What you don't know, can't hurt the Bush Administration

[PixelPusher]

(follow title link for more links that are provided in the body of the story)

Bush Admin: What You Don't Know Can't Hurt Us (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002175.php)
By Paul Kiel - December 18, 2006, 11:46 AM

Just how many different ways has the Bush Administration tried to hide once-public information sources from the public record? Help us count the ways.

On Friday, Justin discovered that the Department of Defense has suddenly classified the numbers of attacks in Iraq for September through November of this year -- after providing the figures for every month since the war began. Why classify the information now? If there's a good explanation, we don't know it, and the Pentagon isn't returning our calls.

As others have noted, it's far from the first time that the administration has tried to deep-six data that was unhelpful to its goals. Over the years, they've discontinued annual reports, classified normally public data, de-funded studies, quieted underlings, and generally done whatever was necessary to keep bad information under wraps.

Wouldn't it be great to have all those examples in one place? Thankfully, Steve Benen at the Carpetbagger Report has started us off on that goal. But we're pretty confident there are more examples, so please use the comments to make suggestions, and we'll update the list as we verify the specifics. Please, include links where possible.

Here's Steve's list:

* In March, the administration announced it would no longer produce the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation, which identifies which programs best assist low-income families, while also tracking health insurance coverage and child support.

* In 2005, after a government report showed an increase in terrorism around the world, the administration announced it would stop publishing its annual report on international terrorism.

* After the Bureau of Labor Statistics uncovered discouraging data about factory closings in the U.S., the administration announced it would stop publishing information about factory closings.

* When an annual report called “Budget Information for States” showed the federal government shortchanging states in the midst of fiscal crises, Bush’s Office of Management and Budget announced it was discontinuing the report, which some said was the only source for comprehensive data on state funding from the federal government.

* When Bush’s Department of Education found that charter schools were underperforming, the administration said it would sharply cut back on the information it collects about charter schools.

Our list continues, after the jump.

Update:

* The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has to date failed to produce a congressionally-mandated report on climate change that was due in 2004. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has called the failure an "obfuscation."

* The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced plans to close several libraries which were used by researchers and scientists. The agency called its decision a cost-cutting measure, but a 2004 report showed that the facilities actually brought the EPA a $7.5 million surplus annually.

* On November 1st, 2001, President Bush issued an executive order limiting the public's access to presidential records. The order undermined the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which required the release of those records after 12 years. Bush's order prevented the release of "68,000 pages of confidential communications between President Ronald Reagan and his advisers," some of whom had positions in the Bush Administration. More here. (Thanks to Roger A. and nitpicker below.) Update: TPMm Reader JP writes in to point out that Bush did the same thing with his papers from the Texas governorship.

* A rule change at the U.S. Geological Survey restricts agency scientists from publishing or discussing research without that information first being screened by higher-ups at the agency. Special screening will be given to "findings or data that may be especially newsworthy, have an impact on government policy, or contradict previous public understanding to ensure that proper officials are notified and that communication strategies are developed." The scientists at the USGS cover such controversial topics as global warming. Before, studies were released after an anonymous peer review of the research. (Thanks to Alison below.)

* A new policy at the The U.S. Forest Service means the agency no longer will generate environmental impact statements for "its long-term plans for America's national forests and grasslands." It also "no longer will allow the public to appeal on long-term plans for those forests, but instead will invite participation in planning from the outset." (Thanks to libra below.)

* In March 2006, the Department of Health and Human Services took down a six-year-old Web site devoted to substance abuse and treatment information for gays and lesbians, after members of the conservative Family Research Council complained.

* In 2002, HHS removed information from its Web site pertaining to risky sexual behavior among adolescents, condom use and HIV.

* Also in 2002, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission removed from its Web site a document showing that officials found large gaps in a portion of an aging Montana dam. A FERC official said the deletion was for "national security."

* In 2004, the FBI attempted to retroactively classify public information regarding the case of bureau whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, including a series of letters between the Justice Department and several senators.

* In October 2003, the Bush administration banned photographs depicting servicemembers' coffins returning from overseas.

* In December 2002, the administration curtailed funding to the Mass-Layoffs Statistics program, which released monthly data on the number and size of layoffs by U.S. companies. His father attempted to kill the same program in 1992, but Clinton revived it when he assumed the presidency.

* In 2004, the Internal Revenue Service stopped providing data demonstrating the level of its job performance. In 2006, a judge forced the IRS to provide the information.

Jonathan Gaither contributed research to this post.


Just imagine if they were half as good at governing as they were at "controlling the message".

[BIG IRISH]

Just imagine if they were half as good at governing as they were at "controlling the message".

You have only found out about .00000000000000000000000000000000001
of what they have hidden.

The old Russian Proverb
which Bush expects follks to believe

The less you know the better
you sleep.

[boutons_]

December 21, 2006

U.S. to Declassify Secrets at Age 25

By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 — It will be a Cinderella moment for the band of researchers who study the hidden history of American government.

At midnight on Dec. 31, hundreds of millions of pages of secret documents will be instantly declassified, including many F.B.I. cold war files on investigations of people suspected of being Communist sympathizers. After years of extensions sought by federal agencies behaving like college students facing a term paper, the end of 2006 means the government’s first automatic declassification of records.

Secret documents 25 years old or older will lose their classified status without so much as the stroke of a pen, unless agencies have sought exemptions on the ground that the material remains secret.

Historians say the deadline, created in the Clinton administration but enforced, to the surprise of some scholars, by the secrecy-prone Bush administration, has had huge effects on public access, despite the large numbers of intelligence documents that have been exempted.

And every year from now on, millions of additional documents will be automatically declassified as they reach the 25-year limit, reversing the traditional practice of releasing just what scholars request.

Many historians had expected President Bush to scrap the deadline. His administration has overseen the reclassification of many historical files and restricted access to presidential papers of past administrations, as well as contemporary records.

Practical considerations, including a growing backlog of records at the National Archives, mean that it could take months before the declassified papers are ready for researchers.

“Deadlines clarify the mind,” said Thomas S. Blanton, director of the private National Security Archive at George Washington University, which obtains and publishes historical government documents.

Despite what he called a disappointing volume of exemptions, Mr. Blanton said automatic declassification had “given advocates of freedom of information a real lever.”

Gearing up to review aging records to meet the deadline, agencies have declassified more than one billion pages, shedding light on the Cuban missile crisis, the Vietnam War and the network of Soviet agents in the American government.

Several hundred million pages will be declassified at midnight on Dec. 31, including 270 million pages at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has lagged most agencies in reviews.

J. William Leonard, who oversees declassification as head of the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives, said the threat that secret files might be made public without a security review had sent a useful chill through the bureaucracy.

“Unfortunately, you sometimes need a two-by-four to get agencies to pay attention,” Mr. Leonard said. “Automatic declassification was essentially that two-by-four.”

What surprises await in the documents is impossible to predict.

“It is going to take a generation for scholars to go through the material declassified under this process,” said Steven Aftergood, who runs a project on government secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists.

“It represents the classified history of a momentous period, the cold war,” Mr. Aftergood said. “Almost every current headline has an echo in the declassified past, whether it’s coping with nuclear weapons, understanding the Middle East or dictatorship and democracy in Latin America.”

Anna K. Nelson, a historian at American University, said she hoped that the files would shed light on the Central Intelligence Agency role in Iran and deepen the documentation of the Jimmy Carter years, in particular the Camp David accords.

“Americans need to know this history, and the history is in those documents,” Ms. Nelson said.

She said the National Archives staff was buried in a 400-million-page backlog that awaits processing and is not publicly available.

Also, a budget shortfall has cut back on evening and weekend access to the major research center of the archives, in College Park, Md.

“They can declassify the records, but the archives don’t have the staff to handle them,” Ms. Nelson said.

The first deadline was imposed in an executive order that President Bill Clinton signed in 1995, when officials realized that taxpayers were paying billions of dollars to protect a mountain of cold war documents.

The order gave agencies five years to declassify documents or show the need for continued secrecy.

When agencies protested that they could not meet the 2000 deadline, it was extended to 2003. Mr. Bush then granted another three-year extension, but put out the word that it was the last one, despite the new emphasis on security after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and a new war in Iraq.

“The Bush administration could have said, ‘This is a Clinton thing,’ and abandoned it,” Mr. Aftergood, said. “To their credit, they did not.”

As an enforceable deadline loomed, the intelligence agencies that produce most secret material add workers to plow through files from World War II.

The C.I.A. has reviewed more than 100 million pages, released 30 million pages and created a database of documents, Crest, that is accessible from terminals at the National Archives. Although most of the documents are exempt, they can be requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

The National Security Agency, the eavesdropping and code-breaking agency, has released 35 million pages, including an extensive collection on the Gulf of Tonkin incident that led to the escalation of the Vietnam War. The agency plans a major release early next year on the Israeli attack on the Liberty, an American eavesdropping ship, in 1967.

The F.B.I., by contrast, negotiated an exemption from the 1995 executive order and concluded last year that the 2003 executive order ended its special status. It has rushed to review material, seeking exemption for 50 million pages on intelligence, counterintelligence and terrorism, but leaving 270 million pages to be automatically declassified now.

Among those files, said David M. Hardy, the bureau declassification chief, are those on investigations of Americans with suspected ties to the Communist Party. Reviewers will keep working on the exempt material to see what can be released, but it is a slow process, Mr. Hardy said.

“The numbers of documents are staggering,” Mr. Hardy said.

The bureau is studying digitizing documents and using computers to search for classified material. Some experts say mass declassification is not the smartest approach. L. Britt Snider, a former intelligence official who heads the Public Interest Declassification Board, which advises the White House, said most government records, even top-secret ones, were pretty boring.

“Rather than take this blunderbuss approach,” Mr. Snider said, “I’d like to see the agencies concentrate first on what’s interesting and what’s important.”

=======================

I wonder if some org is going to try to scan the documents into text? Like Google wanted to do for all the world's books, but ran into copyright problems.

[xrayzebra]

You all mean like Sandy Burglar stealing papers and
destroying them? Well, it is okay for him to do it,
cause Clinton's bunch lied anyhow about everything.