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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secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.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was when an intelligence historian, Matthew M. Aid, noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been withdrawn from the archives' open shelves.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
.. 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.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
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.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
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.
The google video is 17 s of an explosion taped from far away with the description:
"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.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
Anyone who has held a security clearence can tell you - the government over-classifies. From my brief stint with a security clearence, I can honestly say I didn't learn anything from the documents I viewed that one couldn't reach by common sense or looking around on the internet.
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.
http://www.cryptome.org/ They archive all kinds of stuff that was being pulled of the Internet in the post 9/11 world.
If the government will stop proving on a regular basis that it deserves to be thought of in that way, we'll stop.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
This just in:
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.
Lurking in the desert
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. Not only is that rather unusual, but there are some big issues with the new appointment, Weinstein. All that means is that NARA now has a politcal appointee at its head, unlikely to stand up for freedom of information.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
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.
The reason that they want to re-classify stuff is simple. The US gov has a policy of 'plausible deniability' meaning that everything they say is considered true ("because we say so") until someone finds evidence to the contrary. Remove the evidence and you got a new 'truth'.
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.
When all else fails, run.
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?
10 years of pleasuring the Queen... GAK!
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
"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.
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
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
"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.
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.
Virtually nobody in the general public understands how intelligence collecting works or how classification schemes are intended to thwart them. Hollywood and novels have conditioned us to think of vital information as being a small discrete units, say a single document, that must be protected. In truth, this is a mere plot device to create what Hitchcock called a "McGuffin", some single thing the characters can run around trying to obtain in order to drive the story. People believe that only a small amount of the "McGuffin" information honestly needs to be kept secret and that the rest is just dishonesty.
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.
I checked with the Ministry of Truth and apparently this information is incorrect. These documents have always been classified. And we have always been at war with Eurasia.
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.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
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.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]