(surreveilance footage of CIA operative "Ralphie" and his subject - Intended waepon was rumored to be a Red Ryder assault rifle)
Posted on 08/25/2004 8:25:10 AM PDT by presidio9
A former dictator's cocktail preferences and a facetious plot against Santa Claus were classified by the government to prevent public disclosure.
Also stamped "secret" for six years was a study that concluded 40 per cent of U.S. army chemical-warfare masks leaked. These and other ludicrous and lethal examples of classification were cited Tuesday by members of Congress and witnesses at a House of Representatives subcommittee hearing into the Sept. 11 commission's conclusion that secrecy is undermining efforts to thwart terrorists.
Some classifications were made in error or to save face.
The CIA (news - web sites) deleted the amount Iraqi agents paid for aluminum tubes from page 96 of a Senate report on prewar intelligence.
The report quoted the CIA concluding: "Their willingness to pay such costs suggests the tubes are intended for a special project of national interest."
That price turned out to be not so high. On page 105 of the same Senate report, the same security reviewers let CIA's figure -up to $17.50 US each -be printed twice, along with other estimates the Iraqis paid as little as $10 apiece.
"There are too many secrets" and maybe too many secret-makers, said U.S. Representative Christopher Shays (news, bio, voting record) a Connecticut Republican and chairman of the government reform committee's national security panel. There are 3,978 officials who can stamp a document "top secret, secret" or "confidential" under multiple sets of complex rules.
No one knows how much is classified, he said and the system "often does not distinguish between the critically important and comically irrelevant."
The problem is growing, said J. William Leonard, director of the Archives' Information Security Oversight Office, which monitors U.S. government practices. Officials decided to classify documents eight per cent more often in 2003 than in 2002. Total classification decisions -including upgrading or downgrading -reached 14 million.
"The tone is set at the top," Shays said.
"This administration believes the less known the better," he added, noting sadly he was speaking of a Republican administration.
"I believe the more known the better."
The panel's ranking Democrat, U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich (news - web sites) of Ohio, noted former president Bill Clinton (news - web sites) directed that in cases of doubt, the lowest or no classification be used. But in 2003, President George W. Bush (news - web sites) ordered officials to use the more restrictive level.
Steven Aftergood, director of a Federation of American Scientists project on secrecy, said some classification was clearly designed to conceal illegality or avoid embarrassment, even though that is forbidden.
Aftergood cited the "secret" stamp on U.S. army Maj.-Gen. Antonio Taguba's report of "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" inflicted on Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
Carol Haave, deputy undersecretary of defence for counter-intelligence and security, said most misclassification was unintentional, resulting from misunderstanding or failure to declassify no-longer-sensitive data. She said a weakness, particularly for anti-terrorism efforts, is that those who collect intelligence determine its classification.
"Collectors of information can never know how it could best be used," Haave said.
"We have to move to a user-driven environment."
Leonard, of the Archives, said another obstacle to sharing anti-terrorist data as the Sept. 11 commission envisioned was that U.S. law divides the authority for writing the rules that govern secrets. The CIA director has authority to protect intelligence sources and methods, the Energy Department has power to write regulations to shield nuclear secrets, the Pentagon (news - web sites) has control over classifying NATO (news - web sites) data and the National Security Agency can define communications eavesdropping secrets.
"All these variations have nuances that impede co-operation," Leonard said.
Aftergood, who is fighting in court to declassify the overall budget for intelligence agencies, argued declassifying that total "could break the logjam" of over-classification. That was also recommended by the Sept. 11 commission.
Leonard said a 2000 law created a public interest declassification board to recommend release of secrets in important cases but the president and Congress never appointed members.
"The executive branch is ready to make nominations," Leonard said, urging Congress to select its choices.
For the curious: the CIA classified for 20 years longtime Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (news - web sites)'s preference for pisco sours, said subcommittee staff members citing previously classified documents published by the National Security Archive, a private anti-secrecy group.
And a CIA employee made up a story of a terrorist plot to hijack Santa Claus and inserted it into some classified traffic.
"So, apparently the fact that CIA had a sense of humour was classified," said subcommittee counsel Lawrence Halloran.
(surreveilance footage of CIA operative "Ralphie" and his subject - Intended waepon was rumored to be a Red Ryder assault rifle)
you'll shoot your eye out!
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A 20-Year SANTA...
just for the LOVE of it...
http://www.lzxray.com/Ronnie3.jpg
(Photo)
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Great pic Ronnie!
Santa Claus wears a red suit, must be a communist...
I understand that Santa also coordinates with E.L.V.E.S. - probably a campaign finance law violation.
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