Congressional Research Service Reports Leaked

[BirminghamExaminer]

Senators John McCain (R) and Patrick J. Leahy (D) have fought for transparency in government every year since 1998 by introducing bills to have these reports made public. The CRS, a branch of Congress is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act or FIOA. Though McCain and Leahy have supported an open government by introducing a bill trying to make the record public, the bill has been rejected each year.

Though the CRS reports are meant to be secret, selected reports have been leaked over the years to special interest groups who then use them to aid their agenda. In the meantime, the reports have been kept secret from the public. Until now that is.

Read more here: http://www.examiner.com/x-1172-Birmingham-Progressive-Politics-Examiner~y2009m2d8-Congressional-Research-Service-Reports-Leaked

[Idealism]

1. That is awesome

So much to read, so little time... 6,200 CRS reports?! christ

[BirminghamExaminer]

2. At least now it's a level playing field.

Before now, special interests groups (read lobbyists) have gotten sneaked access to selected reports and used them for their agenda. Now we can all read this stuff. Yay!

[ggould1]

3. Hope they don't get pulled.

[bobthedrummer]

5. Welcome to DU BirminghamExaminer, DU's a well recognized open source for political intelligence

among other things.

Then there's The National Security Archive to consider.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/

:fistbump:

[BirminghamExaminer]

8. Thanks for the link.

And thanks for the welcome. I don't know how I never found this sanctuary until recently. This might have saved me some gray hairs had I known about it anytime during the last 8 years.

[bobthedrummer]

4. Thank Ralph Nader for FOIA, imagine what Nader could do as Secretary of Health & Human Services...k

[TahitiNut]

6. That's a goldmine of information.

Wow.

[EFerrari]

7. Fascinating. I read a a report on Bolivia that says it's lapsing on

drug interdiction and makes no mention at all of our efforts to destabilise the current regime -- even though NGO workers have gone public about the Embassy's efforts to recruit them.

Maybe "not cooperating with drug trafficking interdiction" is code for "not playing ball".

Fascinating. I wonder how many of these reports are as skewed. The disinformation is sort of endless, isn't it?

[Idealism]

9. What would you expect?

Politicians don't know issues very often, they just know what they are told. They often even mess that small amount of information up...

[BirminghamExaminer]

10. You can download the entire report on piratebay as a torrent now

If anyone is interested you can now download the thing as a torrent. Wikileaks website got overwhelmed so they've got it on piratebay here:

http://thepiratebay.org/tag/wikileaks

You must have a torrent application to download.