WASHINGTON — In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians. The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassified pages began in 1999, when the Central Intelligence Agency and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Bill Clinton. It accelerated after the Bush administration took office and especially after the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to archives records. But because the reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy governed by a still-classified memorandum that prohibits the National Archives even from saying which agencies are involved it continued virtually without outside notice until December. That was when an intelligence historian, Matthew M. Aid, noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been withdrawn from the archives’ open shelves. Mr. Aid was struck by what seemed to him the innocuous contents of the documents mostly decades-old State Department reports from the Korean […]
It took me a half dozen e-mails and telephone calls over three days to just to confirm that yes, the Directorate of National Intelligence, or DNI, the new-ish uber-spooks body has opened an office to deal with state and local law enforcement. And it took me a few more inquiries before the DNI gave up the name of its head, Michael Tiffany, though nothing more. Mind you, this is not classified information. Forget about denying public information to a pesky reporter: State and local cops have to know who’s in charge of state and local law enforcement issues, right? Finally, I Googled Michael Tiffany and eventually found out that he had spent 36 years with the New York Police Department, the last nine as chief of intelligence. He also did a turn in the Bronx as as deputy chief of narcotics. A prince of the city. Probably a good guy to have in the job: He talks cop. But the difficulty I had just prying out Tiffany’s name mirrors the challenge and frustration law enforcement officials have over who’s in charge of homeland security information flow at the federal level. Up […]
SAMARRA, Iraq – The gunfight by the Tigris River was over. It was time to retrieve the bodies. Staff Sgt. Cortez Powell looked at the shredded jaw of a dead man whom he’d shot in the face when insurgents ambushed an American patrol in a blind of reeds. Powell’s M4 assault rifle had jammed, so he’d grabbed the pump-action shotgun that he kept slung over his shoulders and pulled the trigger. Five other soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division scrambled down, pulled two of the insurgents’ bodies from the reeds and dragged them through the mud. “Strap those motherf—–s to the hood like a deer,” said Staff Sgt. James Robinson, 25, of Hughes, Ark. The soldiers heaved the two bodies onto the hood of a Humvee and tied them down with a cord. The dead insurgents’ legs and arms flapped in the air as the Humvee rumbled along. Iraqi families stood in front of the surrounding houses. They watched the corpses ride by and glared at the American soldiers. Fifteen months earlier, when the 1st Infantry Division sent some 5,000 Iraqi and U.S. soldiers to retake Samarra from Sunni Muslim insurgents, it was a […]
Israel held back yesterday from imposing an all-out embargo on the incoming Hamas-led Palestinian administration but announced sanctions that were still likely to cripple the authority. While committing itself not to block humanitarian aid, Israel said it would actively work to stop assistance of whatever sort – financial, military or diplomatic – reaching the Palestinian Authority while it was run by Hamas. Middle East factfile The £30 million monthly tax refund that Israel has traditionally paid the authority would be frozen from the beginning of next month and Israel would work to persuade other countries to impose the same financial block. The loss of the money will be felt immediately by the Hamas-led government as it is needed to pay about 135,000 public sector employees. Israel reiterated that all Hamas members were still regarded as belonging to a terrorist group and were banned from moving through Israeli-controlled checkpoints. This includes the 74 newly elected Hamas members of parliament. Israel said the sanctions were intended to hurt the Palestinian Authority, not its people. It held back from imposing a full closure of its borders and checkpoints with Palestinian areas, which means thousands of migrant […]
Changes in glaciers in the world’s largest and highest mountain system may have the most immediate effects on nearly half of the world’s population, a University of Idaho glaciologist said here Thursday. Vladimir Aizen, a UI professor of glaciology, said changes in the flow of freshwater from 100,000 glaciers in the Central Asia Mountain System will affect nearly 2.5 billion people. He spoke at a media briefing organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science during its annual meeting in St. Louis. Rising temperatures are causing dramatic changes in the world’s glaciers, scientists studying ice fields in Greenland, Chile and Asia agreed during the briefing. Aizen said changes in water flow caused by climate change could have dramatic influence on water supplies. Better information is needed about both the record of past climate shifts stretching back 200,000 years recorded in Central Asia’s mountain glaciers, Aizen said. That data can guide future decisions and trillions of dollars of investment to build reservoirs or other means of coping with changing water regimes. Aizen said rising temperatures can be expected to narrow the time between the rivers’ annual peaks of runoff from rain and snow […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
