President Bush reversed course on Tuesday and agreed to let his national security adviser give sworn public testimony before the 9/11 commission, while he and Vice President Dick Cheney will meet privately in a separate session with the full panel.
Reuters article
Not just Condi forced to testify under oath in public, but Boris and Natasha are now going to meet with the full panel.
Way to go, Richard Clarke.
"We applaud the decision of the president to allow the national security adviser, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, to testify," Hastert and Frist said in a statement noting the "unique nature" of the hijacked airliner attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people.
What a freaking dufus. That "unique nature" bit came from the 60 Minutes interview with Rice when she tried to say her testimony would be unprecedented, and Ed Bradley said it was an unprecedented event: "it's a big enough issue to talk in public."
The New News - Satire for the Unwashed Masses
Secrecy freaks.
This administration, as you've seen printed elsewhere, I'm sure, is the most secretive ever - more paranoid about secrecy than Richard Nixon, they say. The absurdity of Conoleezza Rice's refusal to testify publicly or under oath privately is one example of the unreasonableness of their demands for secrecy. It seems like secrecy for secrecy's sake. Or, more likely, for the sake of control and power. And perhaps to cover up the blunders of their incompetency.
Now, the Federation of American Scientists has secured documentation that shows the NSA changed its classification rules in March of 2001 on signals intelligence information and "total personnel strength in the cryptologic community". That information had been classified for a time period of 25 years. In March of 2001, it became classified for "all time frames". Now, it really doesn't make any sense to classify something that has already been declassified. Offhand, I can think of three reasons you would do that.
1) You are obsessed with secrecy. It's just a matter of principal that you want total control of information, and so you don't consider whether it's reasonable or not.
2) There is something in the records beyond 25 years ago that is problematic for you, and to date, luckily, no one has filed a request for the records containing that information, so you're going to lock it up before they do.
3) There is something you are doing now that you don't ever want to become public knowledge, not even 30 years from now.
4) You really think that there is something 25 years old that might provide a terrorist or "rogue state" with information they could use to destroy this country. (Like how many people we had working cryptology 25 years ago.)
What have I missed?
According to Secrecy News:
Even as they extended the secrecy of the total number of SIGINT personnel indefinitely, officials at the National Security Agency in 2001 simultaneously declassified the number of civilian and military personnel who work at NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, MD.
Why?
Because the Bush Administration's NSA Transition Team asked them to, in response to a request from the Maryland congressional delegation.
Furthermore, "it is in NSA's best interests to declassify basic civilian personnel figures in order to be able to advocate more effectively for NSA," according to an internal NSA memorandum dated January 19, 2001 obtained by Secrecy News.
In other words, in this case classification and declassification were political decisions, not national security decisions.
Another internal NSA document from April 2001 elaborated on the purely political drivers behind such classification actions.
NSA officials, it said, were "under pressure to declassify the numbers of military personnel at NSA. They are not under pressure to declassify any other numbers (e.g., number of military personnel living in Maryland or the total number of contractors employed at NSA), so those items remain classified."
It was a simple political calculation. But it had nothing to do with national security.
Why?
Because the Bush Administration's NSA Transition Team asked them to, in response to a request from the Maryland congressional delegation.
Furthermore, "it is in NSA's best interests to declassify basic civilian personnel figures in order to be able to advocate more effectively for NSA," according to an internal NSA memorandum dated January 19, 2001 obtained by Secrecy News.
In other words, in this case classification and declassification were political decisions, not national security decisions.
Another internal NSA document from April 2001 elaborated on the purely political drivers behind such classification actions.
NSA officials, it said, were "under pressure to declassify the numbers of military personnel at NSA. They are not under pressure to declassify any other numbers (e.g., number of military personnel living in Maryland or the total number of contractors employed at NSA), so those items remain classified."
It was a simple political calculation. But it had nothing to do with national security.
Sounds like number 1.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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