Free Republic

SIMI VALLEY - More than 5,000 new pages of documents related to Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' work for the Reagan administration will be opened to the public Monday at the Reagan Presidential Library. The library has about 50,000 pages of records related to Roberts' work as associate White House counsel. Roughly 8,000 pages had been released before Roberts was nominated to the Supreme Court by President George W. Bush. Since the nomination, archivists at the library have been working seven days a week, preparing the documents for researchers on both sides of the debate. While the Reagan Library in...

Possible Connection To Terrorism Locally TORRANCE — What started as a police investigation into a string of gas station robberies in the South Bay has now turned into a full-blown counter terrorism investigation. The FBI is investigating two suspected Southland robbers for possible connection to terrorism. A target list said to include two synagogues, the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles and at least 17 military installations in the Los Angeles area was reportedly found at the home of one of the two robbery suspects. The list is supposed to have been found at the home of Levar Haney Washington, 25,...

The Senate took steps Friday to ensure that Congress clearly explains future efforts to restrict the public's access to government documents. Approved by a voice vote, the Senate bill requires that future legislation containing new exemptions to what records are open for public scrutiny under Freedom of Information Act be "stated explicitly within the text of the bill." The measure was promoted by Sens. Jon Cornyn, R-Texas, and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who have sought to protect and strengthen the act, passed in 1966, in a post-9/11 era when security concerns tend to override the public's right to know. The legislation...

The Bush administration is considering making the National Security Agency _ famous for eavesdropping and code breaking _ its "traffic cop" for ambitious plans to share homeland security information across government computer networks, a senior NSA official says. Such a decision would expand NSA's responsibility to help defend the complex network of data pipelines carrying warnings and other sensitive information. It would also require significantly more money for the ultra-secret spy agency. The NSA's director for information assurance, Daniel G. Wolf, was expected to outline his agency's potential role during a speech Wednesday at the RSA technology conference in...

UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL The Department of Justice has abandoned its argument that charges made by a fired FBI translator are secret, paving the way for a court case involving charges of incompetence, poor security and possible espionage in the translation unit of the bureau's Washington field office. At issue are accusations by Sibel Edmonds, a contract translator for the FBI hired in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Mrs. Edmonds, fluent in Turkish and in the Farsi language spoken in Iran, reported that many of those hired to work in the unit barely could speak English; that they...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA, under pressure from Congress, has agreed in principle to release new documents detailing its ties to former Nazis who aided U.S. Cold War espionage against the Soviet Union, officials said on Sunday. Facing demands for public testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, CIA officials have conceded that records on former Nazis who have not been accused of war crimes, including members of the German SS, should be subject to the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998, the officials said. "This means the information we thought would come out when we wrote the law, will...

WARNING: This column will make you very angry! By law, illegal aliens convicted of heinous crimes -- rape, murder, child molestation -- are to be deported once they've served their jail terms. But lately, thousands of them have simply been let go. And Justice Department officials have refused to release a government database that could help journalists and others find them. No one knows exactly how many of these criminals there are nationwide, but Cox Newspapers Washington Bureau journalists Eliot Jaspin and Julia Malone examined Georgia state prison records in 2002 and found numerous cases like that of convicted pedophile...

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR New Haven HERE is yet another indication that the government hasn't learned the lessons of Sept. 11. In December, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted for the second year in a row against the single largest item in the intelligence budget, with members calling it a wasteful misallocation of money that had not been adequately debated by Congress. Nevertheless, not only did the project - which is officially top secret, but has been widely reported to be the latest version of a $9.5 billion surveillance satellite system called Misty - again receive its financing from the Congressional appropriations committees,...

A Salt Lake city attorney Jesse Trentadue says two teletypes sent by the FBI director show that an informer had infiltrated a paramilitary training compound in Oklahoma known at 'Elohim City' and was there in April 1995 when one of the bombing suspects called looking for co-conspirators.Trentadue believes at one time the FBI was investigating whether a gang that robbed a string of midwestern banks to fund attacks on the government was connected to the bombing.The accusation made in the lawsuit alledges the FBI is violating the federal Freedom of Information Act by refusing to turn over the documents.The name...

Mark Tapscott January 31, 2005 WARNING: This column will make you very angry! By law, illegal aliens convicted of heinous crimes — rape, murder, child molestation — are to be deported once they've served their jail terms. But lately, thousands of them have simply been let go. And Justice Department officials have refused to release a government database that could help journalists and private citizens find these aliens. No one knows exactly how many of these criminals there are nationwide, but Cox Newspapers Washington Bureau journalists Eliot Jaspin and Julia Malone examined Georgia state prison records in 2002 and found...

Unlikely thorn in government's side Wednesday, December 15, 2004  John Young certainly doesn't come off like an Internet renegade.At 68, the native Texan is decades older than most hackers. He is a respectable architect, having done work for Columbia University, the Austrian Consulate and St. Cecilia's Roman Catholic Church, all in Manhattan. He resides in a stately apartment building on the Upper West Side, complete with doorman.But John Young is all about making mischief - enough to irk more than one foreign government and to prompt a visit from the FBI.On his Web site, www.cryptome.org  , Young posts secret documents...

Internet revolution is forcing transparency Mark Tapscott November 15, 2004 Debates about “red states” and “blue states” aside, the 2004 presidential campaign made one thing clear: The Internet is rapidly establishing real-time transparency in government and the media as the sine qua non of American public policy. That’s good news for the American voter, because for the most part government and the major media remain for now much as they have been for the past half-century -- too remote, restrictive and elitist. Revolutions aren’t won in a day and sometimes progress is slow, so friends of openness in government can...

Didn't a newspaper sue to have President Bush's records released? Now it's our turn. Are we willing pay to get the entire Kerry military record released to the public?

Experts from the Swedish Defence have been on a secret mission to Iraq to check on information that Saddam Hussein produced WMDs as late as June last year. The mission was carried out in June - without the knowledge of the Swedish government or USA. The decision to make the journey was taken by Åke Sellström, head of the department of NBC-protection of the Swedish Defence Research Agency. Neither the acting DG of FOI or the US-led occupation forces in Iraq were informed. TT: Must not a journey of this nature receive clearance from higher authorities? -Yes, in principle, but...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 2 — The Bush administration has put a much tighter lid than recent presidents on government proceedings and the public release of information, exhibiting a penchant for secrecy that has been striking to historians, legal experts and lawmakers of both parties. Some of the Bush policies, like closing previously public court proceedings, were prompted by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and are part of the administration's drive for greater domestic security. Others, like Vice President Dick Cheney's battle to keep records of his energy task force secret, reflect an administration that arrived in Washington determined to strengthen the...

Remembering The Zebra Killings By James Lubinskas FrontPageMagazine.com | August 30, 2001 MOST SERIAL KILLINGS in America take on a life of their own through movies, books and documentaries. The crimes of Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer and The Son Sam are still well remembered years after they committed. Yet there is one set of serial killings that been almost completely forgotten and is rarely mentioned popular culture. The Zebra Killings occurred in the Francisco bay area between 1972 1974 and left 71 people dead. They were dubbed the Zebra because of the radio channel used the police investigating the case...

(Hartford-AP, July 17, 2002 8:30 PM) _ The state Supreme Court ruled today that the Department of Public Safety cannot charge the Hartford Courant twenty million dollars for a database of criminal convictions. The Hartford Courant requested a copy of the database in 1999. The 850,000 [entries?] in the database give the names, dates of birth, addresses and criminal histories of those who have violated Connecticut law. Public safety officials said the 20 million dollar price tag was based on a state statute that allows police to charge 25 dollars to search for an individual file. The state Supreme Court...

ALBANY, May 7 — The Pataki administration has proposed legislation that would severely restrict public access to any information the state collects in its efforts to thwart terrorists. The legislation would add to items exempt from the Freedom of Information Law any materials "obtained or compiled in monitoring, investigating or preparing for suspected or potential terrorist activity." James K. Kallstrom, the state director of security, said the current law had hindered his office's ability to gather intelligence. The federal government, private industry and other sources were unwilling to share information about terrorists or potential targets because of worries that the...