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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.)"
For interested Americans, the 'big boom' video censored by Google may be viewed here.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.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was when an intelligence historian, Matthew M. Aid, noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been withdrawn from the archives' open shelves.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
Maybe this isn't an example of Congress rewriting history, but here is an example from two weeks ago of exactly that.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
http://www.cryptome.org/ They archive all kinds of stuff that was being pulled of the Internet in the post 9/11 world.
Insightful?
Settle down everyone, and read this.
It is a feature when you upload a video to say who can and cannot watch a video, not "US Government Censorship"
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.
Sounds like the basis for a great TV movie.
"It puts that whole Google censorship thing in a whole new light. (Americans aren't allowed to see that video.)" Anyone who has ever actually posted a video to Google Video knows that you can specify which country you would like this viewable in. The option under advanced settings when posting is: ----------------- Regional restrict: -Do not restrict (your video will be seen by the largest audience possible) -Select countries where the video won't be shown: (LIST HERE) ----------------- Now quit playing the blame game on google for censoring.
Uh, maybe YOU don't care about the President violating the 4th amendment and blatantly ignoring a law specifically designed to implement the safeguards it describes. But, I guess you Bushheads don't care about living in a police state as long as the police are Republicans.
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 office, and only "accelerated" under Bush after the 9/11 attacks. I would argue then that using this thread to attack Bush ignores the reality that it isn't just Republicans who are turning our nation into a police state and further, not complaining about it. The Democrats are doing their part to lead us down that slippery slope, too.
So when it comes to throwing around words like "police state" leave the partisan rhetoric at home--it just obscures the real issues.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
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. If you google through their site for Iraq or Robert Fisk (their correspondent), you'll find plenty. Here.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
The person who posted the video selected the so called censorship. Also, simply use a proxy to access the video: http://www.publicproxyservers.com/page1.html
just punch it into firefox's connection settings and watch away!
(I used the swedish one: 192.165.166.4 8080 anonymous Sweden)
If you RTFA a bit better, you may have noted that they were reclassifying documents Clinton had declassified in 1995.
Clinton signed an order to declassify those documents and then a few years later, some/one alphabet agency went behind his back and started reclassifying them.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The reason these "seemingly innocuous" documents are being reclassified isn't because any one of them has a major significance; it's because they are all tiny little pieces of disparate information that may not mean much of their own, but taken in context with many other documents and facts they can be be put together to "paint a bigger picture."
This is by far not the only example, but here is one: In some cases that picture could show something like what the reality of some US policies (both acknowledged and unacknowledged) are/were - and that reality many times is much more harsh than they would like to lead the public to believe - and many times shows that some policies or events (especially US foreign policy in relation to places like centrel/south america as well as things which occurred as far as back WWII and the post war period)are/were completely opposite to things which are considered core "American values" (like promoting freedom and democracy, etc). This is just one aspect.
What these agencies have realized is that things have changed in regard to research; that how the internet and access to multitudes of documents and other sources/streams of information have made it possible for both credentialed and arm chair researchers alike to find, relate, assemble and analyze massive amounts of information in a way that (for the most part) was only available to intelligence agencies, governments and those with access to research libraries just 10 to 15 years ago.