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Secrecy and Security News

Newer News: February 2008

January 2008

• Your Government: Access Denied by Eric Alterman, George Zornick, Center for American Progress, January 31. "All administrations have their tussles with FOIA requests. But when the Bush administration took over in 2000, a frontal assault on Freedom of Information requests began."
• Congress Seeks to Limit "State Secrets" Privilege by William Fisher, IPS News, January 31. "Alarmed by the George W. Bush administration's increasing use of the so-called 'state secrets privilege' to keep politically embarrassing lawsuits against the government from ever coming before a judge, Congress is stepping in to help ensure that people with grievances can have their cases heard."
• Bush Anti-Terror Eavesdropping Spurs Criminal Probes by Robert Schmidt and James Rowley, Bloomberg News, January 31. "The Bush administration's use of clandestine eavesdropping to fight terrorism is fueling an increase in criminal cases that rely on cooperation between prosecutors and intelligence agents."
• President Orders Review of Recommendations from the Public Interest Declassification Board, memorandum to agency heads, January 29. "Please submit in writing no later than April 15, 2008, your views on each of the recommendations, including with respect to each recommendation your view of whether and to what extent it should be implemented."
• Canoga Park resident facing charges of being agent for Saddam by Tony Castro, Los Angeles Daily News, January 30. "William Shaoul Benjamin, 65, an Iraqi-born naturalized U.S. citizen, goes on trial today on federal charges that he failed to 'register, as required by law, as an agent for executed Iraq leader Saddam Hussein's feared intelligence service'."
• Air Force Alters Rules for Handling of Nuclear Arms by Walter Pincus, Washington Post, January 25. "The Air Force has made substantial changes in its handling of nuclear weapons in the wake of a B-52 flight last August during which the pilots and crew were unaware they were carrying six air-launched cruise missiles with nuclear warheads, according to a policy directive approved last week."
• New policy expected soon for sensitive information by Elise Castelli, Federal Times, January 22. " The White House soon is expected to issue new rules for how managers should categorize information that is sensitive but unclassified. The new policy will put an end to the 100-plus categories that agencies now use to label unclassified information that they want to shield from the public."
• U.S. intel official: Secrecy dysfunctional, United Press International, January 14. "A senior counter-intelligence official says the U.S. system for protecting secrets has become 'dysfunctional in the face of current needs of national security'."
• White House Secrecy Starts to Give by Elizabeth Williamson, Washington Post, January 13. "After years of hammering on the walls of secrecy surrounding the Bush White House, activists and Congress have begun, slowly, to open some cracks."
• Iran showdown has echoes of faked Tonkin attack by Nick Juliano, Raw Story, January 11. "The similarities between this week's confrontation between US warships and Iranian speedboats and events off the coast of North Vietnam 44 years ago were too hard for many experts to miss, leading to the question: Is the Strait of Hormuz 2008's Gulf of Tonkin?"
• Public-records legislation is positive step, Arizona Daily Star, January 10. "After nearly eight years of a secretive Bush administration, and the federal government's near-paranoid quest to control the flow of information, we believe the amendment to the Freedom of Information Act is an important step toward recognizing that the public's business is best done in public."
• Government Secrecy Guru Reflects on Agee's Death by Laura Rozen, Mother Jones, January 9. "As a long time close CIA watcher, I asked Aftergood to comment on controversial former CIA officer Philip Agee's death, and he obliged."
• PIDB: how to fix overclassification, excessive secrecy by Rebecca Carr, Cox Newspapers The Secrecy File, January 9. "A presidential advisory board issued a long-awaited report today that attempts to address the excessive way federal agencies mark documents secret."
• Declassified Study Puts Vietnam Events in New Light by Peter Grier, Christian Science Monitor, January 9. "US signals intelligence -- the much-vaunted ability of American military and spy units to eavesdrop on the radio calls and other electronic communications of an adversary -- failed at crucial moments during the Vietnam War, according to a just-declassified National Security Agency history of the effort."
• Report reveals Vietnam War hoaxes, faked attacks, Agence-France Presse, January 7. "The report was released by the National Security Agency, responsible for much of the United States' codebreaking and eavesdropping work, in response to a "mandatory declassification" request, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) said Monday."
• U.S. Spysat Snapshots Courtesy of Russian Tracking Facility by Leonard David, LiveScience.com, January 7. "Eager to take a look at a super-secret U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) satellite? Now you can thumb through a sourcebook on a Russian satellite tracking facility in Siberia called the Altay Optical Laser Research Center."
• FOIA reformed. But how much? by Andrew Zajac, BaltimoreSun.com The Swamp, January 5. "Nearly lost in the flood of presidential primary reportage over the past week was news that President Bush signed into law legislation overhauling the federal Freedom of Information Act."
• New Government Openness Law Not All That Open by Kim Zetter, Wired News Threat Level, January 3. "Although the new law contains provisions that allow the media and public to better track the status of their FOIA requests and makes other positive changes toward faster response times to information requests, the law does not reverse Ashcroft's policy directive toward increased secrecy."
• FAS Files complaint Against Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (pdf), letter to the DoJ Office of Professional Responsibility, January 2. "By violating the executive order in this way, Justice Department attorneys caused significant damage to the integrity of the national security classification system."
• The Best and Worst of 2007: Government Secrecy by Patrick Radden Keefe, The Century Foundation, January 2. "America has a classification problem, and has for quite some time. Classification has become both a reflex within the federal government and a powerful get-out-of-jail-free card for the executive branch."

Older News: December 2007

https://sgp.fas.org/news/2008/01/index.html
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