Down the Memory Holes

What always makes me laugh, in a bitter and angry way, is how supporters of the Bush administration defend every intrusion of privacy, from the PATRIOT Act to warrantless NSA spying on Americans, with the canard that it’s ok because they’ve got “nothing to hide”.

Yet the Bush administration has been hiding things and it all started way before 9/11, so that tired old cliche about the attacks “changing everything” does not apply.
In Chapter 4 of George Orwell’s epic 1984, the main character, Winston, worked in the Ministry of Truth in a department which altered the past by destroying unpleasant records:

In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston’s arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes.

There have been many documents fed into the “memory holes” since Bush came into office:

• Instead of keeping the records of his term as Texas governor in the state archives, Bush sent them to his father’s presidential library.  Texas law says they are subject to FOIA requests but the librarians there said they “could not be expected to comply” with such a law.  It took a lawsuit for them to respond to FOIA requests.
• Despite saying that Bush’s entire military records had been released to the public, no documents exist on what “service” he was performing for the military in 1973.  Furthermore, it took a lawsuit to most of the records on Bush, which the DoD earlier said were “destroyed” but later admitted it did not find them due to “an oversight”.
• Bush wrote an executive order to withhold previous president’s records unless someone showed a demonstrated, specific need to see them.  Previously all presidential papers were releasd to the public after 12 years.  This blocked some 68,000 pages of records from Ronald Reagan’s presidency which officials at the Reagan library had wanted to make public.  Bush’s justification came from a legal loophole found by his trusty counselor, Alberto Gonzales.
• Attorney General Ashcroft wrote a memo to not release ANY government records under FOIA unless a “full and deliberate consideration” of the records was performed, vastly slowing down and reducing the number of records released.  The previous policy had been for the government to have the burden to prove why FOIA documents shouldn’t be released.
• Many documents which were unclassified (and were never classified) were removed from the internet, incuding items such as the U.S. Army Weapons System Handbook.
• The Center for Disease Control removed information about condoms and their effectiveness against HIV transmission, replacing it with info saying that the data was “hard to assess”.
• The Department of Health and Human Services removed a section of its website which dealt with prevention and treatment of substance abuse for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.
• The government has gone to court many times to keep the records of VP Cheney’s Energy Task Force secret.
• The Department of Justice withdrew a press release about a DOJ report that showed racial profiling was prevalent in law enforcement departments around the country and issued the report without that analysis.
• The government removed information from websites about the illegality of sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace, using a twisted legal interpretation to say it is only illegal to discriminate against homosexual behavior (therefore it is legal to discriminate against actually being homosexual).
• The National Institutes of Health removed information from their cancer website showing scientific findings that abortions do not increase the risk of breast cancer.
• The Fish and Game Department’s website removed information that showed drilling for oil in Alaska’s National Wildlife Refuge (ANWAR) would destroy, disrupt, diminish and damage the environment.  The website also removed information about the migration of caribou and fired the scientist who compiled and posted the info.
• The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has removedinformation to data on the safety records of automobile tires, which all manufacturers are required to report.
• The EPA removed a scientific study it itself commission removed a report which showed that mercury pollution is very dangerous, which would have required it to implement more stringent environmental controls.
• The EPA has suppressed the Toxic Chemical Release Inventory report, which it now only issues every two years instead of annually.
• The Department of Labor has removed nearly all statistics from its Women’s Bureau websites, including information about the earning differences between men and women.
• The EPA has removed its Risk Management Plans, which showed where chemical hazards were located around the United States.
• A NASA scientist, James Hansen, who had previously lead the agency’s investigation into global warming had his findings censored.
• In a separate (and earlier) case, internal EPA memos confirm how the Bush administration has suppressed other scientific information that confirms global warming.
• The Bush administration refused to release a report showing links between Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 hijackers on national security grounds.
• The CDC removed information from its website of scientific studies that showed condom use did not lead to earlier or increased sexual activity.
• Bush wrote an executive order to block the Congress from subpoening information about abuses in the Boston FBI department.
• The White House has issued a memo (via Andrew Card), later expanded by an executive order, to pressure agencies not to release Sensitive but Unclassified (SBU) information.  Example here.  Why this matters here.
• Between 2001-2003, documents were classified at a 50% higher rate than the last 5 years of the Clinton administration.
• Bush granted the ability to “top secret” classify to several departments for the first time, including the Department of Agriculture and Health and Human Services.
• The Department of Defense removed a report from its website which was critical of its missile defense system.
• The White House has removed documents from its own website, including Bush saying he was “not that concerned” about Osama bin Laden.
• The Department of Energy removed its PubSCIENCE service, which allowed users to search for scholarly papers in academic journals.
• The government, especially the CIA, began a large-scale project to reclassify many documents which had long been declassified and often published elsewhere, and only because an alert researcher discovered this was the project discovered.  Among the reclassified documents was a 1948 CIA report about a riot in Colombia.
• The Department of the Treasury removed information written by John M. Fitzgerald (later fired and then protected by whistleblower laws) in a report to Congress which showed a lack of environmental reviews and poor planning for environmental disasters in USAID projects overseas.
• The Department of the Interior has refused to provide information on how much oil and gas private companies are extracting from public land in the USA.
• The Department of Defense telephone directory, available for sale to the public until 2001, is now for official use only and the public cannot buy it.
• The Department of Energy’s intelligence budget, which was unclassified until 2004, is now classified.
• The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency has ceased all access to aeronautical maps and safety data which had been previously public.
• The Department of Education removed more than 1 gigabyte of records and statistics published before 2001 which contradicted Bush education policy.
• The Pentagon issued a memo to defense contractors asking them to be “guarded” in all public statements about the contracts they have been awarded.  The contractors were later ordered not to discuss their contracts with the media.
• The Department of Justice ruled that the press and public could not attend immigration hearings for people rounded up after 9/11.
• The Department of Energy removed information from its website which showed information about the transportation of hazardous materials.
• The Department of Defense has removed public access to its database of routine policies and procedures, which were previously unclassified.
• The true cost of the post-invasion search for WMD in Iraq, estimated at over 600 million dollars, is itself classified.
• In 2003, Bush issued an executive order which delays the automatic declassification fo government documents 25 years old or older.
• The Bureau of Land Management removed information from its website concerning an Inspector General’s report that the Indian Trust fund was not adequately protected.
• The FAA removed its EIS database, which included statistics about aviation accidents and incidents.

For even more information removed and/or protected, see here.

In 2004, Representative Henry Waxman issued a 90-page report on secrecy in the Bush administration, which you can find here.  Definitely worth reading.

Meanwhile it is legal for the government to do the following, without a warrant:

Access your library records without telling you, maintain your credit card information in multiple databases, add your name to a “No Fly” list without telling you why or giving you a manner in which to have your name removed, wiretap your phone, do a “pen register” on your phone (record all the numbers you dial or numbers which dialed you), conduct a physical search of your home without informing you, open and read your mail, spy on you if you’re conducting a protest, add your name to one of dozens of “terrorist” databases, infiltrate your peaceful anti-war group with undercover agents, flag you for extra screening hassles on commercial airline flights, get all of your commercial records (including bank records) simply by writing a National Security Letter, read, track and intercept all of your internet use, add your DNA to a federal database if you’ve ever been arrested (even if you were later found not guilty) and maintain “total information awareness” databases on you, despite the fact that they were outlawed by Congress (they simply changed the name to TOPSAIL).

Have a Doubleplusgood Day!

Crossposted from the ungood crimethink website Flogging the Simian

Peace