Tag: secrecy

Newly Released Photos Show Classified Documents Stored at Penn Biden Center and Biden’s Delaware Home That the Government Fought to Keep Hidden

The Oversight Project forced the release of photos of Biden’s classified documents stored at the Penn Biden Center and Biden’s Wilmington home that the government fought to keep a secret.

“The pictures confirm what many suspected all along: Joe Biden got the kid-glove treatment, while President Trump was presumed guilty,” the Oversight Project said in a press release.

“The newly released photos show FBI agents at the Penn Biden Center and Biden’s Wilmington home handling classified materials with visible care — organized, contained, undisturbed, and literally wearing gloves. Compare that to Mar-a-Lago, where agents dumped documents across the floor for cameras to capture — images that were leaked and blasted across every front page within days, priming the public to see Trump as guilty before a single charge was filed. Two completely different postures — one designed to protect a reputation, the other to destroy one, they said.

The DOJ and FBI hid these photos for years.

Former Special Counsel Robert Hur in February 2024 released a 345-page report on his investigation of the stolen classified documents.

Robert Hur found that Joe Biden “willfully retained” classified information, however, he decided not to charge him. Hur said there is evidence Biden retained classified notebooks, “knowing he was not allowed to do so.”

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UK Government’s Apple iCloud Backdoor Secrecy Called “Farcical” in Court

The British government’s policy of neither confirming nor denying that it had ordered Apple to put a backdoor into iCloud has been described as “farcical” during a court hearing.

The London-based Royal Courts of Justice is the venue of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which on Thursday heard that the “neither confirm nor deny” (NCND) stance was “logically unsustainable” given that everybody already knows the fact.

Ben Jaffey KC, who represents the campaign groups Privacy International and Liberty, told the court that the government was defending a secret that no longer exists.

The tribunal is hearing Apple’s complaint alongside the complaint from Privacy International and Liberty, challenging the home secretary’s power to issue secret orders, known as technical capability notices (TCNs).

The January 2025 leak to the Washington Post revealed that the Home Office had issued a TCN to Apple, requiring access to end-to-end encrypted messages and data stored by Apple customers worldwide in iCloud. Apple did not comply with the order and instead pulled its Advanced Data Protection service from UK users.

But within hours of the Washington Post story, Home Office sources confirmed the report to the Times. In October 2025, the Home Office issued a new TCN, reportedly narrower in scope and aimed at UK users.

As the tribunal was told, this was not the only confirmation of the original order. A post on X by former US director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in August 2025 was seen by more than three million people, while in December 2025, the investigatory powers commissioner, Brian Leveson, said that “lawful access can be achieved in a way that strikes a balance between maintaining strong encryption and ensuring law enforcement and the government can protect the public from terrorism, serious crime, and hostile state activity.”

Gabbard had reported that the UK had agreed to “drop its mandate” for Apple to provide a “backdoor” that would have enabled access to the protected encrypted data of American citizens.

Jaffey told the court that it was unlikely that Home Office sources would have confirmed the TCN without “tacit approval” from the government. “But here, within hours of reporting by the Washington Post, multiple sources were confirming to the Times the existence of the orders,” he said.

Leveson’s statement, Jaffey continued, “gives the game away.” The commissioner’s report would have been “clearly prejudicial to issues that might come in front of him in the future” had there been no TCN issued at all.

And while the Home Office is sticking to its NCND policy, WhatsApp and Google have confirmed in witness statements that they have not received any such orders – something they are free to say because there is no legal bar on disclosing that you have NOT received a TCN.

Apple, on the other hand, is in a different position because it did receive the order, and is now in court trying to force the government to confirm this, and by extension, admit that the TCN is still in force.

Another argument made by Jaffey is that Apple had to ask for permission before it could discuss the order with the US government, and that permission was granted. “The fact that Apple even needed to ask permission confirms there is a TCN,” he said.

The government’s argument against abandoning the NCND policy is that it would damage national security and hinder the investigation and prosecution of “serious crime,” including terrorism and online child abuse. But Jaffey said that “the horse has long bolted” as far as secrecy around the TCN is concerned, and that the government’s stance is “ridiculous” and “understates the principle of open justice.”

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Food Labeling Should Not Be This Hard

Knowing what’s in your food or whether what you’re about to eat comports with a medically prescribed diet can be difficult. There’s no reason why the government should make it harder. But that’s exactly what the United States Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration are doing when they prohibit companies from conveying information about FODMAP content on food labels.

Although not inherently harmful to most people, FODMAPs are a broad category of short-chain carbohydrates and sugar alcohols believed to trigger gastrointestinal symptoms in individuals living with irritable bowel syndrome and possibly several other functional gastrointestinal disorders.

In technical terms, FODMAPs are fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols. More practically, people with IBS might want to be careful around most standard dairy items, honey, several cereals and artificial sweeteners, and a cornucopia of fruits, vegetables, legumes, and spices.

When consumed, these items can lead to luminal distension by causing increased amounts of water to enter the gastrointestinal tract and increased gas production by bacteria living in the colon. In some individuals with IBS and other functional gut disorders, this may trigger or exacerbate certain symptoms of their condition (e.g., intense pain and changes in intestinal motility), possibly through neurons in the gut responding abnormally to these physiological responses to FODMAP consumption. 

Hence, some patients with these conditions choose to limit their FODMAP intake or are encouraged to do so by their health care provider. Some go on strict low-FODMAP diets long term. Others temporarily do so for two to eight weeks then work to reintroduce specific FODMAP-containing foods into their diet to determine what they can tolerate. Broadly speaking, a lot of patients with relevant conditions find that the diet helps alleviate their symptoms.

Low-FODMAP diets though are generally considered sort of bland. They also tend to require a certain amount of time and education to be effective. Looking at a table of high- and low-FODMAP foods to make decisions about what to eat may not require an advanced degree in nutrition, but it is not difficult to imagine how having to break out such a table to evaluate every item you consider purchasing at the grocery store could become rather burdensome, especially if you’re new to the diet.

Fortunately, there are organizations and companies out there to help. Monash University, for example, has labs that both study the effectiveness of low-FODMAP diets and test food items for FODMAP content. Monash also offers several resources to help those on low-FODMAP diets make informed meal choices and works with companies that wish to offer low-FODMAP food options. If a company wants to submit a product to Monash for evaluation and Monash determines the item is low in FODMAP content, the company can then use a trademarked label to convey this information to consumers.

However, as one US company learned, even if one of the world’s leading FODMAP research facilities tells you your food is low in FODMAPs, this isn’t exactly the kind of thing you can just put on a label in the United States.

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Covert Pentagon propagandists are tracking anti-war Americans, skirting the law

In mid-August, a conservative activist using the digital moniker “Datarepublican” quietly admitted she was employed by the Pentagon as a “special government employee.” For months, she’d been pocketing a government paycheck while intensely lobbying for President Trump’s imperialist misadventures online and tracking their most vocal critics in a digital database.

Datarepublican was identified in 2025 as Jennica Pounds, a Utah-based mother with nearly a million followers whose stated raison d’etre is “fighting communists” – a moniker she applies liberally to anyone perceptibly to the left of Barry Goldwater.

And she’s not alone. Pounds has emerged as the face of a new wave of right-wing influencers who are being covertly employed by the US Department of War to spread pro-government propaganda. On August 29th, Washington Post reporters revealed at least three more digital activists are surreptitiously working for the Pentagon, which designates them as either special government employees (SGEs) or as what the US military calls “highly qualified experts” (HQEs).

Named in the Pentagon’s army of influencers were retired Air Force colonel Rob Maness, and retired Army colonels Kurt Schlichter and Thomas Anderson. Like Pounds, Anderson also operated in relative anonymity until recently, posting under the Twitter handle “Cynical Publius.” Schlicter, for his part, is a prolific right-wing troll who has frequently fantasized about the ethnic cleansing and extermination of Palestinians.

The operation appears to be in breach of two federal laws, the Hatch Act and the Smith-Mundt Act, which prohibit government employees from engaging in political activities while on the clock, and forbid them from directing their propaganda efforts at the US population, respectively.

The aforementioned right-wing activists are the only ones known to have been working secretly for the Department of War. But the revelations about paid Pentagon propaganda posters come as the US military pursues a flurry of murky partnerships with prominent conservative influencers like top TPUSA widow Erika Kirk, who was appointed to the Air Force Academy Board of Visitors by Trump in March in an effort to further slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s “legacy.”

Then there’s Laura Loomer, the obsessively anti-Muslim Trump ally, who is producing de facto press releases for self-proclaimed “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth, enjoying Pentagon press credentials, and earning references as an “informal advisor to the Department of War.”

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The case for declassifying 9/11 records

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently ordered the release of more than 170,000 pages of city records about the air quality in Lower Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks. This release, the first in a series of planned disclosures, shows how opening decades-old records, including those that expose government wrongdoing, is in the public interest. Political will to expand such efforts elsewhere is crucial.

Thousands of 9/11 survivors and victims’ families in Lower Manhattan have fought for more than two decades to hold foreign entities liable for the terrorist attacks — only to find that one of the biggest obstacles is their own government. While successive U.S. administrations have promised closure for victims, critical records remain classified 25 years after 9/11, delaying justice and accountability.

The executive order governing classification, EO 13526, mandates that most historical records must be automatically declassified at 25 years, unless they meet certain strict criteria.

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Pentagon reveals secret space weapons are already in orbit — but won’t say what they do

The U.S. has weapons orbiting Earth that can be used to defend American forces from attacks in space, the Air Force secretary revealed this week in a rare public acknowledgment of capabilities the Pentagon has largely kept secret.

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said Monday that the Space Force now has “on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action,” but declined to say what the weapons are, how they work or when they were deployed.

The carefully worded disclosure marks a shift in how openly the U.S. military talks about weapons in orbit as China and Russia develop their own capabilities to disrupt, disable or destroy satellites.

“Is there any question in the room, by anybody, about whether or not the Chinese or Russians have been developing these sorts of weapons?” Meink told reporters after his remarks at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland — right outside of Washington, D.C.

“For over a decade, we’ve been talking about the fact, and we have expressed concern, that the Chinese and Russians were developing weapons for space,” he continued. “We need to focus on making sure we can protect ourselves operating in that environment.”

Exactly what the U.S. has put into orbit remains a mystery.

The U.S. has previously discussed placing weapons in space, including plans to deploy space-based interceptors capable of destroying incoming missiles as part of President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense system.

But Meink’s disclosure goes a step further: The Space Force already has weapons in orbit for “space control,” a mission aimed at protecting U.S. access to space and, if necessary, denying an adversary the ability to use it.

The Pentagon has historically revealed little about the weapons developed for that mission, with publicly known U.S. counter-space capabilities largely based on the ground.

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Trump Says He Might Release More 9/11 Records

President Donald Trump said on Sept. 13 he might release records related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

“I’m going to look at it when I get back,” he told reporters in Ireland, after being asked about recent requests from families of people who perished in the attacks.

A nephew of Lisa Marie Terry, who was in the North Tower at the World Trade Center when it was struck by one of the planes hijacked by Islamic terrorists, was among those who recently called on Trump to declassify records related to the attacks on the center and the Pentagon.

“For 25 years, the deep state has hidden the truth about what happened that day 25 years ago,” he said during a reading of the names of the victims in New York City on Sept. 11. “President Trump, you are our last hope. Release the unredacted files that implicate Saudi Arabia while what’s left of the victims’ families are still alive to see it.”

Terry Strada, whose husband, Tom Strada, died in the attacks, said during the same event that past administrations have chosen “to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families” and urged Trump to take action.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, according to the FBI. Some of the families have sued Saudi Arabia, alleging it is liable because officials supported Al Qaeda in the time leading up to the attacks.

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CIA officer found with $40 million in gold bars in his basement reaches tentative plea agreement

Federal prosecutors said on Friday that they reached a tentative plea deal with a former CIA officer who was found with more than $40 million in gold bars in the basement of his Virginia home. 

According to U.S. officials, David J. Rush, who was an officer in the agency’s science and technology division, created a false classified program that only a few people were allowed to know about. The program allowed him to accumulate the gold bars. He was arrested on May 19 after FBI agents found 303 gold bars and nearly three dozen luxury watches in his home, the New York Times reported. 

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A court filing seeking an extension of time to file an indictment states that government lawyers and Rush’s attorney told a federal district court in Virginia that a “preindictment resolution promotes the public interest.” Part of the reason, the attorneys explained, is the extensive hurdles that dealing with classified material might create to a trial.

“The parties have made significant progress and have a plea agreement in principle that would resolve the matter prior to an indictment,” the government and defense lawyers wrote in a joint filing to the court.

In a court filing, the lawyers for the government and Rush’s attorney asked the court to give them until Oct. 8 to reach an agreement. 

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How Romania Came To Host A Post-9/11 CIA Black Site & Got US Cash Bonanza

Ammar al-Baluchi remembers the cold most of all. Held nearly naked in a cell lit around the clock by fluorescent bulbs, he referred to his detention “as if I was living in a refrigerator”.

The nephew of self-declared 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Baluchi was one of six to a dozen men believed to be held and tortured in a secret CIA prison in Bucharest between 2003 and 2005. The treatment of detainees at the facility, formally known as “Detention Site Black”, is described in detail in Guantanamo court filings.

Solitary confinement under lights that never switched off, sleep deprivation that at times meant being forced to stand shackled for days, repeated dousing with icy water, and forced shaving and physical handling that interrogators euphemistically logged as “attention grasps” and “facial holds” were common practice.

A photo released by Baluchi’s lawyers to the press in 2024 shows him stripped naked and photographed. It is believed to be the first published image – of tens of thousands – of a “war on terror” detainee in a CIA black site.

“We know they were tortured horrifically,” Ben Keith, a British barrister representing Baluchi outside the US, told Middle East Eye. “It’s not always possible to say which bit of torture took place because they were tortured for days and weeks, but you don’t detain somebody in a black site with the purpose of just talking to them.”

A quarter-century after the 9/11 attacks, which triggered the so-called “war on terror” and devastating US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that directly killed at least 940,000 people, a US military judge has finally set a trial date for Baluchi: 5 June 2028.

Lieutenant Colonel Michael Schrama ruled this month that the case against Mohammed, Baluchi, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi will begin on that date.

Schrama is the fifth military judge to preside over a case that has been trapped for more than a decade in disputes over evidence, national security secrecy and, above all, whether confessions obtained under torture before the men ever reached Guantanamo can be used at trial.

That question runs directly through a basement in Bucharest, where the accused are believed to have been detained and tortured.

In April 2025, a Guantanamo military judge ruled that statements Baluchi gave the FBI in 2007 were involuntary and inadmissible, tainted by what the court called torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment inflicted on him in CIA custody, including in Romania.

The judge found that Guantanamo’s “modestly changed confinement circumstances” had not been enough to remove the “lingering taint” of what happened before he arrived there.

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U.S. Secretly Removed Accused Pedophile Diplomat From Britain: Report

American authorities allegedly removed a U.S. diplomat serving in London from the country in a secret operation after he was accused of possessing child porn.

A report from The Sun — Britain’s top circulation newspaper — has claimed that U.S. secret agents carried out a clandestine operation on UK soil without informing local police, seizing an American diplomat from his London flat, taking him to a U.S. air base, and returning him to the United States.

The diplomat was reportedly under investigation after allegedly receiving indecent images of children from his brother. According to the report, American agents received a court order in the U.S. before carrying out the raid on the diplomat’s apartment in Putney, London, on August 25th. An investigation of the flat is said to have confirmed that the diplomat was in possession of the child pornography in question.

The move to remove the unnamed man back to the United States has riled feathers in London given that American officials have no authority to carry out policing operations in the United Kingdom.

A British government source is quoted by The Sun saying: “They should have told Scotland Yard when they carried out the raid, and certainly when they found material. Instead, we think they have taken him to a US airbase and flown him 4,000-plus miles to where his brother was being investigated. We think it was a dawn raid before they then took him to the base in a US military convoy.

“If there are child-abuse crimes, there are possibly other crimes he could have committed. There are fears the Yanks are trying to keep this in-house and it’s a cover-up. And we now don’t know if we’ll ever get him back to face British justice.”

An American diplomatic source reportedly defended the action, saying that the United States “acted decisively” and that if it had not acted swiftly, “there could have been delays and diplomacy that could have gone on for weeks or months.”

It is not the first time that American officials have avoided the British judicial system for crimes allegedly committed in the UK. London has previously raised the alarm over the case of a U.S. fighter pilot, Captain Jacob Wulfson, who strangled a woman in Cambridge. Rather than facing trial in England, Capt. Wulfson was tried on a U.S. air base.

He was acquitted of sexual assault and aggravated sexual contact, but was found guilty of strangulation, for which he received a six-month sentence. Downing Street said that it was “very concerning” that he avoided prosecution in Britain.

Commenting on the latest report, a U.S. Embassy spokesman said: “We are aware of allegations concerning an individual assigned to the U.S. Embassy in London. The United States government expects all personnel to adhere to the highest standards of conduct, and we take these allegations seriously.

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