Abuse of national security classification

[noise]

There are times when governments fight to keep documents secret to protect sensitive intelligence or other vital national security interests. And there are times when they are just trying to cover up incompetence, misbehavior or lawbreaking.

Last week, when a British court released secret intelligence material relating to the torture allegations of a former Guantánamo prisoner, Binyam Mohamed, it was clear that the second motive had been in play when both the Bush and the Obama administrations and some high-ranking British officials tried to prevent the disclosure.

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Seven Paragraphs

The same thing has been done with 9/11 records.

[BeFree]

1. No doubt

There is no telling how many secrets about 9/11, recorded by real patriots within the US government, that have been placed in Top Secret 'protection'.

Military records come to mind.

We know the about the trashed ATC tapes.

And of course the closed and closely controlled investigation of the ground zero activities.

Evidence of government secrets once withheld are the recently released NIST photos.

It is in the interest of the powers that be in government, to keep from the public, any item which paints a 'bad' picture of its activities. Witness the problems the 9/11 Commission had.

Many FOIA requests are denied.

To suggest otherwise - that they tell us everything - goes against history and is a deep denial of reality.

[Neily]

2. Significance of NIST's new photos?

I did not see a significant thing in any of the recently released NIST photos. They all appeared to be the same we have seen a million times before or am I missing something?

[BeFree]

5. Finally released

The idea that they wouldn't allow us citizens to view the pics is sig.
What else is being kept from us?

[defendandprotect]

3. Agree . . . and nothing is safe from "national security" . . . !!

[Bryan Sacks]

4. The "second" category needs further breaking up

Grouping together incompetence and lawbreaking serves those who would break the law and prefer to have their conduct seen as an error or mistake. Willful misconduct, which happens regularly in the regular practice of law enforcement, should not be confused with good faith mistakes or errors, which also happens regularly.

The NY Times' editors are of course aware of this distinction, and its importance:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/02/opinion/02moran.html

In this case, the cover-up had to do with unlawful activities, obviously, and not any error or incompetence.

[BeFree]

6. Hey, noise

How's this for an idea?

We are the centrists. The middle roaders.

On the far right we have the authoritarians, and on the far left the whacked out 'truthers'.

Meanwhile we just plod along trying to make sense out of this mess and willing to accept wherever it leads once we have a real open and honest investigation.

I mean, how middle of the road can you get?

[Make7]

7. Violation of rule #7? Click this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=277126&mesg_id=277126