Official secrecy reaches historic high in the U.S.

Published on July 3rd, 2005

Official secrecy reaches historic high in the U.S. — The end of freedom of information and an informed public. The terrorists are winning.

WASHINGTON Driven in part by fears of terrorism, government secrecy in the United States has reached a historic high by several measures. Federal departments now classify documents at the rate of 125 a minute as they create new categories of semisecrets bearing vague labels like “sensitive security information.”

A record 15.6 million documents were classified last year, nearly double the number in 2001, according to the federal Information Security Oversight Office. Meanwhile, the declassification process, which made millions of historical documents available annually in the 1990s, has slowed to a relative crawl, from a high of 204 million pages in 1997 to just 28 million pages last year.

6 users responded in " Official secrecy reaches historic high in the U.S. "

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# 1 Joe Gaffney said, on July 3rd, 2005 at 12:17 pm

By striking the WTC, the terrorists have set into motion the destruction of the United States from within. They just have to sit back and watch us curtail our liberties and spend ourselves in bankruptcy to protect ourselves from their “perceived” threat. I’m not worried about the terrorists near as much as I’m worried about the actions taken by our own government. The keep telling us the terrorists haven’t won yet they keep acting like they have.

# 2 Mike Voice said, on July 3rd, 2005 at 12:50 pm

I thought that crap was bad enough when I got out of the Navy in ‘96, I can’t imagine how much worse it is now.

As an example, I worked in the Nuclear Propulsion field. On top of all the materials being classified Confidential [the three main levels - at the time - being Top Secret, Secret, and Confidential] , and Noforn [no foreign nationals were allowed to see this stuff] , and NNPI [Naval Nuclear Propulsion Information ] – they started a new category called PNNPI [Previously NNPI ] – covering materials which no longer qualfied as NNPI, but were still considered “sensitive”.

When I retired, I had to sign two security debriefing statements – one for general classified materials, and a second for NNPI materials.

The exciting part was that after the Walker spy scandal, Regan’s administration had added wording (to be clear – before I had to sign it, not after) which stated I could be prosecuted for revealing what was currently considered non-classifed materials – if a President – at some later date – decided it should be classified information.

So, in the post-9/11 world, I don’t talk about any of that shit – because I have no way of knowing what has been retroactively classified.

And I’m sure the paranoid idiots behind all of this see that as a good thing

# 3 Teyecoon said, on July 3rd, 2005 at 5:11 pm

I agree with Joe in that it looks to me like the terrorists have won. Hell, the fact that Bush got re-elected on a “security” basis proves to me that they won. Not to mention, the overwhelming resurgence of the Christianity influence in this country to somehow offset the “terroristic” influence of the Muslim religion because we want to believe in something as passionately as they do or we evidently lose (the extremist belief game). It’s like two sides of a sporting event believing that they will win if they give more support to “their sides” mascot than the other team.

# 4 Zappini said, on July 4th, 2005 at 6:52 am

Teyecoon wrote: …the fact that Bush got re-elected… Why do you assume Bush won the 2004 election?

# 5 MikA said, on July 5th, 2005 at 2:37 am

I hope you’ll forgive a foreigner commenting here but it seems to me that no-one is looking hard enough at the long game.
President Reagan caused the Soviet Union to implode by massive military spending which made the USSR attempt to keep up causing all sorts of financial problems there resulting in the collapse of the state.
It seems to me that the terrorists are using a similar but much cheaper strategy against the USA. Every terrorist action or threat causes the US government to spend on countermeasures to the action and every other similar action that anyone in power can think of. In crude terms for every dollar the terrorists spend, the USA and other western countries spend a million. They can keep this up forever and only rarely need to achieve anything, even a threat will be responded to.
Tell me I’m wrong here but the numbers look convincing to me

# 6 Mike Voice said, on July 7th, 2005 at 7:10 am

In crude terms for every dollar the terrorists spend, the USA and other western countries spend a million.

Agreed. We are told that deficit-spending is to be expected during a war, and that taxes need to be reduced to stimulate the economy. We are increasing our spending while reducing our income – which is a recipe for a painful economic future.

They can keep this up forever and only rarely need to achieve anything, even a threat will be responded to.

The 2nd front on terrorism was supposed to keep the terrorists occupied with attacking our troops in Afganistan and Iraq. But Madrid, and now London, are sad examples of the truth that they “only rarely need to achieve results”.

After London was bombed, New York was put on high alert. Why? Any evidence uncovered that an attack was planned? Or just knee-jerk paranoia?

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