CIA Secretly Reclassifying Documents 525
SetupWeasel writes "The New York Times is reporting that the CIA is secretly reclassfying documents. How did we catch on? Historians have some of the documents. From the article: "eight [of the] reclassified documents had been previously published in the State Department's history series, 'Foreign Relations of the United States.'" Are our intelligence agencies rewriting history, stupidly paranoid, or both? We do know that they are ignoring a 2003 law that requires formal reclassifications. It puts that whole Google censorship thing in a whole new light. (Americans aren't allowed to see that video.)"
For as long as Governments .. (Score:3, Insightful)
America: your country has been usurped by your CIA and its masters. The American Public no longer control that agency.
Re:Damn censorship! (Score:0, Insightful)
Well, Vote Libertarian!
take it for what it is. (Score:5, Insightful)
This poster in no way agrees with what the CIA is doing, just pointing out an oft made error. This here is not some Orwellian nightmare.
Secret? (Score:3, Insightful)
Eep.. (Score:3, Insightful)
In some ways I'm glad that my civil rights can't be screwed because such lax idiots are in control, but at the same time I fear all my personal information is being held by people I wouldn't trust with my TV remote.
Re:take it for what it is. (Score:3, Insightful)
"This here is not some Orwellian nightmare."
No, I guess it's not.
Ignorance is strength.
Re:Secret? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gammas are the best class. I sure wouldn't want to be one of those Alphas or Betas.
Tempest in a teapot (Score:2, Insightful)
The thing is that something that wasn't secret before may become sensitive in the future due to changing conditions. Also things that are secret now may become less critical in the future and thus be released. This is the whole reason for review procedures.
Only people who are constantly willing to believe the worst in the government are going to see a grand conspiracy here.
To quote Orwell (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:For as long as Governments .. (Score:1, Insightful)
It blows my mind this paranoid ramblings gets modded up. The CIA's "masters" are our elected government. Just because you call them "masters" in a cleverly worded attempt to infuse an element of the sinister doesn't make anything you say even remotely true. The CIA is allowed to keep secrets because the government lets them. The government lets them because we elect people who agree with that. The "American Public" could remove the CIA from existence in the next pair of elections if it wanted. The bottomline here is that there are certain things worth keeping secret. Just because you and some historian somewhere thinks the agency is going overboard doesn't mean the entire mission is a farce. That's a grade A fallacy.
I'm thinking you need to put on your tinfoil hat, get in your faraday cage, and pop your meds.
Re:Route around that censorship. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:For as long as Governments .. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Secret? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't limit those explanations to just Slashdot. Almost everywhere you go in the US, you will find a natural distrust of government. After all, remember back in the Clinton Administration, there was a large number of conservatives that truly believed the US Government was secretly collaborating with the United Nations in order to allow for a World Government? [wikipedia.org]
Re:Route around that censorship. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it is true, but without knowing the motives of the submitter in banning access to the U.S., it's as erroneous to dismiss the issue as it is to execute the standard Slashdot knee-jerk reaction to censorship.
Re:take it for what it is. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tempest in a teapot (Score:5, Insightful)
If the government will stop proving on a regular basis that it deserves to be thought of in that way, we'll stop.
Re:For as long as Governments .. (Score:5, Insightful)
Get a blowjob from an intern.
Re:Article Text - Fuck NYT registration (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Your last statement is true to a point... (Score:1, Insightful)
How can you possibly know that he hasn't developed this opinion by consuming information from a broad range of sources?
Disagreeing with someone is not reason enough to label them un-informed.
Re:Your comments betray your knowledge of history (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:For as long as Governments .. (Score:1, Insightful)
oooh
listen: the CIA will *never* be brought under control by elected politicians. name one, single, case where this has occurred, and the CIA haven't been able to bring about some other circumstance to navigate around the ruling.
the fact is, the establishment of a secret intelligence agency without public oversight (and there is *zero* with the CIA) is a grand trojan horse designed to introduce a hidden control mechanism into a society. every single scenario where a 'secret intelligence agency' was considered a solution to some problem, has instead proven to be an introduced mallady within the given society, by its enemies.
if you don't think this is the case, ask yourself these two simple questions: what have the CIA successfully done to protect the american people? what harm has the agency done the United States of America?
hint: the answers to those questions are protected and classified in the interests of national security
Re:Secret? (Score:3, Insightful)
which is why my fellow americans terrify me.
i think for the most part our government is both evil and stupid. not necessarily on purpose or design. but it is bound to happen when you create a huge beuracracy and give it unchecked power.
i mean seriously, the thing that annoys me most about this is it implies they have nothing better to do? these idiots can't adequately describe the nuclear capability of a hostile nation because they're too busy reclassifying previously published papers about things that happened in the korean war?
only a beauracracy can produce this kind of entertainment...
Re:take it for what it is. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:For as long as Governments .. (Score:5, Insightful)
Orwell is here (Score:4, Insightful)
This is part of a larger trend that is developing at a rapid pace in the US which embraces secrecy in place of open government, and propaganda instead of news. To think we used to scold the old USSR for this very same bullshit. It's shameful that so many Americans are comfortable with this new form of 'freedom'. It really is true: You don't really appreciate what you have until it's gone.
Re: Fucking registration (Score:5, Insightful)
Errr? We actually had those at one time?
Not trying to knock your friend or anything, but if the "quality" of reporting I'm seeing in any one of the major metro papers in my area are any indication of the "skilled investigative reporters" of which you speak, I'd be better off with some tin cans, some string, and those X-Ray glasses I got in a box of Cracker Jack as a kid. That way I could investigate them myself with the same level of "thoroughness". The only way to get decent coverage of any story is to use five or six different sources and try to piece together a coherent image of what the actual story should be.
People are stupid, sensationalism sells, and the people who are looking for actual news are being disenfranchised by things such as the Jackson trial and the latest political "scandal". If the papers want money, maybe they should improve the quality of their stories, eh?
Louis 14++ (Score:2, Insightful)
Making documents already circulated in public makes it harder for the public to know about them. It doesn't really stop determined researchers, like foreign intelligence agencies, from knowing about them. But it sure does make it more likely that embarassing info, evidence of crimes, and plans for goverment actions unacceptable to the public will be ignored by our fat, lazy corporate media.
This action by Bush's government is independently a demonstration of a King's privilege. But of course it doesn't stand alone. Over the past 5 years, there is a long list of individual actions by Bush's government to do thinks like an absolute monarch, including ignoring Congress, lying us into war, leaving the Gulf Coast unprotected, leaking CIA/WMD agent identity to protect a lie to send us to war, with only the TV spokesmodel facing any repercussions when the government is caught. It's obvious that the Bush doctrine of the unitary executive [wikipedia.org] is Bushspeak for "the state, that's me".
Re:For as long as Governments .. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the fact is that you've watched too many cheesy shows on TV. The people that run the CIA are appointed. By elected officials. You'll recall the recent tossing-out of the guy that was put in there by the last president, primarily because he did such a lousy job stewarding the agency's prediction of events like 9/11. So he does a crappy job, and he and his crew get the boot. He's replaced by a new guy (with a new team) that are in line with the currently elected administration. The current administration doesn't set the agency's budget, either. That's done by congress. The members of the intelligence oversight committees are very aware of the cash flow and the programs they fund.
But everything they do can't be publicly chewed on, any more than everything your local police department does to catch bands of car theives, church arsonists, or kiddie porn shops is discussed openly in the press... because doing so undermines the ability to accomplish the tasks. If you don't like the tasks, then you put forth a lucid, compelling case that causes enough people to think like you and elect representatives and executives that put the agency to more/different/fewer missions.
'national security' in this case, being, the desire of the American public to revolt against its politicians and create conditions ripe for civil war.. you do know that 99% of the time, when a politicians says 'national security' he means "we can't tell the public about this because we believe it might cause another civil war..."
Wow! 99%, huh? You, sir, are a BS-ing, twaddle-headed, paranoic, twit with a rudderless, nonsensical agenda. At least I don't have to worry about you actually being persuasive enough with enough voters to see your vision of things displace a more rational, however imperfect, one that takes reality into account.
Re:You miss the parent's point... (Score:5, Insightful)
LS
Re: Fucking registration (Score:5, Insightful)
But we lost that years ago when newspapers found that parrotting PR guff is a lot cheaper that employing real reporters. The dearth in solid investigative reporting is not just due to the Internet - the decline began long before the net was in everyone's home.
Re:For as long as Governments .. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you are making a false assumption. Most Americans want the CIA. The reason the CIA exists and continues to exist is because Americans see a need for that agency. If most Americans wanted the CIA to be axed, it would be.. because politicians "pandering" for votes would be lobbying for it. Your post seems to imply that most Americans don't want the CIA, but don't have a choice in the matter. That is just false.
There are things worth keeping secret, and the American public knows it. Someone has to be in charge of keeping those secrets. If you think there is nothing that should be kept secret, you are delusional. Americans want to know that Bin Ladin's cellphone is tapped, and Americans realize that publishing that on the front page of the NYT isn't the best idea. That is the purpose of the CIA. Just because you can point to abuses doesn't make the CIA's core mission wrong -- that's a logical fallacy.
The issue of oversight is more alot more controversial. Some people believe there needs to be more oversight, and some don't. That's a valid conversation worth having. However, the slashbots who can't think 2 steps beyond their reflexive spinal response to $emotion-mongering, are the ones who jump up and say "GOVERNMENT BAD, SECRETS BAD, WE ARE ALL SLAVES". I'm just standing up and telling the tinfoil weirdos to get back in their (faraday) cages and let the rational people have a rational debate that will actually enhance people's understanding of the situation.
Patterns are the Key (Score:5, Insightful)
However, real-world intelligence does not come in discrete units but rather it arises from an analysis of broad patterns. It comes from data mining. Many separate and seemingly innocuous pieces of information are stitched together to create a picture of something hidden. The reason that the military (or even corporations) "over-classify" is to prevent the data mining of otherwise trivial items. The 1947 balloon program sounds historic and trivial but that program fit into a budget and organization somewhere and that effected the form of other, perhaps more interesting and relevant, programs.
Only someone from the inside, with a broad picture of how all the pieces fit together, could possibly judge whether the classification of any particular piece of information is justified or not. Anyone else is doing so based on ignorant hubris.
Re:For as long as Governments .. (Score:2, Insightful)
The actual series of events is that then President Clinton asked the judge what "sexual contact" was, and when the judge answered that oral sex did not count as "sexual contact", President Clinton then answered that he had not had "sexual contact". That definition actually came from Ken Starr's office, who then accused President Clinton of perjuring himself.
In other words Ken Starr's office deliberately set a trap for then President Clinton, and if he had answered any other way he would have perjured himself. They were going to accuse him of perjury no matter what he answered.
Please review for yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewinsky_scandal [wikipedia.org]
Re:Tempest in a teapot (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Route around that censorship. (Score:4, Insightful)
Time to start reading kiddies (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can control what people know, you control what they beleive, and thus how they act. Right to the point where they're not even aware that they're being played.
The Iraq Invasion is a wonderful demonstration of the US Ministry of Truth. There are people in the US currently running around thinking the US invaded Iraq to "liberate" the people, not go after WMD which wasn't there.
You 1st worlders can't see it firsthand, it is so scary to watch.
What isn't Orwellian about it, again? (Score:3, Insightful)
The government is not rewriting history, just denying access to it. Whether that is as bad is debatable... This here is not some Orwellian nightmare.
One of the examples from the story is a 1950 assessment by the intelligence folks to the effect that the People's Republic of China was unlikely to intervene directly in the Korean war that year. As anyone who watched an episode of two of "MASH" could tell you, the red Chinese did come across the border in 1950.
In that case, the history the CIA (and whatever other agencies -- we're not allowed to know who's even involved ) is erasing is the history of their own mistakes. If that's not "Orwellian" what is? Seriously.
Re:For as long as Governments .. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Patterns are the Key (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Patterns are the Key (Score:3, Insightful)
That sounds pragamatic enough, but then how are citizens to cope with the inevitiable use of classification to bury information for political reasons rather then security reasons? The most egregious example that I know of was the "secret" bombing of Cambodia in the early 70s. North Vietnam, the USSR, China, and Cambodia, all knew the bombing was happening and who was doing it. It was classified to avoid domestic political fallout from an expansion of the war, and to avoid international embarassment from having to admit that the US was violating the neutrality of Cambodia (even though it was well known that North Vietnam was already violating it).
Re: Fucking registration (Score:5, Insightful)
Poster2: "Errr? We actually had those at one time?"
Yes, we did, but the 1990s were a hallmark in the die-off of investigative journalism. Several books have been written about the subject. The 1990s produced a corporatized media system that tipped over a hump in concerns of financial controls, corporate ownership, and the vast background hum of elite influence. The end product is that major media outlets are streamlined to produce consumerist news (HappyNews{tm}), not anything else. Investigating financial topics, for instance, not only takes a while, but tends to cross some corporate donor or owner somewhere.
The (in)famous meta-story of the Fox News / Monsanto story is an outstanding example of how highly-corporatized ownership of news (and in fact all industries, as well as corruption of government) kills investigative journalism.
An American is much more likely now to find investigative journalism from independents like Greg Palast, and foreigners (notably, the BBC). His domestic media otherwise has been completely subverted and simply cannot be trusted.
Re:For as long as Governments .. (Score:3, Insightful)
Headline:
"Bush brings security and pleasure to farm yard animal"
He's broken his oath of office, which is to uphold the constitution of the United States. Really, what would he have to do to get impeached? I think he'd get away with running over a baby carriage in a market, at the end of a drunken rage. He'd take a hit in the polls ofr a few months, but when we invade Iran all will be well for him again.
Thank you CIA for all that you do for [Bush] us.
Re:For as long as Governments .. (Score:3, Insightful)
You keep using that word, "rational". I do not think it means what you think it means.
It does not mean attempting to pre-empt factual, reasoned, discussion by name-calling and sneering mockery, for example.
Re:For as long as Governments .. (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, I know people in that line of work. I know it's not that straightforward. My comments are in the context of the earlier loon's post about the CIA being a completely un-accountable, all-powerful, secret-super-duper black government X-files type entity that's doing the bidding of Evil Masters, blah blah blah, and how nothing can dislodge them from their powerful position running our lives, etc. I'm trying to point out that it's an agency made up of people (many brilliant, some mediocre, most honorable, some sleazy) who do not work in a vacuum. The agency's management is a mix of career and appointee people, and things there, philosophically and loyalty-wise change with the times and with the administration from which they take direction.
Some aspects of what they did (or did not) put together before 9/11 are only clear with perfect hindsight, and some should have been clear before-hand. I do not envy anyone the responsibility of having to do what their covert, analytical, and even administrative people have to contend with. But I also know that they operate within a framework that has some inertia. They're just now recovering from having been largely gutted in years past, and they have a hell of a time hanging onto decent employees because of how little the jobs pay. A changing of the guard there, along with the new security czar's office, and a public (and legislature) that understands that the missions is actually important... that all adds up to a very different scenario than, say, 6 or 8 years ago.
Doesn't matter though. For as many bad guys as they (in cooperation with their counterparts at NSA, NRO, FBI, DIA and the rest) identify and act against, we'll all still be bitching when the next group of jihaddis, already here in the states, blows something up or shoots up a school like that one in Russia. As much as people here bitch about the perceived loss of liberties, it is the liberty in this country that makes us so vulnerable to that sort of thing, and we're just going to have to roll with those punches as they come. Happily, we've actually stopped some stuff like that in its tracks - not that the intel people ever get to really have public credit for most of what they do.
Re:Tempest in a teapot (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, that's real effective. The President can piss all over the Constitution, violating his oath of office in a series of act that by any reasonable measure require impeachment and imprisonment, and what happens? A few folks scream bloody murder, the President and staff respond with a big "fuck you - we'll do what we want", and the whole shebang continues unabated.
That whole 'vigilance' thing isn't doing dick.
Max