http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/nation/05/12/0512cornyn.html
“As written, the federal shield law doesn’t provide protection for all bloggers, Goldberg said, nor should it.
‘It favors mainstream journalists — folks who work for papers, TV stations and radio stations,’ Goldberg said. ‘It needs to apply to certain folks who are only operating on the Web. The question is, who?’
***
They say the House and Senate versions of the shield law would encourage leaks of classified information and make it difficult to prosecute bureaucrats and officials who break the law by disclosing top-secret information.”
Is it classified the method used to weaponize the anthrax was “encapsulation”? Is it classified that “siliconized solution” was used? Is it classified that anthrax lab techs Barq and Wahdan were captured? Is it classified that Ibn Khattab was killed by a poison letter from the Russian intelligence service? Is the motive of the looters who killed Bin Laden’s brother-in-law Khalifa in Madagascar classified? Is it classified what Al-Timimi did for the Navy in the late 1990s while at SRA International? Is some of the work Dr Alibek did under the DARPA grants under a contract with USAMRIID involving the Ames strain classified? Should it have been classified that Al-Timimi was suspected of being an “anthrax weapons suspect”? Are the whereabouts and fate of Aafia Siddiqui classified? Mohammed Abdel-Rahman? Is it classified whether the American Type Culture Collection, to which Al-Timimi had access (ATCC jointly sponsored his bioinformatics program), had virulent Ames strain?
I don’t know. But as author Andrew McCarthy urges, “imagine the liability!”
With greater government secrecy, certainly we need to have to have a greater confidence in government.
“Domestic spying far outpaces terrorism prosecutions: As more Americans are watched, fewer cases are made,”
Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2008
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-justice12-2008may12,0,4309444.story
“’These are the only tracks in the snow left by terrorism investigations, if there are no more counter-terrorism prosecutions,’ Richman said. ‘This is why, more than ever, there is a pressing need for congressional oversight, for accountability at the top of the [Justice] department, and for public confidence in the department.’”
Government in the sunshine has brought us 100 hours of audio recordings of North American Aerospace Defense Command and United States Northern Command (NORAD-USNORTHCOM) on 9/11.
http://www.governmentattic.org/docs/NORAD-USNORTHCOM_9-11_Tapes.pdf
With bloggers like Ed, however, dramatically exposing Dugway’s use of silica in making simulants as “horse and buggy,” we have to concern ourselves with the risk that he undermine national security by revealing the government’s work on gas masks for horses.
http://www.governmentattic.org/docs/Horse_Gas_Mask_reports.pdf
It seems that at some point, though, the public interest favors history being written, precisely so that confidence in government (and especially the DOJ) can be maintained.
Here is an internal FBI memo on the use of pretexts and covers (deception) in interrogation and gaining information.
http://www.governmentattic.org/docs/FBI_Pretexts_and_Cover_Techniques_May-1956.pdf
Deception seems not to have gone out of style.
There is a real risk that in Amerithrax that the deception and secrecy has not been for an appropriate governmental purpose.