What explains the continued secrecy?

If the skeptics of the government's story are mere conspiracy nuts then why is the government continuing to hide so much information about the attacks? For example, the full CIA IG report. The 28 pages of the JI report which detail Saudi support for alHazmi and alMihdhar. Details of the July 10 briefing given to Rice by the CIA. Testimony from the heads of the CIA/FBI Bin Laden units (Rich B. and Rod Middleton). How is it possible that these two key officials have never explained their conduct to the public?

Is it right for intel officials and politicians to make the case for torture and warrantless spying while they refuse to declassify key information about the attacks they used as the justification for their illegal CT policies?

that is the way governments act - why do you think it was necessary to pass a FOI act in the first place? And look how hard it is to get information out of any government agency (local, state or federal) even with FOI acts.

Government agencies are set up such that it is always easier to say no rather than yes.

are there some issues rightfully withheld for the public for security reasons or confidentiality? Or should everything the government do, be completely transparent ASAP?


Before you or others accuse me of supporting torture, etc, etc, blah, blah , blather. I believe there are compelling reasons to withhold information from the general public. I also believe this information should be released to the public within a reasonable time period.

This is an extremely complicated issue on many fronts over many years, ethics, morality, security, good faith, etc, and highly difficult to define a set of rules that balances out transparency and security.

In the past, entire agencies have not even been acknowledged to exist. Operations have been undertaken outside Congressional purview of any kind. Teams have appointed themselves, assigned their own missions, and removed themselves from oversight. Intel agencies have set up private fronts that also make profits from non-governmental business and can thus finance and conduct operations, with cover but without oversight. Today, private contracters (who are free to do business with any other entity in the world) get 2/3 of the intelligence budgets. Their books are not subject to Congressional oversight.

Thus I dispute that large parts of the spook world should even qualify as government. This is an extra-legal, extra-constitutional, self-appointed sphere -- what P.D. Scott calls "parapolitics." Covert operations are almost by definition illegal (under some country's law, or they wouldn't need be covert). This encourages a contempt for the law and for the idea that the people's will should determine the law. The operators consider it a self-evident necessity to deal with gangsters, drug dealers, armed insurrectionaries and political extremists; also, to deal with independent funding sources from among the rich and corporate at home and abroad (including such actors as might be pursuing their own interests); and, often, to keep all such dealings conveniently deniable to their office-holding superiors.

Until you deal with the existence of covert, unaccountable and independent power centers that enjoy the protection of government but are not actually government, your question is meaningless. It's not just, who is qualified to decide what should be secret from the people? But also: Who is qualified to decide what should be kept secret from the other spooks and supposed oversight authorities? The system is designed for chaos.

I agree with much of what you wrote.

The larger question still remains as to how to manage this whole affair in ways that protect us from the government and allow the government to effectively protect US institutions and the citizenry.

the government should be 100 percent transparent in real time in all that it does, no matter what the issue might be? Our government institution have no obligation to protect the sovereignty and well being of the people it serves?

It's easy to post slogans.

and I guess difficult to understand Parenti


They Thought They Were Free - Read by Dave Emory


The Germans, 1933-45

Excerpt from pages 166-73 of "They Thought They Were Free" First published in 1955

By Milton Mayer

But Then It Was Too Late

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

....

"Yes," I said.

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, THE SHOCK DOCTRINE will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’



Michael Parenti - Terrorism, Globalism & Conspiracy

"Coincidence Theory: By sheer chance things just happen repeatedly and coincidentally to benefit their interests without any conscious connivance by them, which is most uncanny. There is also: Stupidity Theory, Innocence Theory, Momentary Aberration Theory, Incompetence Theory, Unintended Consequences Theory and Innocent Cultural Proclivities Theory."

- Michael Parenti

but we currently have a system that is being exploited to protect government officials from accountability and keep the public ignorant. So not only are secrecy laws being abused but that secrecy also enables the promotion of absurd CT measures that are illegal and of questionable effectiveness.

I recently read a good book on this issue called Nation of Secrets: The Threat to Democracy and the American Way of Life by Ted Gup. He makes a good case that the secrecy has gone way too far. I remember John Ashcroft wrote an editorial a few months ago suggesting the public had plenty of representation by way of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. His point was that they do a good job of looking out for the public. IMO, this is absurd. For example, Silvestre Reyes (Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee) recently suggested that Obama keep Hayden and McConnell on and think twice about discontinuing the CIA interrogation program. Is Reyes truly concerned about protecting national security or is he more concerned with protecting himself from legal liability? He has been on the House Intelligence Committee since 2001 so he was probably read in to these illegal programs at some point. He was a member of the 9/11 Joint Inquiry investigation so he has heard all sorts of testimony which has not been shared with the public. It seems the standard the public is expected to accept is that government officials act in good faith. Thus, we should go along with the classification and the illegal tactics as our leaders simply know better. This isn't representative democracy. This is authoritarianism.

Why were all videos of the plane (or whatever it was) that hit the pentagon on 9/11 confiscated and never released? They don't confiscate videos every other day. What national security were they protecting by not allowing us to see what those videos showed? What national security are they protecting now?

The only "video" they released consists of about 5 frames that hardly show anything but a fireball.

Here is another one that was released, as a result of a lawsuit:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=n4O4R0LWCQ4

Again, it doesn't show much of anything, but maybe the plane should be visible - I don't know.

This appears to be a reasonable recreation of what happened:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YVDdjLQkUV8

But if it was like the other planes that hit the WTC towers, this plane was not the commercial aircraft we were led to believe. However, with limited evidence, we can't say much more about what it was. This seems reason enough for them to hide the evidence, for their own interests, not ours.

2 star general says 911 was cover up
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uiH0shjlesw

"If the government has nothing to hide, why are they hiding everything?"
-- Lt Col Bob Bowman