Wikileaks: Change you can download: a billion in secret Congressional reports

I found this interesting, though I know little of the credibility of the documents available for download at this site - I only found it today through a youtube video. How long do you think it will last?

Change you can download: a billion in secret Congressional reports:

February 8, 2009
EDITORIAL

Wikileaks has released nearly a billion dollars worth of quasi-secret reports commissioned by the United States Congress.

Frontpage of sample CRS report, RL31555: China and Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Missiles: Policy Issues, dated January 7, 2009.

A full listing of reports is available here.

The 6,780 reports, current as of this month, comprise over 127,000 pages of material on some of the most contentious issues in the nation, from the U.S. relationship with Israel to the financial collapse. Nearly 2,300 of the reports were updated in the last 12 months, while the oldest report goes back to 1990.

The release represents the total output of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) electronically available to Congressional offices. The CRS is Congress's analytical agency and has a budget in excess of $100M per year.

Open government lawmakers such as Senators John McCain (R-Arizona) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vermont) have fought for years to make the reports public, with bills being introduced--and rejected--almost every year since 1998. The CRS, as a branch of Congress, is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

CRS reports are highly regarded as non-partisan, in-depth, and timely. The reports top the list of the "10 Most-Wanted Government Documents" compiled by the Washington based Center for Democracy and Technology[1]. The Federation of American Scientists, in pushing for the reports to be made public, stated that the "CRS is Congress' Brain and it's useful for the public to be plugged into it,"[2]. While Wired magazine called their concealment "The biggest Congressional scandal of the digital age"[3].

Although all CRS reports are legally in the public domain, they are quasi-secret because the CRS, as a matter of policy, makes the reports available only to members of Congress, Congressional committees and select sister agencies such as the GAO.

Members of Congress are free to selectively release CRS reports to the public but are only motivated to do so when they feel the results would assist them politically. Universally embarrassing reports are kept quiet.

So while I was led in a certain direction with respect to what to look for (like the definition of a terrorist) I found that there really are some very intriguing articles.

Take a peek, you won't be disappointed.

__._/wiki/Change_you_can_download:_a_billion_in_secret_Congressional_reports

http://__._/wiki/Change_you_can_download:_a _billion_in_secret_Congressional_reports

Thanks for posting this. Just glancing through briefly there seem to be some interesting things in there I may have to take a closer look at.

Your link doesn't go to the actual page though, it goes to a page that has no content. So here it is for anyone else who wants to have a look.

Wikileaks or ATS, which on has more truth on it? Time for you to do the research yourself. I don't see anybody here promoting wikileaks much. Lots of threads endlessly, constantly discussing other things though.

secure....__._/

Latest addition is a PDF deriving from the Copyright Summit of March 12th 2009 and which scoops how the world will be shaping up in regards to piracy or copyrights. Many paragraphs weren't added at the time of this report. All these "Pirates" in the news. I prefer the cyber-pirate to the toothless, starving Somalian one but from the Elite perspective, it is useful to tar them all with the same sticky brush. War is war, after all.

As someone very smart recently said, "Leaders don't go to war with each other, their workers do." But Leaders of countries also use Pirates to get their goals accomplished, at least so history tells us.