Tag: secrecy

The Intercept Sues to Release 911 Recordings From Trump Rally Shooting

The Intercept filed a lawsuit on Monday to force county officials in Pennsylvania to release 911 recordings from the July rally in which former President Donald Trump was injured in an apparent assassination attempt. Despite the public’s “compelling” interest in these materials, Butler County refuses to hand them over without a court order.

Almost two months after the July 13 shooting, questions remain about the timeline of law enforcement officials’ response and coordination, including when rally attendees first alerted them to the gunman climbing onto a nearby roof. Police from Butler Township released body camera footage showing their frantic real-time response from multiple perspectives.

But Butler County insists that releasing the 911 calls might jeopardize investigations into what happened.

“Simply put, there is no accountability without public access,” said Melissa Bevan Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association. “The county should reverse its denial so that the nation has a better understanding of what happened and can work to prevent similar attacks in the future.” 

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Federal Judge Rules Inmate Death Records Can Remain Secret Because They Could Embarrass Prison Officials

In response to a public records lawsuit filed by the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason, a federal judge has ruled the U.S. government can hide findings about whether people who died in federal prison received adequate medical care, partly out of fear that those records could be used to criticize prison officials.

U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Columbia Christopher R. Cooper issued an opinion in August that the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) was largely not required to disclose redacted information from mortality reviews of in-custody deaths in two federal women’s prisons that have been the subject of numerous accusations of medical neglect.

In addition to finding that the mortality reviews were part of the BOP’s decision-making process, Cooper wrote that the BOP had successfully demonstrated that releasing the records would result in foreseeable harm to the agency. The judge wrote that a declaration from a BOP official credibly established that the mortality reviews could be used to “criticize” or “ridicule” the agency. 

“And, as described above, she notes that the members of the Mortality Review Committee would be ‘deter[red] . . . from acknowledging mistakes’ if they feared those mistakes would be publicized,” Cooper continued.

Reason Foundation, represented by the law office of Deborah Golden, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit last year against the BOP seeking mortality reviews of in-custody deaths at FCI Aliceville, a federal women’s prison in Alabama, and FMC Carswell, a federal prison in Texas that is the only medical center for incarcerated women in the BOP system.

Whenever a federal inmate dies, a committee reviews the circumstances and whether BOP policies were violated. The committee then gives recommendations on how care could have been improved. That information could reveal whether the BOP is aware of medical neglect within its walls and how bad the problem is.

Reason reported in 2020 on allegations of fatal medical neglect inside FCI Aliceville. Numerous current and former inmates, as well as their families, said in interviews, desperate letters, and lawsuits that women inside FCI Aliceville faced disastrous delays in health care. They described monthslong waits for doctor appointments and routine procedures, skepticism and retaliation from staff, and terrible pain and fear.

Seeking to learn more, Reason filed a FOIA request in May 2020 for inmate mortality reviews at FCI Aliceville, as well as FMC Carswell. 

When the BOP finally released mortality reviews from FMC Carswell three years later, it redacted any information that would indicate if there was substandard care, such as the review committee’s findings on the timeliness and appropriateness of care; problems encountered during the medical emergency; whether there was adequate documentation in the patient’s medical files; and whether the patient received appropriate care per the BOP’s policies.

The BOP withheld that information under exemption b(5) of the FOIA, which protects “predecisional” or deliberative communications between officials. The National Security Archive dubbed it the “withhold it because you want to” exemption.

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REVEALED: The northeastern state that won’t tell voters about its ‘secret’ $1 billion spend on migrants

Massachusetts Republicans have demanded the state’s Democratic leaders come clean on their alleged ‘$1 billion in secret migrant crisis spending.’

The Bay State’s GOP filed public records requests asking Gov. Maura Healey’s administration to provide a detailed breakdown of spending on shelters, meals and other costs.

The request comes as Massachusetts scrambles to accommodate the roughly 50,000 non-legal migrants who’ve entered the state since President Joe Biden took office in 2021.

The Boston area has in recent weeks been roiled by outrage, after Stoughton school district cut bus services to local kids but kept them running for young migrants living in shelters.

Against this troubling backdrop, Amy Carnevale, the state’s GOP chairwoman, demanded that Healey come clean about how taxpayer dollars were being spent.

Her ‘administration has shrouded nearly $1 billion spent in secrecy, leaving Massachusetts residents in the dark,’ Carnevale said.

‘They have withheld critical information on 600 incidents involving police, fire, and EMT.’

When reporters asked questions about migrant costs, Healey’s team was ‘blocking them at every turn,’ said Carnevale.

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Secretive SR-72 Hypersonic Aircraft, Successor to Lockheed Martin’s Legendary SR-71, Could Soon Take Flight

In 2013, a feature article appeared on the website of legendary aerospace and defense giant Lockheed Martin that quickly had aviation buffs talking. The piece, titled “Speed is the New Stealth,” claimed that a new hypersonic aircraft was under development at the company’s famous Skunk Works facility, which would soon set a new standard for speed and stealth in American aerospace technologies.

“That’s because today,” the article explained, “engineers are developing a hypersonic aircraft that will go twice the speed of the SR-71.”

“It’s called the SR-72.”

It was a remarkable revelation since 2013 marked nearly 23 years since the fabled SR-71—once the pride of the American stealth reconnaissance arsenal—had been officially retired. The conclusion of the SR-71’s tenure in service resulted from several factors, including maintenance costs amid a shrinking military budget and new vulnerabilities presented by developments in Soviet surface-to-air missile capabilities.

Perhaps the most apparent issue the SR-71 faced was the implementation of newer, less costly, and more effective reconnaissance technologies. Chief among these were satellites that had already proven their resilience in collecting detailed information from the heart of Soviet territory by the final years of the 20th century. Then, in the early 2000s, the CIA began to deploy the first armed Predator drones for missions in Afghanistan, an early showcase for the power and capability of unmanned aerial vehicles as an American military asset in the new millennium.

Amidst such 21st-century realities, by 2013, Lockheed Martin seemed confident that its vision of a new unmanned hypersonic aircraft capable of flight at six times the speed of sound would soon become a reality. Citing cost-saving production methods and recent advancements made with Aerojet Rocketdyne to “integrate an off-the-shelf turbine with a supersonic combustion ramjet air-breathing jet engine to power the aircraft,” the 2013 article seemed to indicate that the forthcoming wonder machine that Aviation Week had already nicknamed the “son of Blackbird” would soon take flight.

The arrival of America’s next formidable stealth plane, in other words, was right around the corner. Yet despite all the buzz the SR-72 announcement generated at the time, the story eventually receded again into the shadows of the highly classified world of black projects.

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Does the Government Classification System Need Reform?

For decades, presidents and their appointees have misused the classification system to conceal waste, fraud, abuse, and even criminal conduct, failing to properly manage classified federal records generally.

That is why a new bipartisan effort to deal with this major executive branch misuse of power is both remarkable and welcome.

The solution offered by Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Gary Peters (D-MI) and senior Senate Judiciary Committee and Select Intelligence Committee member John Cornyn (R-TX) is the Classification Reform for Transparency Act of 2024 (S. 4648). If enacted the bill would, for the first time in U.S. history, prohibit an executive branch official from misusing the federal government’s document classification system to hide various forms of misconduct.

When I testified before Chairman Peters’ committee in March 2023, this was among my top three reform recommendations, and I’m deeply grateful Senators Peters and Cornyn have embraced the overarching idea because it’s been badly needed for literally decades. While there are literally dozens of examples to justify such a change in law, just two from the post-9/11 era should suffice to make the point.

As I’ve testified elsewhere, in the days immediately following Al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on America, then-National Security Agency (NSA) Director General Michael Hayden authorized NSA personnel to intercept all communications between the U.S. and Afghanistan for a 30-day period. There was just one very big problem: under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), Hayden had no lawful, unilateral authority to take such action.

Hayden needed to go to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and get approval for such electronic eavesdropping since it clearly implicated the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans. Instead, he ordered the surveillance anyway and used the classification system to keep his decision from becoming public – a tactic that worked for over four years until the New York Times exposed it in December 2005. That revelation sparked an over two-year battle to make Hayden’s illegal mass surveillance program nominally constitutional (at least in the view of federal courts), which is how we got the controversial and still serially-violated 2008 FISA Amendments Act.

The second example involves Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

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I Investigated UAPs at the Pentagon—Americans Can Handle the Truth

I’m Luis Elizondo, a former senior intelligence official with the United States government. Currently, I continue to provide advice and assistance to the U.S. government while also publicly advocating for increased transparency and disclosure regarding the topic of UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena).

I was never particularly interested in UFOs or science fiction. My background is in science—I graduated from the University of Miami with majors in microbiology and immunology, with studies in parasitology.

The scientific method has always been one of my core tenets. After my time in the Army, I served as a special agent in counterintelligence, investigating terrorism, espionage, and other serious crimes. I’ve always been a fact and rule-based person.

Early in my career, I worked extensively with advanced aerospace technology, ensuring that it didn’t fall into the hands of our adversaries. I dealt with first-stage solid rocket motor booster engines, advanced avionic systems, and other weapon systems, working with major companies that formed the foundation of my career.

In 2008, I took on a new position at the Pentagon, having left my previous role at the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). I accepted the position since it allowed me to spend more time with my family.

My new role involved integrating national intelligence information and making it accessible to local law enforcement, which was challenging because most local law enforcement agencies don’t have security clearances. After 9/11, it became clear that there had to be a way to share critical information with local agencies without compromising security.

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Tapes confirm The Dossier’s reporting on President Biden’s Las Vegas medical emergency that preceded his departure from Dem nomination

Thanks to the great FOIA work of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, we now have the audio tapes that confirm The Dossier’s exclusive reporting on President Biden’s undisclosed medical emergency that took place during his July 15-17 trip to Las Vegas, Nevada.

The audio from the Las Vegas Metro Police Department’s protective detail for President Biden on July 17 provides stunning detail about the mystery incident, which occurred that afternoon following a campaign stop at a Mexican restaurant.

Jennifer Van Laar, who also reported on the incident, verifying with independent police sources (shortly after The Dossier published our report), published the tapes over at Red State.

“For everyone on the radio, right now POTUS is 421 . He's being seen so we're just kinda waiting to see how this is shaping out,” one of the dispatchers said over police radio. “So, for everybody's knowledge, he's 421 right now. We're just trying to figure out what's going on, and we're gonna go from there.”

Another dispatcher announced over the police radio that “Secret Service is requesting a code 3 response.”

In emergency response terminology, code 3 indicates a critical and urgent situation requiring an immediate response and the use of lights and sirens.

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UK MoD sent two intelligence officials to classified Pentagon UFO summit

Two British intelligence officials were sent to a classified international summit about UFOs at the Pentagon, it has emerged, despite the UK Ministry of Defence claiming to have had no interest in the subject since 2009.

The UFO community are convinced that world governments know more than they are letting on about the existence of aliens while governments have taken an interest in examining the phenomenon of UFOs after several unexplained sightings.

On Tuesday Express.co.uk reported that the MOD branded an earlier study by the British military into the potential existence of alien life from UFOs reportedly seen across the country, including by its pilots, a waste of taxpayer’s cash.

The spokeswoman said: “In over 50 years, no sightings of extra-terrestrial intelligence, Unidentified Flying Objects and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena reported to us indicated the existence of any military threat to the United Kingdom.

“It remains more valuable to prioritise MOD resources towards other Defence-related activities. In 2009 the MOD UFO desk was closed because it served no defence purpose and was taking staff away from more valuable defence-related activities.

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Court Rules That the Government Can Hide Its Own Report on CIA Torture

The government investigated itself—and you’re not allowed to see the results. On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) doesn’t apply to the Senate’s 2012 report on CIA torture programs. The decision blocks off an avenue to find out what’s in the 6,700-page paper, which the CIA has fought to keep under wraps for more than a decade.

The ruling comes after a small victory for transparency. On Friday, defense lawyers at the Guantanamo Bay military tribunal were allowed to release a photo of their defendant handcuffed and nude at a CIA black site in 2004. Defense lawyers have mentioned the existence of disturbing photos from black sites, but because almost all evidence at the Guantanamo trials is classified, they have never been able to release these photos to the public.

Over the weekend, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin canceled military prosecutors’ controversial plea deal for three accused Al Qaeda members. Their cases may go to trial—which would allow lawyers to uncover more evidence related to the CIA torture program.

The Senate investigation had been prompted by past CIA attempts to cover its tracks. After learning that the CIA had destroyed tapes of prisoners being tortured, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence began an investigation into the CIA’s entire interrogation program. (CIA officer Gina Haspel, who helped destroy the tapes and had personally watched torture sessions, later became CIA director during the Trump administration.)

By 2012, staffers had dug up reams of evidence on CIA malfeasance. They reported not only the specific torture methods, but also that the CIA had tortured innocent people (including a mentally challenged man and two of the agency’s own informants), that CIA leaders had lied to the public and Congress about the program, and that much of the intelligence gained under torture was useless or worse.

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SURPRISE! FBI Declassifies 950 Pages on Suspected Fed Front Group Patriot Front – Nearly Every Page Is FULLY REDACTED

The FBI declassified two packages of documents on the suspected federal front group Patriot Front on Monday.

** The Patriot Front Part 01 document release included 586 pages.
** The Patriot Front Part 02 document release included 364 pages.

After reviewing the documents The Gateway Pundit reporter Anthony Townley found that nearly every page is fully redacted.

The Gateway Pundit has reported on this suspect federal front group numerous times over the past three years.

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