Tag: secrecy

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer received email in Greek from consultant to shield it from the public: lawsuit

Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer received a coded email related to her administration’s response to a local water crisis in an apparent attempt to hide the sensitive communication from the public, a lawsuit alleges. 

The email was disguised in Greek alphabet font and sent by Andrew Leavitt, a consultant to Michigan’s energy department, to Whitmer’s senior energy adviser Kara Cook in September of 2021, according to a class action lawsuit filed.

“Hot off the presses. As I warned there are some major red flags. It seems like we are back at square one having not learned from Flint,” reads Leavitt’s decoded email, which was first reported by the Washington Free Beacon on Wednesday after a June court filing in the case. 

Leavitt served as a consultant for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy.

The use of the Greek language and alphabet “appears to be calculated to conceal the statements,” the court filing states, noting that Leavitt “prefaced his grave concerns about the water crises with a reference back to his prior warnings and the State and City Defendants’ failure to learn from the Flint tragedy.“

Since the email was written in Greek, it would not have been included in public records requests for government communications containing words such as “Flint” or “red flags.”

Michigan’s public records department cannot electronically search for material written using the Greek alphabet, the Washington Free Beacon reported. 

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Media Blackout: Black Curtains Go Up In Lahaina Blocking View of Ground Zero Investigation, Clean Up

Footage out of fire-ravaged Lahaina, Hawaii, shows crews have erected an extensive line of black curtains blocking citizens from seeing what’s going on as hundreds of people are still reported missing.

Video courtesy of citizen journalist Geoff Cygnus on TikTok depicts miles of fencing and curtains have been put up alongside Front Street, one of Lahaina’s main highways, obstructing the view of ongoing activities.

“There seems to be a huge emphasis on ensuring that the media and anyone else can’t see what’s going on,” Cygnus reported in a recent video.

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Janet Airlines flies secret jets out of Las Vegas to AREA 51

Here’s an airline you’ll likely never fly on – no matter how much money you have.

Janet Airlines Boeing 737 planes travel to one of the most mysterious and talked-about places on Earth – Area 51, deep in the Nevada desert.

There, the United States government develops its most secretive military technology.

The ultra-secret base is also rumored to host crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft – and even aliens themselves (although cynics claim this provides a useful distraction from exotic aircraft and weapons development that happens there).

But the Janet jets that take workers and government officials there are altogether more nondescript, with the passenger airliners not believed to contain any particularly exciting features. 

Janet – whose letters are rumored to stand for Joint Air Network for Employee Transportation, or Just Another None Existent Terminal – has a fleet of six Boeing 737 jets. 

Its pilots also fly seven smaller Beechcraft propeller planes.

Janet planes making the 87 mile trip from Vegas to Area 51 describe their destination as the mysterious-sounding Station 3. 

Flight trackers show the jets traveling part of the way there, but they turn their transponders off around 12 miles before they reach their final destination, according to journalist Matt Lillywhite. 

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Tracking Orwellian Change – The Aristocratic Takeover of ‘Transparency’

“Transparency” was one of America’s great postwar reforms. In 1955, a Democratic congressman named John Moss from California — who served in the Navy in World War II, was nominated for office by both Democrats and Republicans, and was never defeated in any election for public office — introduced legislation that would become one of the great triumphs of late-stage American democracy.

The Freedom of Information Act took a tortuous path to becoming law, opposed from the start by nearly every major government agency and for years struggling to gain co-sponsors despite broad public support.

In a supreme irony, one of Moss’s first Republican allies was a young Illinois congressman named Donald Rumsfeld. After a series of final tweaks it eventually passed the House 307-0 in 1966, when it landed on the desk of Lyndon Johnson, who didn’t like the bill, either. Johnson signed it, but decided not to hold a public ceremony, electing instead to issue a public statement crafted by none other than Bill Moyers, which concluded, “I signed this measure with a deep sense of pride that the United States is an open society.”

The Freedom of Information Act gave reporters and citizens alike extraordinary power to investigate once-impenetrable executive agencies that conduct the business of government. FOIA requests gave windows into the affairs of the Hoover-led FBI, the Iran-Contra scandal, and the “Afghan logs” story made public after a bitter fight put up by the National Security Archive and the Washington Post. The irony alert here was this last FOIA lawsuit ultimately revealed behaviors unflattering to none other than Donald Rumsfeld.

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The NSA’s Intellipedia Decision: A Precedent for Reduced Transparency?

In a recent development that has raised eyebrows among transparency advocates, the National Security Agency (NSA) has taken a firm stance against the release of information from Intellipedia, the Intelligence Community’s collaborative platform. This decision comes as a stark departure from the agency’s previous protocol, which for over a decade allowed the release of records from this platform under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The Appeal and the NSA’s Response

As first reported by The Black Vault, this issue came to light when a series of FOIA requests were recently closed by the NSA, all seeking information from Intellipedia. The newly found stance produced a “GLOMAR Response” in each case where the agency could “neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of any responsive material contained within the Intellipedia collaborative platform.” However, for more than a decade, The Black Vault received a long list of Intellipedia entries released by the NSA.

There have been 130 appeals submitted by The Black Vault fighting this obfuscation.

The first of these 130 appeals has now had a decision rendered, and it was met with a response that has set a concerning precedent for future requests along with the remaining 129 appeals that are still being processed.

The NSA stated, “Based on my review, the appropriate response in this case is to neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of any responsive material contained within the Intellipedia collaborative platform.”

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Tinker Air Force Base deaths: 17 people dead in 2023, military refuses to reveal causes

An Air Force base in Oklahoma is tight-lipped after 17 people have died since the beginning of 2023, with an advocate for military families saying she’d made inquiries about a possible rash of suicides. 

Officials for the Air Force and the base have refused to reveal the nature of the deaths, saying only that there were ‘various causes.’

DailyMail.com has reached out to the base for an explanation or names of the personnel who have died – but officials did not respond in time for this report. 

A number of the deaths are also still ‘under investigation,’ a spokesperson for the base said. A Military.com investigation suggested that ‘they had been informed of deaths connected to base this year including potential suicides.’ 

It’s not clear how many of the deaths were service members or what their role was at the base, which has over 30,000 personnel on site. 

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National security panel reviewing secretive land buys near key Air Force base

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is probing a secretive company that has been buying up land around a key Air Force base in California, sources familiar with the matter and a California lawmaker told CNN.

The ongoing review by CFIUS, an interagency panel chaired by the Treasury Department that is tasked with examining the national security implications of foreign investments, has not been previously reported.

But it comes as several California congressmen have raised concerns about the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of land bought up in recent years in Solano County, California, by Flannery Associates, a limited liability company registered in Delaware whose owners are publicly unknown.

“They’re right at the fence line with Travis Air Force Base, on three sides of the fence,” Rep. John Garamendi, a California Democrat whose district includes the base, told CNN.

Flannery is not required by Delaware law to disclose its owners. Attorneys representing the company did not return CNN’s requests for comment, but previously told the Wall Street Journal that British and Irish investors make up 3% of the company’s invested capital, with the rest being from US investors. They also denied that Flannery’s purchases were motivated by the proximity to Travis Air Force Base.

A Treasury Department spokesperson said in a statement to CNN that “CFIUS is committed to taking all necessary actions within its authority to safeguard US national security. Consistent with law and practice, CFIUS does not publicly comment on transactions that it may or may not be reviewing.”

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‘We’re Going To Uncover the Cover Up’: House Probes Government Handling of UFOs

“The American public has a right to learn” about UFOs, lawmaker says. A House Oversight subcommittee hearing on Wednesday examined what the government knows about unidentified flying objects, or UFOs.

The hourslong hearing “oscillated between statements of concern about the potential national security threat posed by unknown objects flying close to U.S. military aircraft and more extreme allusions to government conspiracies to hide the existence of alien lifeforms,” reports The Washington Post. More:

“We’re not bringing little green men or flying saucers into the hearing — sorry to disappoint about half y’all,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said. “We’re just going to get to the facts. We’re going to uncover the cover up.”

In response to reported encounters by Navy pilots, the U.S. military and the intelligence community have sought to more closely analyze such incidents. The sightings, including some that are believed to be drones or unmanned craft — like the Chinese surveillance airship shot down in U.S. airspace earlier this year — have fueled concerns that American adversaries could have developed new technologies that pose a threat to U.S. security.

Subcommittee members yesterday called for more transparency from the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies about their findings regarding UFOs—or “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (UAP), the new preferred term.

“The American public has a right to learn about technologies of unknown origins, nonhuman intelligence and unexplainable phenomena,” said Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.).

One of the witnesses yesterday was David Grusch, a former Pentagon employee who worked on the UAP task force and now claims the government is secretly storing downed alien vessels.

“I was informed in the course of my official duties of a multidecade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access,” Grusch claimed again yesterday. He also agreed when asked whether he had “personal knowledge of people who’ve been harmed or injured in efforts to cover up or conceal these extraterrestrial technology.”

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SECRETIVE FEDERAL AGENCY’S DAYS OF KILLING PETS WITH POISON BOMBS MAY FINALLY BE ENDING

PATCHES OF SNOW dotted the ground when Canyon Mansfield stepped outside on March 16, 2017. The hill behind the 14-year-old’s home in Pocatello, Idaho, was not particularly large. At the summit, Mansfield would only be 300 yards from his house, and yet, he treasured the visits.

With its sweeping mountain view, the hill was Canyon’s refuge. His 3-year-old yellow lab, Kasey, was his constant companion there.

The two set off as usual that afternoon. Kasey was thrashing one of his toys when Canyon spotted a sprinkler-like object protruding from the ground. He ran a finger along the device. Suddenly, he heard a pop, and an orange cloud burst forth. Canyon lunged back as the front of his body was doused in chemicals. The burning began immediately.

As Canyon grasped for snow to irrigate his eyes, he heard Kasey grunting near the device. He called to him, but he didn’t come. He stopped what he was doing and ran to him. Dropping to his knees, Canyon watched as Kasey writhed in spasms. Frothing at the mouth, the dog’s eyes turned glossy. The boy didn’t want to leave, but he knew he needed help. He sprinted down the hill for his mother.

Canyon’s father, Mark Mansfield, a family doctor, was at work when the boy called for help. He raced home as fast as he could. Pulling into the property, Mansfield rushed to Kasey and positioned himself above the dog, prepared to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Canyon stopped him. It’s poison, Canyon said.

Kasey was dead, and Canyon’s head was pounding like never before. Toggling between his training as a physician and his horror as a parent, Mansfield struggled to sort out his son’s symptoms from the trauma he’d just experienced. He told Canyon to get into the shower immediately.

While his son cleaned up, Mansfield called the Bannock County Sheriff’s Office. A bomb and hazmat team were dispatched. Longtime Sheriff Lorin Nielsen was at a loss, trying to answer what felt like an absurd question: Who would plant a bomb in Pocatello?

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Whistleblower testifies that US government is ‘absolutely’ in possession of non-human craft

A former Pentagon intelligence official testified Wednesday that he was “absolutely” certain the government had possession of nonhuman craft.

David Grusch, a former Air Force officer, said during a House Oversight Committee hearing that his information was based on interviews with 40 witnesses and that he knew where the material was being held. Grusch added that nonhuman “biologics” were recovered along with the craft.

Grusch initially made the claims last month before adding the information about pilots in a NewsNation interview.

He was an intelligence officer for the Air Force and eventually joined the task force looking into unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP, the military’s preferred term for UFOs.

He said he became a whistleblower in May 2022 after he received a number of concerning reports that the government was acting with secrecy and without congressional oversight with regard to UAP.

A Pentagon spokesperson strenuously denied Grusch’s initial claims, saying they have “not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.”

Grusch said he feared for his life and had faced professional and personal consequences from the government for speaking out, noting there was an ongoing whistleblower retaliation investigation into his treatment.

He said he believed that the government first became aware of nonhuman technology in the 1930s and that there had been a “multi-decade campaign to disenfranchise public interest.”

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