CIA closes office that declassifies historical materials.

CIA closes office that declassifies historical materials

www.latimes.com

CIA closes office that declassifies historical materials
The Historical Collections Division is the latest casualty of sequester cuts. The office handling Freedom of Information Act requests will take over the work.

By Ken Dilanian

WASHINGTON — The budget ax has fallen on a CIA office that focused on declassifying historical materials, a move scholars say will mean fewer public disclosures about long-buried intelligence secrets and scandals.

The Historical Collections Division, which has declassified documents on top Soviet spies, a secret CIA airline in the Vietnam War, the Cuban

(visit the link for the full news article)

I'm sure the CIA is all broken up about the closure of the Historical Collections Division they handed all the classification work to it's FOIA division which is notorious for being obstructing FOIA requests.I'm sure those document burners and shredders are gonna be working overtime now.Expect even fewer releases now.

www.latimes.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

With everything going on lately, the banks, the abrupt closed door meetings, the leaks, bengahzi, and the NSA, just to name a few.... Add this on top and it just seems to me like the gov is battening down the hatches so to speak. What happens if the UN inspectors find out the rebels got the nerve gas from the events at bengahzi and it makes global news? No way to keep it from the merican public and this is what all the ammunition, tanks, and artillery are for. The news of this would have a global impact and might just be the "event" that all this preparation is for...

I don't know whats going to happen, just a thought. Perhaps is all related.

reply to post by mike dangerously

Hahahahahahahah.

Just, hahahahahahahahaha.



S + F

So this is where 'Don't ask, don't tell went? Convenient.I'm thinking. They don't want us to know and they aren't telling. Never mind cutting the silly programs. endoftheamericandream.com... Let's cut the freedom of information, yeah that's the ticket! (sarcasm)

reply to post by mike dangerously


Obama complains about sequester cuts, but it's clear that his administration is using it to hide information that might make him look worse. The Bureau of Labor Statistics just announced last month that due to the sequester, they won't be gathering data and reporting on mass layoffs or green jobs any more either.

reply to post by myartisstrong


I believe that the event that they are preparing for is a wave of world wide enlightenment that is going to happen very very soon, and I actually have been woken up by my greater eternally enlightened self for an entire day. I can remember seeing that we are all one mind and since we are looking at half the world dead in 35 yrs our soul will awaken soon and pull us out of this simulation, though before that things get real real crazy so the final harvest will be full of imagination and ignorance. We will instantly cry and laugh at the world looking back from there because it is obviously hand crafted so to speak by an immense work force of former humans that reached enlightenment early and granted the universe its first god as close minded bible thumpers call it or "him", what small scopes of vision these doomed perspectives of us have. There are many more surrounding layers of natural systems of nature that work together with precision that there is no analogy to do it justice, but no words can describe the joy and love I felt it was greater than a googleplex of supernovaing stars inside a space the size of my chest.

Meh you dont need to know anything anyway. Here, enjoy because distractions are awesome!.

Way to create a backlog, CIA. FOIA requests previously took a while to handle (I think my mother's took about 6 weeks). Wonder how long that backlog is going to be now that the historical archives duties have been funneled into the FOIA office? It's a petty move. I find it amazing that other departments that have faced sequester cuts aren't pulling these kind of moves but the ones in the DoD? They're choosing to penalize the public for the sequester. Kind of says something there.

Originally posted by WhiteAlice
Way to create a backlog, CIA. FOIA requests previously took a while to handle (I think my mother's took about 6 weeks). Wonder how long that backlog is going to be now that the historical archives duties have been funneled into the FOIA office? It's a petty move. I find it amazing that other departments that have faced sequester cuts aren't pulling these kind of moves but the ones in the DoD? They're choosing to penalize the public for the sequester. Kind of says something there.

Its the CIA of course your going to cut things that are not imporatant to your mission. Sure the office is nice PR and give people something to read about the old days but, its not going to gather any intel for you. FOIAs can be easy or a pain. When I would get stuck doing them I aways hoped for something off the wall so we would have nothing on it that needed reviewed.

I guess they came to the extraterrestrial files and decided to call it a day
Perhaps the extraterrestrial stuff files up so much behind the public screen by now, filled up their library with cosmic secret stuff

Originally posted by MrSpad

Its the CIA of course your going to cut things that are not important to your mission. Sure the office is nice PR and give people something to read about the old days but, its not going to gather any Intel for you. FOIAs can be easy or a pain. When I would get stuck doing them I always hoped for something off the wall so we would have nothing on it that needed reviewed.

Originally posted by mike dangerously


I'm sure the CIA is all broken up about the closure of the Historical Collections Division they handed all the classification work to it's FOIA division which is notorious for being obstructing FOIA requests.I'm sure those document burners and shredders are gonna be working overtime now.Expect even fewer releases now.

www.latimes.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Or, is it perhaps an indication, that once putting most of the "documentation" online, as a way of digitizing and simplifying what they were in charge of, not to mention saving trees, they no longer have to worry about taking the time and all that black ink, and an actual person to black it all out before they release it, for the important stuff has already been permanently redacted, anything that's really concerning, and so, the files of importance, worthy of attention, are already long gone, so they can hand it over to the office of FOIA......

I have noticed the CIA has moved a great deal more online than ever before, as well as tending to post everything FOIA has previously requested to stop repeat quests outright when nothing material has changed. Several agencies seem to have gone to this in Obama's hard push to put basically everything that was real world into the online realm.

I wonder if that has to do with this office's place in priorities to be considered expendable in at this stage?

Ah.

So... will they then reclassify how long ago counts as 'historical' and be spared sharing all kinds of not very old stuff?

Is this going to help end our chances of seeing any more of those pesky JFK files that have been worrying them for the past 50 yrs? I hop not.
Not that I think we will end up seeing them released anyway.

Originally posted by wrabbit2000
I have noticed the CIA has moved a great deal more online than ever before, as well as tending to post everything FOIA has previously requested to stop repeat quests outright when nothing material has changed. Several agencies seem to have gone to this in Obama's hard push to put basically everything that was real world into the online realm.

I wonder if that has to do with this office's place in priorities to be considered expendable in at this stage?

There's a lot of wisdom in putting everything online. Ideally, every declassified document should be online. The concept of filling out an FOIA request to get information is outdated. I would hope that's the motivation behind this.

Originally posted by Aazadan

Originally posted by wrabbit2000
I have noticed the CIA has moved a great deal more online than ever before, as well as tending to post everything FOIA has previously requested to stop repeat quests outright when nothing material has changed. Several agencies seem to have gone to this in Obama's hard push to put basically everything that was real world into the online realm.

I wonder if that has to do with this office's place in priorities to be considered expendable in at this stage?

There's a lot of wisdom in putting everything online. Ideally, every declassified document should be online. The concept of filling out an FOIA request to get information is outdated. I would hope that's the motivation behind this.

Oh yeah. Definitely. Cause the preservation of any "truth" is so very much safer online, right? At the very least, we can then document, fully, what we elected as truth, and discarded as bunk. And then just "reset" it and then keep track of the details so when doing it over, we don't miss a thing, right? Hmmmmm.....can't even figure out an "emoticon" to go with this or express this "con" fully. Let's just go totally AI, transhumanist android, or even full robotic bodies, and do away with emotions altogetherm and get this crap over with.

Sorry. I am so stunned by what I read here, lately, I'm quickly losing my ability to wrap any of me around it, much less my friggin mind.... Ooops, forgot that mind thing doesn't belong to me, either, whomever that is...or anyone else, either. Let's just get to the singularity, altruistic we are one thing, as much as possible, as quickly as possible, dependent, totally upon downloading and uploading, forget all this individual crap....that's the whole problem anyway.

Better get out that DSM....I must be borderline something. Never mind personality. With the transhumanist thing and singularity, who needs one anyway....just an unnecessary pesky thing getting in the wa, all that personality crap. Sooner or later we'll all either have "borderline" ones (personalities, that is) or disassciative ones in order to keep one (a personality) or multiple ones......, just trying to figure out which "one" you are.

Sorry, that isn't aimed at you, personally.....oh wait, the whole point is losing that problematic feature, right? Computers can certainly solve all that, huh?

Originally posted by tetra50
Oh yeah. Definitely. Cause the preservation of any "truth" is so very much safer online, right? At the very least, we can then document, fully, what we elected as truth, and discarded as bunk. And then just "reset" it and then keep track of the details so when doing it over, we don't miss a thing, right? Hmmmmm.....can't even figure out an "emoticon" to go with this or express this "con" fully. Let's just go totally AI, transhumanist android, or even full robotic bodies, and do away with emotions altogetherm and get this crap over with.

It's far more difficult to alter a document if it's placed online and possible to download. There would be groups and individuals that download everything placed online, I'm one of them. If a document is then altered, these groups would have an earlier digital copy where that's not the case and could show the governments changes. When paper records are handed out there's not as many copies of an older version of a document so it becomes easier to alter something and claim it has always been a certain way. Online allows for mass distribution in a way that paper documents just don't provide.