Tag: secrecy

Whistleblower says governor’s office illegally altered, withheld records related to podium purchase

An anonymous former state employee came forward Friday claiming to have evidence that the Arkansas governor’s office doctored documents and unlawfully withheld financial records that should have been made public under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.

Attorney Tom Mars, who is representing the whistleblower, sent a letter today to Sen. Jimmy Hickey (R-Texarkana) offering to have his client speak to auditors. Hickey yesterday requested that Legislative Audit, a nonpartisan agency independent from the executive branch, look into what’s come to be known as “podiumgate.”

The controversy concerns the $19,000 purchase of a lectern (or podium) by the governor’s office from an out-of-state events company earlier this year, as well as Gov. Sarah Sanders’ successful efforts to newly block access to certain governmental records.

Sanders recently pushed the state legislature to write a new exemption into the Arkansas FOIA in an attempt to prevent Matt Campbell, the Little Rock lawyer behind the Blue Hog Report blog, from accessing those records. Campbell’s FOIA requests uncovered the lectern purchase to begin with.

In the letter, Mars said his client can prove that someone in Sanders’ office altered documents that Campbell had requested through the Arkansas FOIA and that Sanders’ office pressured another government agency to withhold from the public documents that should have been made available.

His client is willing to give a statement to legislative auditors under oath, Mars said, and can provide documents for them to review.

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I worked construction on New York City’s mysterious windowless building – here’s what I saw

Nestled in the heart of lower Manhattan, the mysterious 33 Thomas Street, commonly known as the ‘Windowless Building’, has remained shrouded in secrecy for decades. 

This formidable skyscraper, devoid of windows and rising 550 feet into the skyline, has puzzled New Yorkers and intrigued passersby since its completion in 1974. 

Often regarded as one of the city’s oddest buildings, its true purpose has long been a subject of intrigue and speculation.

One man, who chose to remain anonymous for safety reasons, worked as a steamfitter – someone responsible for installing wiring and pipes carrying liquids and gases under high pressure – in the building with his son back in the early 2000’s. 

His son told Dailymail.com his father and crew were strictly forbidden to enter certain rooms in the building. There were off-limit areas of the building that were restricted for all visitors. No one was allowed to enter. 

‘There were rooms we couldn’t get into. They specifically told us not to enter, and we couldn’t ask what’s inside or why we can’t go in,’ he said.  

The crew ultimately ended up having to install wires around the rooms, an unprecedented move in the field of steam fitting.  

Additionally, the crew once found what appeared to be confidential papers in a filing cabinet in the basement of the building. 

The classified information was regarding what to do with machines in case of a radiation attack. 

Since being built the windowless building functioned as AT&T’s long-distance telephone exchange until 1999, when the company moved elsewhere. 

Today, the windowless skyscraper is still sometimes used for its original purpose of telephone switching by some local exchange carriers.

Other areas of the building are reportedly used as a high security datacenter. 

It’s now more commonly known as 33 Thomas Street, rather than the AT&T building or the Long Lines Building. 

Constructed under a cloak of secrecy, 33 Thomas Street was designed to withstand an atomic blast, according to an exclusive report about the building by The Intercept in 2016. 

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Liberal government called on to release still-secret documents on Nazi war criminals living in Canada

A Jewish advocacy group is calling on the Liberal government to release a still-secret 40-year-old report and other documents containing details about alleged Nazi war criminals living in Canada.

The federal government has withheld a second part of a 1986 government commission report about Nazis who settled in Canada. In addition, it has heavily censored another 1986 report examining how Nazis were able to get into Canada. More than 600 pages of that document, obtained by this newspaper and other organizations through the Access to Information law, have been censored.

David Matas, the honorary counsel for B’nai Brith, said the Jewish advocacy organization was also pushing for the release of RCMP and Department of Justice files on alleged Nazi war criminals in Canada. “We’ve run up against a brick wall,” he said of the government’s decision to continue withholding the records.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Wednesday that the government could take another look at whether the records should be released. “Canada has a really dark history with Nazis in Canada,” Miller said as he headed into the weekly Liberal caucus meeting.

“There was a point in our history where it was easier to get in as a Nazi than it was as a Jewish person. I think that’s a history we have to reconcile.”

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ALONE IN THE WORLD?

The recordings captured from US Air Force planes last a mere 1.17 minutes — just long enough to spark mass international reaction. In the first video, against a backdrop of cloud contours, a bright white oval figure streaks across the sky.

“Oh, my gosh!” exclaims one of the pilots.

“They are going against the wind!” chimes in the second, “and the wind is 120 knots to the west!”

“Look at that thing, dude!” insists the first one.

Suddenly, the object starts to rotate. The pilot can’t contain his amazement.

“Look at that thing! It’s rotating!” Cut.

In the second video, the camera is pointed downward, with the sea as the backdrop. The radar pinpoints an object moving at such astonishing speed that it eludes tracking. The first two attempts are unsuccessful. On the third try, the radar locks onto it.

“Whoa! We got it!” exclaims the pilot.

The military personnel are all excitement: “Woo-hoo!” one cheers.

“Oh, my gosh, dude!” exclaims the first.

“Wow! Look at it fly!” Cut.

In the third video, a small object picked up by the radar remains static for a few moments before vanishing abruptly. Cut.

These images were never meant to go public. In fact, they gathered dust in the Pentagon’s archives for several years until Christopher Mellon, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, and later for Security and Information Operations, leaked them to the press. Since 2017, Mellon has been working to discover the truth about unidentified aerial phenomena, or what are commonly known as UFOs, or what the US government now calls UAPs — unidentified anomalous phenomenon.

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FBI refuses to release documents in probe into possible nationwide voter registration fraud

The FBI took over a 2020 probe into voter registration fraud that began in Michigan but has denied a Freedom of Information Act request regarding the investigation, citing an exemption in that law regarding ongoing investigations.

According to the dozens of pages of police reports from the Muskegon Police Department and Michigan State Police, a firm called GBI Strategies was under scrutiny as an organization central to alleged voter registration fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The matter was initially investigated by city and state authorities before the FBI took over. 

Contacts between local law enforcement and the FBI continued into 2022 but there is no evidence of what happened after that in the memos obtained by Just the News through requests made under Michigan’s own Freedom of Information Act.

Last week, the FBI denied a Freedom of Information/Privacy Acts request from Just the News regarding records from the investigation into GBI Strategies.

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Is the US government preparing to announce aliens? This is the Senate’s proposed UFO ‘controlled disclosure plan’ and how it would work

The government could be forced to disclose if aliens have visited Earth under new legislation.

The Senate passed an amendment in July that will be part of the National Defense Authorization (NDAA) for 2024.

Known as the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Discloser Act, it says Government agencies with records, samples of craft or ‘biological’ material must hand it over within 300 days.

President Joe Biden will have 90 days to appoint a nine-person Review Board responsible for investigating each record and determining if they are considered UAPs that should be disclosed to the public.

Any government agency possessing such records will be required to hand over printed and digital copies to the board, which has 180 days to investigate and 14 days to publish their findings.

The president, however, can vote against disclosing specific evidence if it poses a national threat.

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Police Seek a Radio Silence That Would Mute Critics in the Press

As a freelance journalist many years ago, I was walking the streets of Brooklyn, looking for a juicy story, anything that I could get into print. I was coming up empty. So I did what anyone would do in that situation. I had lunch.

Halfway through my Jamaican jerk chicken, I heard several gunshots, and in a flash, a man ran by the restaurant. I threw my money on the table and headed to the scene. When I got there a bystander pointed me toward the spent shells. I looked around and talked to witnesses. As one young man pontificated to me about poverty and unemployment leading to crime, I noticed that the cops weren’t there yet. But a photographer from the Daily News was.

That was because, like any good crime reporter, he was listening to police radio and responding to 911 calls, hoping to catch fresh crime footage, fires and other colorful photos that editors love. He’s not alone. Journalists around the country do this, as does anyone who is simply interested in cops, firefighters and other emergency services. Police scanners aren’t cheap, but they are readily available at many electronics retailers.

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Lawsuit Over Sex-Trafficked Teen Could Stop Schools From Hiding Kids’ Dysphoria

The mother of a Virginia teen sex-trafficked twice after her school concealed her newly asserted gender identity has filed a groundbreaking lawsuit against school staff and a Maryland public defender who alleged parental “misgendering” and abuse. The complaint was filed Aug. 22 in the Western District of Virginia court on behalf of Michele Blair by the Child and Parental Rights Campaign (CPRC) with support from the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR).

It alleges that the defendants’ actions—first in withholding vital information about the girl’s gender identification and related assault in the boys’ bathroom, then later by falsely alleging abuse to deprive her mother of custody—resulted in the child’s ordeal at the hands of sexual predators not once, but twice. Blair v. Appomattox et al. will set critical precedents in two areas of roiling national debate: parental notification of gender transition in schools and parental custody relating to gender identity.

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The Real Story of the Men in Black: A History of Horror

Make mention of the Men in Black to most people and doing so will likely provoke images of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. After all the trilogy of Men in Black movies were phenomenally successful and brought the subject to a huge, worldwide audience. Outside of Ufology, most people assume that the Men in Black were the creations of Hollywood. This, however, is very wide of the mark: in reality, the movies were based upon a short-lived comic book series that was created by Lowell Cunningham in 1990. Most important of all, the comic-books were based on real-life encounters with the MIB – which date back decades. In fact, in the movies, the characters portrayed by Jones and Smith are known as J and K. There is a good reason for that: they are the initials of the late John Keel, who wrote the acclaimed book, The Mothman Prophecies and who spent a lot of time pursuing MIB encounters, and particularly so in the 1960s and 1970s. In that sense, the producers of the Men in Black movies and comic-books were paying homage to Keel. Now let’s get to the heart of the matter, namely, the real Men in Black; not those of Hollywood. Who are they? Where do they come from? What is their agenda? If there is one thing we can say for sure when it comes to the matter of the MIB, it’s that they are the ultimate Controllers – they threaten, intimidate and terrify those into silence who they visit. Let’s see how the mystery all began.

It was in the early 1950s that a man named Albert Bender created a UFO research group called the International Flying Saucer Bureau. The group was based out of Bender’s home town of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Bender was someone who quickly became enthused by the UFO phenomenon when it kicked off in earnest in the summer of 1947, with Kenneth Arnold’s acclaimed and now-legendary sighting of a squadron of UFOs over the Cascade Mountains. The world was changed and so was Albert Bender. As a result of the establishment of the IFSB, Albert Bender found himself inundated with letters, phone calls and inquiries from people wanting information on the UFO enigma. Bender was pleased to oblige and he created his very own newsletter – Space Review. It was a publication which was regularly filled with worldwide accounts of UFO activity, alien encounters, and sightings of flying saucers. And on the worldwide issue, it’s worth noting that so popular was Bender’s group and magazine, he found himself inundated with letters from all around the planet: communications poured in from the U.K., from Australia, from South America, and even a few from Russia. Bender was on a definitive high: the little journal that he typed up from his attic room in the old house in which he lived, was suddenly a major part of Ufology. It’s most curious, then, that in the latter part of 1953, Bender quickly shot down the International Flying Saucer Bureau, and he ceased the publication of Space Review. Many of Bender’s followers suspected that something was wrong, as in very wrong. They were right on the money, as it happens.

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U.S. HELPED PAKISTAN GET IMF BAILOUT WITH SECRET ARMS DEAL FOR UKRAINE, LEAKED DOCUMENTS REVEAL

SECRET PAKISTANI ARMS sales to the U.S. helped to facilitate a controversial bailout from the International Monetary Fund earlier this year, according to two sources with knowledge of the arrangement, with confirmation from internal Pakistani and American government documents. The arms sales were made for the purpose of supplying the Ukrainian military — marking Pakistani involvement in a conflict it had faced U.S. pressure to take sides on.

The revelation is a window into the kind of behind-the-scenes maneuvering between financial and political elites that rarely is exposed to the public, even as the public pays the price. Harsh structural policy reforms demanded by the IMF as terms for its recent bailout kicked off an ongoing round of protests in the country. Major strikes have taken place throughout Pakistan in recent weeks in response to the measures.

The protests are the latest chapter in a year-and-a-half-long political crisis roiling the country. In April 2022, the Pakistani military, with the encouragement of the U.S., helped organize a no-confidence vote to remove Prime Minister Imran Khan. Ahead of the ouster, State Department diplomats privately expressed anger to their Pakistani counterparts over what they called Pakistan’s “aggressively neutral” stance on the Ukraine war under Khan. They warned of dire consequences if Khan remained in power and promised “all would be forgiven” if he were removed.

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