POLITICS: Possible Misuse of "Secret" Classification

The "Government Reform Committee's national security panel" cites incidents and information coded as classified or secret by the various US intelligence agencies. Some of these secrets are silly and frivolous, others of the utmost importance.



Illegally concealing information merely because it is 'embarassing' to any administration is flippant abuse of power and trust.

Covering up blatantly illegal acts by officials and officers is downright anti-american, completely unacceptable, and absolutely inexcusable.

Even if one accepts the idea that some of this extraordinarily important information was made secret or kept secret 'in error', one can not accept that such errors go unpunished.

Related News Links:
reform.house.gov
story.news.yahoo.com
www.annistonstar.com

[edit on 8-24-2004 by Valhall]

That sounds like a step in the right direction. There is no way that reports of abuse should have been kept secret, that is a disgusting abuse of power

Misuse of security classification occurs this side of the Atlantic as well.

It's rare that proof can be obtained, but in the late 1990s it became clear that the UK Ministry of Defence had classified their public area Biological Warfare experiments SECRET for 40 years not just because of Cold War secrecy but because public knowledge of the UK BW Field Trials could be politically embarrassing.

The political embarrassment in this case would have been caused by the public finding out they had been exposed to "massive crosswind line releases" of two types of bacteria. In laymans terms the UK MOD had turned the UK into a huge BW laboratory.

The document that revealed this was a briefing document sent from the MOD Chief Scientist to the Secretary of State for War in 1963.

Read the document here

Much praise to Steven Aftergood for highlighting this misuse.


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