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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.
You should listen to all the Nixon tapes - that guy had lots of crazy ideas. None where ever carried out though.
And it makes refrence that British Intel thought it would be likely that the US would invade, not that they were planning a direct attack. Its kind of a misleading headline.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
ours is 50 years, though. there was a /. post a few months back, regarding the unclassification of the documents from roswell on the date of the "alien landing". if i remember correctly, it reported the weather, and had nothing about little green men in a saucer...
What do you think military think-tanks and war games are for? They think up possible scenarios for just about anything and then research ways to acheive the considered goals. The ideas that work are made into operation plans and filed away for the off-chance that such a situation might arise.
We do.
Read, L
The British feared the US would invade. The report doesn't cite specific sources for this scenario. Likely it was the speculation of a few half-informed analysts. I'm sure there are reports circulating through classified networks arbout Libya's plan to join the EU and take it over. Or Syria's plan to grab the Golan Heights.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
GRRRR. Why is /. so UK centric? Aren't the editors aware that there are people in other countries that read this site?
I have a shitty sig!
As usual, a grab bag of interesting things to be gleaned from declassified documents, although perhaps more interesting for their social context than for their political content, like the stuff with Massey-Ferguson and the ministerial scandal where the first thought was "Is this a security risk" rather than "Lets spin this to make it look good." We notice that resignations occurred. these days, the guilty parties would be given a slapped wrist and told to be more careful next time.
How times change.
"How fine you look when dressed in rage."
It should be noted that the intro to this piece -- and indeed, the BBC headline itself -- are a little misleading.
1. There is only one real fact in the piece: The British ambassador to Washington said that the American secretary of defense told him that "it was no longer obvious to him that the United States could not use force." Earthshaking, huh?
The rest of the piece is just more-or-less informed speculation.
2. Of course, I'm not trying to say American military planners *didn't* draw up contingency plans for seizing oil assets. In fact, quite the opposite: If they didn't, then they weren't doing their jobs. The BBC seems to consider this a remarkable revelation, but allow me to humbly suggest it would be more remarkable if military planners *didn't* include this fairly obvious scenario in their contingency planning.
- Alaska Jack
or at least hear about current plans about the Iraq situation. I could actually afford to bet at least 100€ on it, at least at the time of de-classification, that the US had planned more than they let us in on. And that would be BEFORE any claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction were even made.
So nice that, hopefully, not everything remains as a secret...
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
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
Still, the US haters are going to use this to highlight how US's policy was always about oil. I wonder what this will do to Bush in the elections, probably nothing, too bad.
Now they've erased "WMD" from our collective minds as well, and has reduced the reporting of "Iraq has WMD and is buying nukes" to a "small error" which "should've been left out of the speech", yeah a small error which has left thousands dead, on both sides.
I'm sure those people enjoy the fact that they are dead because of one erronous sentence in Dubya's speech.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Yes, but why don't we have plans to switch away from fossil fuels? Why don't we have plans to make a more self-reliant society? Why don't we have plans to benefit all of mankind?
It's kind of sad to look back at the ignoble plans we have made and realize that we haven't really changed.
The warplan devised in the 20's for the defeat of Japan...
Even though the so called secret plans are only supposition on the UK MOD's part, the USA certainly has plans for invading just about every country on earth. This is not due to sinister intent, just responsable planning. The world is a strange and dangereous place where allies of today can quickly turn into deadly ennemies (Japan of the 30's, Iran in the 70's, Panema in the 80's, etc). The price of being unprepared is just too high in this day & age.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
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.
Has it occured to anyone that our Government (and any other industrialized nation) has "plans" on the books for just about every imaginable scenario? And should?
It's called "preparedness", kids. Thats what you pay tax dollars for. You pay tax dollars so that your country won't be caught with it's pants down when the shit hits the fan. Any government worth it's shit draws up plans in advance, anticipating what may happen. Thousands of them. Some of these plans are too scary for normal citizens to know about. But they have to be made.
The Arab oil embargo could have seriously crippled the American economy. That alone is reason enough to go to war. There would be rioting in the streets if the gas pumps stopped flowing, the machines stopped working, and industry ground to a halt. Think about that for a moment before running off thinking an invasion of Saudi Arabia & Kuwait is the byproduct of some oooh-so-evil secret Military comittee tucked away inside a super-secret mountain fortress, controlled by the psychic vampire Illuminati Freemasons.
Put your little conspiracy thoery hat back under your chair and get a grip. The Government is made up of people like you and me. If you had access to the same information they did, you would have made exactly the same arrangements, and outlined exactly the same contingencies.
Bowie J. Poag
Turner: What the hell does Counter Intelligence care about a bunch of goddamned books! A book in Dutch! A book out of Venezuela! ...mystery stories in Arabic! What the hell is so important about...(he stops dead.Still.) Oil fields. This whole damn thing was about oil. Wasn't it?
Atwood: Wait!
Turner:
Atwood: Yes, it is! It still is!
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Did they finally admit to knowledge of 007's actions?
~Chris Hammond
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.
Yet the US continues to treat this tyrannical monarchy as a "partner". Its all about money folks. Most major political figures since the 70s have prospered in one way or another from Saudi money. From Frank Carlucci (fmr Defense official) to Kissinger (former Dr. Strangelove impersonator) to Will Kennard (former FCC Chair) to former UK PM John Major to former President George Bush have been deeply involved in lobbying, consulting, or arms deals with the Saudi government. Most of this is facillitated by the Carlyle Group, a defense firm selling arms and influence to the highest bidder.
We buy their oil, they buy our weapons (and A LOT of them, no other arms buyng nation is even close) and they also enrich those making these deals happen - see again, the Carlyle Group. The word to people currently in office is clear - if you want to get rich when you retire, and I mean RICH, you make things easy for the Saudis now. They will take care of you later, typically to the tune of many millions of dollars.
Amazingly this means many people who were once US government officials spend their days brokering weapons deals with a nation that is deeply involved with terrorism abroad and despotism at home.
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?
--
make install -not war
Things become declassified some time after it no longer serves any purpose to keep those things secret. There is no magical automatic expiration date on sensitive information. 50 years is probably quite long enough for most information to become irrelevant, but it would certainly be "ridiculous" to claim that all information should be declassified after fifty years. So long as the government has the authority to keep some things secret, it's well within that authority to keep things secret for fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand years. You may believe that fifty-year-old secrets are "ridiculous", but you can't justify that belief without knowing exactly what the secret is.
Wait, I thought Bush was going into Iraq to avenge his father's war? Who's this Nixon guy, and how do we prove his real name is Nixon Bush?
You mean the middle east has been a political hot spot since before any of us were born? I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
No.
The fact that this guy willfully taped all of this stuff is even more amazing than the content.
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
From the article:
In the event, there was no military action. The oil embargo faltered and was ended a few months later. Israel and Egypt went on to sign a peace agreement.
Wow, imagine the embargo not faltering on its own, and the U.S. rolling in to take some oil fields. That would have made life more interesting back then, especially if we went into Kuwait and the Soviets goaded the Iraqis into trying to throw us out. A variant of the Gulf War being fought in 1973, with the U.S. as aggressor and Iraq as pseudo-defender. Definite alternate-history novel fodder here.
~Philly
You don't think that people in every country have a right to know what enemy militaries (i.e. any military that isn't their own) were seriously considering?
If the USA released declassified documents that the UK was thinking of invading them, would you have a problem? It's easy to have double-standards; if any other country did to America what the American government is doing to the rest of the world (demanding that Galileo be put on a frequency they can jam; invading other countries without permission from the UN) would you be pleased? Of course not!
By giving the military too much control over secrets (especially, but not exclusively, those of other countryes) you're paving the way towards a police-state.
Effective democracy simply keeps as many groups as possible squabbling so that no one can assume complete unaudited control.
Global symbol "$deity" requires explicit package name at line 2. - If only $scripture started "use strict;"
"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).
Are you kidding?
The way to a police state has already been paved, the sidewalk poured, the trees planted, and Americans are driving down it in droves!
Why doesn't the US do this?
Do what? Seize the oilfields? I thought we just did.
My favorite theory is that someone just said "Catching terrorists is too hard, be we have to be seen to do something - lets get Saddam".
Yes, but why don't we have plans to switch away from fossil fuels? Why don't we have plans to make a more self-reliant society? Why don't we have plans to benefit all of mankind?
It's kind of sad to look back at the ignoble plans we have made and realize that we haven't really changed.
Why don't we have plans to give everybody in the world flowers, and a puppy? Its sad to look back at the ignoble plans we have made and realize that not everybody has seen a rainbow yet.
Best Slashdot comment ever
1973 - 1967 = 5 years. During which Israel occupied the Golan Heights and the Sinai, in which Egypt and Syria had massed troops for a 1967 invasion of Israel, which Israel anticipated and prevented. This is not a secret, as Egypt's Nasser had been posturing for his Arab buddies for months and years with a plan to attack. His mutual aggression pact with Syria, Jordan and Iraq is well documented, as they attempted to surround Israel in 1967. Israeli intelligence allowed their much weaker position to be well defended, and the underlying morale mismatch between the Israeli and Arab forces saw Israel turn the tide against the larger encircling force. In six days the Arab forces were defeated, with the Egyptian airforce destroyed. Israel was in a position to sieze much territory, inflict much damage, in the nearly unbroken military tradition since antiquity. Instead, Israel took control only of the territory used as a platform for the massed Arab armies. And the Sinai was reverted to Egypt after a reliable peace was forged between them.
In 1973, Israel was not so well informed, and the sneak attack by the recondite Egyptian and Syrian force was able to kill many civilians. But again the tide was turned. Egypt's government learned its lesson, and 7 years later Sadat was in power to forge the inevitable peace between the two neighbors. Syria has never accepted its obvious defeats, that it purchased with its own blood as well as its neighbors. Mainly because it covets Israeli reserviors, more strategic than oilfields in that desert region. Just ask the Lebanese, who have been subjugated by Syria for decades, their country used as a killing floor by Israeli-baiting Syrians, who use terrorists as a proxy army to kill Israeli civilians. And there's the value of Israel as a dump for Palestinians who have been penned in refugee camps in Syria and other Arab countries, without even the communities available in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Don't expect the conflict in the region to end until all these murderous hawks, from Assad to Arafat to Sharon, are replaced with actual representatives of their people, who actually benefit from peace, rather than the war machine which produced and perpetuated them.
--
make install -not war
By enacting regime change in Iraq, and trying to get something vaguely democratic and, theoretically, West-friendly, in that country, Iraq becomes a friendly source of oil. This means there's a limit to what its neighbours can do if they choose to withhold oil, as they did twice during the seventies. It also puts Iraq's neighbours on the defensive, because they know what happened to Iraq could, if the US feels mean enough, happen to them too.
Unfortunately too many critics of the war simplified the argument to "The US is just after Iraq's oil", which as you say, makes little sense.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
We currently have PLANS to invade Canada, we have for years, the Canadians have the same "Plans"
Since the U.S and Canadian militaries are so tightly integrated, how would this work? The second in command of NORAD is always a Canadian.
American General: Launch all bombers to target Ottawa!
Canadian General: Yes sir! (to American Colonel) Launch all bombers to target Washington!
American Colonel: Yes sir! (to Canadian Colonel) Launch all bombers to target Ottawa!
Canadian Colonel: Yes sir! Launch all bombers to target Washington!
Etc...
If you can't address the issue head on, open the can of Israeli history (or propaganda, depends on who's reading it) with the the Theme from Exodus in the background.
The bottom line is that Israel did not make a formal declaration of war and wait for the Arabs to mobilize their defenses before making their first strike in '67. It does not change the fact that Israel's action was a "sneak" attack. It is why I perceive your characterization of the Arab's attack in '73 as being somewhat hypocritical.
The '73 "sneak" attack was pretty much inevitable. Israel was occupying lands that 5 years ago belonged to Syria and Egypt. If one is going to dictate borders on the political theory of "I can beat your ass if you try to take it back", one shouldn't be wailing with shocked outrage when the other side actually makes the attempt.
I don't think the conflict will end until the United States makes credible moves towards removing its economic support of Israel or cease meddling in Israeli politics. They are indirectly culpable for the current political state as all the other actors.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
From the BBC article:
"It was thought that US airborne troops would seize the oil installations in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait "
The fact is that as the only superpower, America is the dominant country and is making the same mistakes that us Europeans made when we were in control. Unfortunately, whereas the last 500 years saw defeat on the batlefield as being the ultimate cost, we now see weapons of mass distruction. Look at the Europeans attempts to solve terrorism in Northern Ireland, the Basques or Schleswig-Holstein, and then see how unhelpful voilent "solutions" have been.
We know (sadly all too well) that you cannot fight terrorism with a gun - killing people only creates a new generation of terrorists - you can fight a country but you cannot fight ideas. I might suggest that the money that the US gives to Israel would be better spent on sending the Arab worlds brightest students to good American universities so thay can learn science over religion and take their ideas back with them.
Sometimes, life is stranger than art, I suppose.
>Panema in the 80's
Panama was NEVER an enemy of the US... they sold drugs when they were "friends". They just stopped sending the profits to CIA black ops, and then they became enemies.
Enemies of the United States are usually a matter of political convenience: from what country did the Sept 11 hijackers -- and their funding -- come from?
Was it Iraq? Or was it Saudi Arabia?
Which country has contributed money to the GW Bush election campaign via "multinational" oil companies?
You never hear this in the US "fair and balanced" supposedly "liberal media".
Proof of what?
All he's saying is that fifty year old military documents are being witheld by the government -- which is true. In fact, many documents are being held back. The FOIA has been weakened greatly since Bush took office, simply by the adminstration's outright refusal to release documents.
The only proof we have is that the government has documents which they are unwilling to release. The fact that we can't prove anything is exactly the point because we don't have the information to do so.
There's no conspiracy theory, because there's no information that a conspiracy exists, other than the suspicious reticence of the government. If you can hide all proof that your conspiracy exists, does to not exist anymore?
You're right to be skeptical of any conspiracy theory claims. But you're foolish to believe that no conspiracy exists because the only information that could prove or disprove it is in the guarded posession of those who would be involved in the conspiracy.
The FOIA is one of the greatest Acts in American history, IMHO. Information is the ultimate power, and that power should be held by the people. When the government witholds that power, you should be afraid.
The enemies of Democracy are
With the quick excuse thing, when the invisible Niger Uranium failed to turn up to line seemed to be "it's all about regime change" - but changing a military dictatorship into a military dictatorship doesn't sound so good either.
After 9/11 I thought it was good to see that the US did not act like a cut snake (eg. like bombing Libya after Iran organised blowing up an airliner) - but in the end some elements just reacted like a slow cut snake. Things will even out, those that created the mess will leave and become elder statesmen while someone else has to clean up the mess. Eventually, someone will actually go looking for Bin Laden, instead of pissing people off and giving him more allies. The great minds that gave you "freedom fries" need to be replaced by someone that can think - there must be some competant people in both parties.Blockades have been considered acts of war since time immortal. During the Civil War Lincoln was reluctant to actually declare a blockade against the South because that would have implied that the South was actually a nation-state. We called the blockade of Cuba during the missile crisis a "Quarantine" and sought a FAS unanimous vote to made it "legal" (at least in the eyes of the world if not the letter of the law).
And therefore Cuba would have been justified to launch the nukes based in Cuba because the US conducted an act of war? (The blocade)
The minute an act of war is committed by one nation upon another nation that nation is justified in taking whatever means are necessary to defend itself. Even the UN charter says that.
Please produce the section in the UN charter that defines a blockade of a waterway that a country does not control as an act of war.
(Geez, you people are the kings of rationalization...)
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Have you TRIED FOIA lately?
First off, Ashcroft has made it clear to all governmental agencies that if a FOIA request can be rejected for any reason, it will be rejected. Secondly, since the requester of the information has to PAY for the information that is being requested although there is no set amount per page, many places are getting around FOIA by charging exhorbitant fees ($125 a page, for example,) for requests.
-- Funksaw
"You realize that the dollar can be converted to Euros"
Good point. It's a shame that the dollar is worth less and less every day. I put this down to the lack of confidence in the current US administration, and the readjusting of the global economy - why is a highly qualified Indian programmer worh less than a medioce US one?
Nuke the Russian tank divisions with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles while they're still in the process of occupying Finland. Provide military assistance to Sweden and make a stand in Norway and in the northernmost Sweden (for Kiruna and the other mines).
This is why I am amazed why our last two governments have been talking the public to accept that we must NATO for our safety's sake.
The owls are not what they seem
Luckily, standonguard.com has been taken offline since it outlined the Canadian takeover of the United States. Celine Dion was part of the second wave.
These are the related documents released this week that I've found so far, though I'm still digging:
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office have reportedly held back all documents relating to the day of the coup, however. I assume they are waiting until Kissinger and other US parties who supported and assisted the coup die of old age, before these are released.
The overthrow of President Allende in Chile presented the Foreign Office with a refugee problem. "The usual fellow-travelling civil rights organisations will do their best to confuse the distinction [between] respected democratic socialists and undesirables further to the left," a department minute noted. "In view of the growth of terrorism in this country we really cannot knowingly risk admitting terrorists as refugees."
So calling inconvenient refugees "terrorists" is nothing new, e.g. abandoning thousands on the Chilean left to be murdered by the Pinochet regime, and slamming your doors to legitimate asylum seekers fleeing from "valued trading partners".
Try googling for Opereration Northwood, one that did get declassified. Basically, your gov. wanted to shoot down civilian planes and shipping to justify a pre-emtive invasion of Cuba. It went all the way up to Kennedy, who was the only one that thought it morally reprehensible, and stopped it.
Quote from the original document:
The sad thing is, this all sounds strangely familiar...
And remember, this is one of the few that did get declassified. God knows what else your country has done. Despite the image presented by Hollywood, the USA is one of the most morally reprehensible countries on the planet. Your self-denial and ignorance of the problem makes it even worse.
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
We've had some bad moments, but 'most morally reprehensible' is incredibly ignorant. The ONE example you could come up with actually shows how incredibly good our system of government is (as is the oil example cited in the article above). Through a series of checks and balances these crazy ideas never saw the light of day. Just because a few people in goverment planned it, the proof is in action and both of these cases resulted in neither.
I can come up with thousands of instances of my government doing truly good works across the globe. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Have we had some really bad moments? You bet.. hell we've had some true monsters run this country for brief periods (Lyndon Johnson most recently). Yet, overall, our record is actually pretty damn good. We do look out for our own best interests most of the time (as does your country, whichever that is), but after all that is the job of government.
It's to bad that hating my country is so fashionable right now. We're actually a pretty good bunch. But people always need an enemy, and I guess we'll be it for awhile.
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