Since I'm trying very hard not to consider your post an uninformed troll, I won't go for a cheap shot like "if it weren't for us you'd all be speaking German".
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.