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Needs knowledge?
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| x-filer |
| Are there any documentaries on secret activities of the US gov? Lets stay away from area 51 and how the US gov controls the internet? |
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| smokeape |
If there were any true documentaries on true secret activities, the authors would be jailed for espionage, particularly in light of the new Department of Homeland Security regulations.
;)
[[[smoke]]] |
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| Trancer-X |
Activists Crawl Through Web to Untangle U.S. Secrecy
William Fisher
NEW YORK, Nov 29 (IPS) - To combat the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy, U.S. citizens have been forced to unearth new sources for information they once read in their daily newspapers. But thanks to a few dedicated individuals and not-for-profit groups -- and the Internet -- such material is easier to come by than ever before.
"The Bush administration has taken secrecy to a new level. They have greatly increased the numbers and types of classified documents," says Steven Aftergood, who conducts one of the most widely used "open government" programmes -- the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Project on Government Secrecy.
"They have made it far more difficult and time-consuming to obtain documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). And they have imposed 'gag rules' on an ever-widening group of government employees," Aftergood added in an interview.
''Open government'' sites on the World Wide Web provide a wide variety of information.
For example, on the Internet pages of George Washington University's National Security Archive you can read Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) manuals from the 1960s and the 1980s specifying approved methods of prisoner abuse as well as one of the last major pieces of the puzzle explaining U.S. and UK roles in the August 1953 coup against Iranian Premier Mohammad Mossadeq.
Or, just posted, the telephone conversations of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, berating high-level subordinates for their efforts in 1976 to restrain human rights abuses by military dictators in Chile and Argentina.
OpenTheGovernment.org is a new coalition of 33 organisations dedicated to combating unwarranted government secrecy and promoting freedom of information.
Among recent postings on that site: an evaluation by The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press on "the likely impact of attorney general nominee Alberto Gonzales on press freedoms and the public's right to know," based on Reporters Committee research of Gonzales' performance as a judge on the Texas Supreme Court from January 1999 to December 2000 and as White House counsel since January 2001.
The FAS Project on Government Secrecy publishes 'Secrecy News', which recently disclosed: "Americans can now be obligated to comply with legally-binding regulations that are unknown to them, and that indeed they are forbidden to know."
As an example, the website reports the effort of a former conservative member of Congress to board a commercial airplane. "She was pulled aside by airline personnel for additional screening, including a pat-down search for weapons or unauthorised materials. She requested a copy of the regulation authorising such pat-downs, and was told that she couldn't see it."
Why? "Because we don't have to," said an official of the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA). "That is called 'sensitive security information'. She's not allowed to see it, nor is anyone else," he added, according to 'Secrecy News'. "She refused to go through additional screening (without seeing the regulation), and was not allowed to fly."
According to Aftergood, the "variety of Internet-based sources has increased substantially during the Bush administration. Freedom of Information Act requests are on the rise, passing three million for the first time last year."
"What is behind all of these phenomena is a growing public appetite for official records," he argues. "That is a healthy impulse that in a democracy should be respected and cultivated, not scorned."
Another site, BushSecrecy.org, sponsored by the highly respected Public Citizen organisation, chronicles and documents the administration's obsession with secrecy, as well as steps being taken to fight it.
The website provides a variety of electronic links to up-to-date summaries of each of the administration's major secrecy initiatives, with additional links from those summaries to key documents, such as executive orders, congressional materials, judicial decisions and legal briefs filed by both sides in the court battles raging over these issues.
The new Coalition of Journalists for Open Government has been established "to provide timely information on freedom of information issues and on what journalism organisations are doing to foster greater transparency in government."
The coalition's website reports "the Department of Homeland Security is requiring all of its 180,000 employees and others outside the federal government to sign binding non-disclosure agreements covering unclassified information. Breaking the agreement could mean loss of job, stiff fines and imprisonment."
Like many "open government" websites, the coalition distributes a free email newsletter. Other sites charge for documents. One such is InsideDefense.com, which provides primary source documents gathered by a team of Pentagon reporters, and issues a free weekly publication, 'The Insider', to alert readers to new documents.
The FAS government secrecy project recently provided a sampling of other Internet sources. A few examples:
- GlobalSecurity.org which says it provides "bottomless resources on all aspects of national security policy, and then some;"
- The Resource Shelf offers news on all aspects of government information policy and links to valuable source documents;
- The Memory Hole collects and publishes elusive records and documents that have been withdrawn from the public domain;
- Cryptome promises a rich collection of new official and unofficial documents on security policy;
- Project on Government Oversight performs independent investigations to promote openness and government accountability;
- Electronic Privacy Information Centre offers declassified documents and insights on cryptography policy and privacy; and
- Nautilus Institute's Global Disclosure Project specialises in nuclear weapons policy and strategy.
Some "open government" websites are maintained by individuals, usually associated with universities. For example, the Guide to Declassified Documents and Archival Materials for U.S. Foreign Policy and World Politics, a road map to declassified foreign policy records, is the work of David N Gibbs of the University of Arizona.
FOI.net provides resources on national and foreign freedom of information law from Alasdair Roberts of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
Has the proliferation of these websites had an impact on Bush administration policies?
"Almost all of the recent statistical trends are negative, i.e. in the direction of greater secrecy," says Aftergood. "So it would probably be an exaggeration to say this work on challenging government secrecy has had much of an impact on the government during the current administration."
But, "The real value of the work lies in the fact that it represents the creation of alternate channels for public access to government information," he adds.
"These efforts to provide new means of access are not exactly the solution to government secrecy, but they are a constructive response that leaves the public less vulnerable to official secrecy than it otherwise would be," according to Aftergood.
Most other observers interested in open government agree the Bush administration is unlikely to change its attitude toward fuller disclosure and, they predict the number of alternative sources will continue to grow.
But even the continuing proliferation of new information sources will not correct some of the problems arising from excessive government secrecy.
For example, Timothy H Edgar, legislative counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) told IPS: "Basic information that is crucial to oversight of the government's new spy powers under the Patriot Act -- such as how it is using new powers to obtain personal records -- has been cloaked in secrecy, making it impossible to judge the effectiveness of these powers or their impact on civil liberties."
http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=26467 |
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| Trancer-X |
Scientist's death haunts family
By Fredric N. Tulsky
Mercury News
The death in 1953 of a government scientist, Frank Olson, in a fall from a New York hotel window, is one of the most notorious cases in CIA history.
Only in 1975 did Olson's family learn that the CIA had slipped LSD into his drink, days before his death. President Ford apologized for an experiment gone awry, and promised that the government would reveal everything about the case.
But newly obtained documents show that the Ford administration continued to conceal information about Olson -- particularly, his role in some of the CIA's most controversial research of the Cold War, on anthrax and other biological weapons.
The documents show that two of the key officials involved in the decision to withhold that information were White House aides Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, today the nation's vice president and secretary of Defense.
``These documents show the lengths to which the government was trying to cover up the truth,'' said the scientist's son, Eric Olson, who gave them to the Mercury News. ``For 22 years there was a coverup. And then, under the guise of revealing everything, there was a new coverup.''
Rumsfeld's office referred questions about the withholding of information to the CIA, where a media officer, Paul Nowack, said that CIA activities related to Frank Olson's death were investigated by the Rockefeller Commission as well as subsequent congressional committees.
``The CIA fully cooperated'' in those investigations, he said, and ``tens of thousands of documents were released.'' If anyone has new information, he said, ``they should contact appropriate authorities.''
Eric Olson has contended for years that his father was murdered to cover up his research for the CIA. At a news conference in Maryland today, he will reveal the results of his long inquiry into his father's death.
The new documents do not prove those allegations. But they do show that the White House officials were concerned about any public revelation of Eric Olson's work.
Contrary to the official explanation that Frank Olson was an Army scientist, Olson worked for the CIA, at the special operations division at Fort Detrick, the Maryland laboratory where biological weapons were tested.
Classified research
Eric Olson said this week that a former colleague and friend of his father's contacted him last year and described some of the closely guarded work his father conducted.
He said the colleague told him his father was among scientists studying the use of LSD and other drugs to enhance interrogations, as Cold War tensions ran high and Americans feared that captured soldiers had been brainwashed in Korea.
In the months before his death, the colleague said, Frank Olson had gone to Europe, where he observed the interrogation of former Nazis and Soviet citizens at a secret U.S. base. And, the colleague said, Frank Olson had knowledge of the U.S. biological weapons program.
Eric Olson contends that in the final days of his life, his father became morally distraught over his work and decided to quit. Personnel records show that agency officials were concerned that he was a security risk. Eric Olson believes the thought of Frank Olson quitting was a motive for the government to want him dead.
In 1993, Eric Olson arranged for his father's body to be unearthed and examined by a forensic scientist, James Starrs. Starrs concluded that Frank Olson had probably been struck on the head and then thrown out of the hotel window.
Starrs' conclusion is one of the tantalizing pieces that Eric Olson has gathered to support his belief that his father was murdered. Friday, satisfied that he has accomplished what he could, Olson intends to rebury the remains of his father.
In late November 1953, Frank Olson, then 43, joined a group of government officials at a conference at Deep Creek Lodge in western Maryland. For days afterward, Olson was withdrawn. His son, Eric, says his father told his wife that he intended to quit his job.
But Frank Olson did not quit. And on Nov. 23 he went to New York with another government official, where he twice visited Harold A. Abramson, a doctor who was one of the first researchers to study the effects of LSD.
Olson returned to Washington, then went back to New York on Nov. 28 and checked into the Statler Hotel. He was scheduled to enter a sanitarium the next day.
But early in the morning of Nov. 29, Frank Olson went through the window of the hotel room he was sharing with a colleague, Robert Lashbrook. Lashbrook told police that he was awakened by the sound of breaking glass.
The Olson family knew little else. But in 1975, a commission headed by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller issued a report on CIA abuses, and an account in the Washington Post included a mention of an Army scientist who jumped from a New York hotel room days after being slipped LSD in 1953.
``We realized they were talking about my father,'' Eric Olson recalled. Family members talked to reporters about their outrage and said they would sue the government. Days later, the family was invited to the White House to meet President Ford. He assured them that they would be given all information about what happened to Frank Olson.
Soon after, the family was invited to lunch with CIA Director William Colby, who gave them a file of documents that amounted to the CIA investigation into Olson's death. But the documents left many questions unanswered about both his work and the circumstances of his death.
The family was told that a lawsuit was unlikely to succeed. Instead, the administration promised to support a private bill in Congress, through which the family received $750,000 to resolve their claims.
``The express understanding was that the government had promised to give us all information, which clearly meant information about his work relationship with the CIA,'' the Olsons' attorney, David Rudovsky of Philadelphia, said this week. ``It now appears that was not the case.''
Son finds clues
Over the years Eric Olson turned up many clues, real or coincidental. There was, for example, the assassination manual that the CIA declassified in connection with its Guatemala activities. The manual, created in the early 1950s, identified ``the contrived accident'' as ``the most effective technique'' of secret assassination.
``The most efficient accident, in simple assassination, is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface,'' the manual stated.
Only recently Eric Olson obtained files from a University of California-Davis history professor that showed White House officials had intentionally withheld details of Frank Olson's death from the family.
The professor, Kathryn Olmsted, came across the records at the Gerald Ford library. They included a memo from Dick Cheney, a White House assistant at the time, to Donald Rumsfeld, the chief of staff, on July 11, 1975, one day after the Olsons first held a news conference.
The memo warned that a lawsuit could involve ``the possibility that it might be necessary to disclose highly classified national-security information in connection with any court suit or legislative hearings on a private bill.''
The documents also include memos written by White House counsel Roderick Hills to the president that were routed through Cheney and other officials. ``Dr. Olson's job is so sensitive that it is highly unlikely that we would submit relevant evidence'' to a court, Hills wrote, regarding a potential suit by the Olson family.
``If there is a trial, it is apparent that the Olsons' lawyer will seek to explore all of the circumstances of Dr. Olson's employment as well as those concerning his death. Thus, in the trial it may become apparent that we are concealing evidence for national-security reasons and any settlement or judgment reached thereafter could be perceived as money paid to cover up the activities of the CIA.''
As a result, Hills urged settling the case out of court. |
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| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted...
The documents show that two of the key officials involved in the decision to withhold that information were White House aides Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, today the nation's vice president and secretary of Defense.
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like that's really any suprise
http://www.salon.com/politics/featu...bush_watergate/ |
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| Trancer-X |
| The corruption couldn't continue if good people actually took a stand and spoke out about it. It's sad that they don't. :( |
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