Exactly 70 years ago today, President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff — and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Sixteen years later — just one month after the Kennedy assassination — Truman published a bombshell in The Washington Post: “I have never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak-and-dagger operations… It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of Government… so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue.”

When it comes to behind-the-scenes intrigue, no one could out-sinister Allen Dulles, director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961. Dulles’s job, simply put, was to hijack the US government — for the benefit of the wealthy.

What he did, and how he did it, has never been more relevant, given the state of the nation in 2017. That’s why we are excerpting some revelatory chapters from David Talbot’s recent Dulles biography, “The Devil’s Chessboard.”

https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/07/26/devils-chessboard-allen-dulles-cia-rise-american-secret-government/

Secret FBI information about who funded the 9/11 attacks will remain hidden indefinitely after a Miami federal judge reversed herself last week and decided that the FBI was not improperly withholding it from the public.

At the same time, Judge Cecilia Altonaga ruled out holding a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) trial to evaluate the need for such continued secrecy nearly 16 years after the 9/11 attacks. A trial would likely have included testimony from government witnesses in support of continued secrecy as well as others like Bob Graham, the former Florida senator who co-chaired Congress’s Joint Inquiry into 9/11 and believes the FBI documents should be made public.

http://www.floridabulldog.org/2017/07/miami-judge-rules-out-foia-trial/

http://911blogger.com/news/2017-07-17/fl-judge-rules-out-foia-trial-911-funding

The Pentagon conducted a series of secret chemical and biological weapons tests involving military personnel in the 1960s and 1970s. Veterans groups and members of Congress are demanding to know exactly what happened – and who has suffered.

The tests, known as Project 112 and SHAD (Shipboard Hazard and Defense) involved some 6,000 military personnel between 1962 and 1974, the Vietnam War era. Most served in the Navy and Army. The purpose was to identify any weaknesses to U.S. ships and troops and develop a response plan for a chemical attack.

The tests involved nerve agents like Sarin and Vx, and bacteria such as E. Coli. Sarin and Vx are both lethal. According to DOD documents, death can occur within 10 to 15 minutes of exposure to a fatal dose of Vx.

“Veterans were exposed to some of the most extreme and hazardous agents... and they now suffer from debilitating health care conditions,” said Ken Wiseman, senior vice commander of the Virginia branch of The Veterans of Foreign Wars, one of the nation’s largest veterans groups, at a press conference outside the Capitol Wednesday. They want to know more about the extent to which service personnel were exposed.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to request for comment.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/mcclatchys-america/article160998169.html

Sixteen years is a long time to expect the American public to wait to know who was behind 9/11, the most significant act of terror in modern U.S. history. Unfortunately, the wait continues because of the resistance of federal agencies to openness, the over-classification of information and the weakness of the Freedom of Information Act.

Vast numbers of investigative and intelligence documents related to 9/11 remain classified. The FBI alone has acknowledged it has tens of thousands of pages of 9/11 reports that it refuses to make public. To make matters worse, agencies withholding information tell what are essentially lies to make their actions seem as acceptable as possible.

For example, the FBI repeatedly has said its investigation of a Saudi family who moved abruptly out of their Sarasota home two weeks before 9/11 — leaving behind their cars, clothes, furniture and other belongings — found no connections to the attacks. Yet statements in the FBI's own files that were never disclosed to Congress or the 9/11 Commission say the opposite — that the Sarasota Saudis had "many connections" to "individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001."

http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/column-sixteen-years-after-911-the-american-public-deserves-answers-not/2329923

http://911blogger.com/news/2017-07-10/sixteen-years-after-911-american-public-deserves-answers-not-secrecy

Known as the Next Generation Identification system, since 2014 the FBI has amassed more than 50 million images scoured from facial recognition alone; and, as reported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the images have merged into the FBI’s legacy database of fingerprints and other identifiers to create a centralized hub of surveillance.

The FBI has admitted that the system contains non-criminal identification as well as criminal, including:

suspects and detainees,
fingerprints for job applicants
licenses
military or volunteer service
background checks
security clearances
naturalization
All told, it’s been estimated that half of all adult Americans appear in a biometric database.

Despite what is clearly a sweeping program of surveillance and a violation of numerous Amendments to the Constitution, the FBI has resisted all inquiries made by privacy organizations and even the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

http://www.activistpost.com/2017/06/fbi-secrecy-privacy-org-urges-congress-address-biometric-database.html

https://epic.org/testimony/congress/EPIC-HAC-FBI-budget-June2017.pdf

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the assault on the USS Liberty, and though it was among the worst attacks in history against a non-combatant U.S. naval vessel, the tragedy remains shrouded in secrecy. The question of if and when Israeli forces became aware they were killing Americans has proved a point of particular contention in the on-again, off-again public debate that has simmered over the last half a century. The Navy Court of Inquiry’s investigation proceedings following the incident were held in closed sessions, and the survivors who had been on board received gag orders forbidding them to ever talk about what they endured that day.

Now, half a century later, The Intercept is publishing two classified documents provided in the cache of files leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden related to the attack and its aftermath. They reveal previously unknown involvement by Government Communications Headquarters, the U.K. signals intelligence agency; internal NSA communications that seem to bolster a signals-intelligence analyst’s account of the incident, which framed it as an accident; as well as a Hebrew transliteration system unique to the NSA that was in use at least as recently as 2006.

The first document, a formerly unreleased NSA classification guide, details which elements of the incident the agency still regarded as secret as of 2006. The second lists a series of unauthorized Signals Intelligence disclosures that “have had a detrimental effect on our ability to produce intelligence against terrorist targets and other targets of national concern.” Remarkably, information relevant to the attack on the Liberty falls within this highly secret category.

Though neither document reveals conclusive information about the causes of the assault, both highlight that at the time of their publication—approximately four decades after the incident—the NSA was determined to keep even seemingly minor details about the attack classified. The agency declined to comment for this article.

https://theintercept.com/2017/06/06/fifty-years-later-nsa-keeps-details-of-israels-uss-liberty-attack-secret/

Six years ago, a deputy commanding general for U.S. Army Special Operations Command gave a conservative estimate of 116 missions being carried out at any one time by Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and other special operations forces across the globe.

Today, according to U.S. military documents obtained by VICE News, special operators are carrying out nearly 100 missions at any given time — in Africa alone. It’s the latest sign of the military’s quiet but ever-expanding presence on the continent, one that represents the most dramatic growth in the deployment of America’s elite troops to any region of the globe.

In 2006, just 1 percent of all U.S. commandos deployed overseas were in Africa. In 2010, it was 3 percent. By 2016, that number had jumped to more than 17 percent. In fact, according to data supplied by U.S. Special Operations Command, there are now more special operations personnel devoted to Africa than anywhere except the Middle East — 1,700 people spread out across 20 countries dedicated to assisting the U.S. military’s African partners in their fight against terrorism and extremism.

https://news.vice.com/story/the-u-s-is-waging-a-massive-shadow-war-in-africa-exclusive-documents-reveal

The X-37B mission is managed by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, a unit inside the Air Force that specializes in developing aircraft technology. It grew out of a project at NASA in 1998 aimed at reducing the cost of space transportation, It was transferred to the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, in 2004, where it became instantly classified. The X in front of the program’s name means the spacecraft is a member of a long line of planes and rockets the U.S. has developed for experimental purposes, usually with a good amount of secrecy. The X-37B, built by Boeing, borrowed its aerodynamic design from the NASA space shuttles that ferried astronauts to and from space for 30 years, but it uses a different kind of heat shield. The X-37B weighs about 11,000 pounds at launch and has a wingspan of 14 feet. It can spend 270 days or more in orbit, and is launched into space aboard an Atlas V rocket.

The Air Force only made public two tests involved in this latest mission: an electric-propulsion device that could allow spacecraft to carry heavier payloads and a NASA experiment aimed at exposing 100 different kinds of materials samples to microgravity. This is where official information from the Air Force usually stops, and the speculation begins. Some in the military-space community believe the military might be tinkering with advanced surveillance sensors, or testing the electric-propulsion devices, known as thrusters, so it can put future reconnaissance satellites in lower orbits, where they can better see targets on the ground. Others say the military wants to use the spaceplane as a weapon capable of approaching other satellites to observe them and, perhaps, interfere.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/why-so-secretive/525969/

(ANTIWAR.COM) The United States has been discovered to have established a military base in al-Wigh, an oasis in southernmost Libya, was Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documentation going back as far as 2015 on its establishment and operation.

This is significant because the base’s existence was never announced to the public, and AFRICOM documents still don’t reveal the exact status and size fo the base. It is officially a “non-permanent” base, which appears to be how they managed to keep it a secret.

http://theantimedia.org/us-military-base-southern-libya/

Daniel Franey’s case is part of a larger trend of law enforcement agencies using confidential informants to manufacture crimes which otherwise may not have taken place. The FBI is typically at the forefront of such cases, even using confidential informants to lure underage and mentally ill Muslims into initiating terrorist plots. According to George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, of the 104 Islamic State-related arrests in the past four years, at least 58 are the result of “the use of confidential informants or undercover stings.”

But the use of confidential informants by the FBI goes far beyond manufacturing criminal plots. In recent years, the FBI has sought to infiltrate mosques and Muslim student associations to look for young Yemenis to serve as informants. During the Keystone XL protests, it breached Department of Justice (DOJ) rules requiring prior approval before the agency can cultivate informants. At least one former informant has said that FBI agents asked him to have sex with Muslim women in order to gather “pillow-talk intelligence.” According to official records, the agency also authorized its informants to break the law 22,800 times over a four year period.

https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/apr/27/confidential-informants/

The unmarked 18-wheelers ply the nation’s interstates and two-lane highways, logging 3 million miles a year hauling the most lethal cargo there is: nuclear bombs.

The covert fleet, which shuttles warheads from missile silos, bomber bases and submarine docks to nuclear weapons labs across the country, is operated by the Office of Secure Transportation, a troubled agency within the U.S. Department of Energy so cloaked in secrecy that few people outside the government know it exists.

The $237-million-a-year agency operates a fleet of 42 tractor-trailers, staffed by highly armed couriers, many of them veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, responsible for making sure nuclear weapons and components pass through foggy mountain passes and urban traffic jams without incident.

The transportation office is about to become more crucial than ever as the U.S. embarks on a $1-trillion upgrade of the nuclear arsenal that will require thousands of additional warhead shipments over the next 15 years.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-nuclear-couriers-20170310-story.html

The Trump administration has invoked executive powers in a bid to block the testimony of several top C.I.A. officials in a federal lawsuit against two psychologists who helped run the agency’s harsh interrogation program, along with portions of 172 internal agency documents.

Hoping to prevent the officials, including Gina Haspel, the agency’s new deputy director, from being forced to testify, the administration is using the state secrets privilege, which means the executive branch is asking the judge in the case to keep information out of court by asserting that its disclosure would damage national security.

The government rarely tries to use the extraordinary power, and this is among the first assertions of it by the Trump administration. At an earlier phase of the case in Federal District Court in Spokane, Wash., the Obama administration did not invoke the privilege — although in court filings last year, it did leave the door open to doing so at a later stage.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/us/justice-department-cia-psychologists-interrogation-program.html?_r=0

Secrets, secrets are no fun; that is, of course, unless you are one of the 26 members of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC). Earlier this week, the Senate began debating the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the colossal $602 billion defense authorization bill shaping issues as divisive as the closing of Guantanamo, the Iran nuclear deal, and US-Cuba relations. Once again, SASC has usurped the democratic process by holding the markup of the bill behind closed doors.

At a time when Congress’s approval ratings remain below 20 percent and Americans feel their government accomplishes nothing, it is confounding that SASC would withhold discussion of a bill that authorizes more than half of the federal government’s discretionary spending. Open markups provide, not only the ability to ensure proper accountability, but also the opportunity to demonstrate the consideration and deliberation required when drafting such a massive bill.

SASC subcommittee chairs are able to hold their individual markups in open or closed sessions; however, discussion of the bill markups occurs in closed executive sessions. SASC members, when justifying the need for the closed sessions, argue that the burden of shifting between open and classified sessions is too cumbersome. In addition to the evident disregard this argument demonstrates towards taxpayers, the argument about inconvenience seems exaggerated in light of the fact that the Committee has successfully held partially open sessions in the past.

http://www.pogo.org/blog/2016/06/ndaa-markups-continue-under-a-veil-of-secrecy.html

The American public's fascination with Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs, was very much the result of an atmosphere of conspiracy and secrecy which flourished during the Cold War, according to Greg Eghigian, associate professor of history at Penn State University. When the Cold War abated, so too did interest in the phenomenon, Eghigian says.

sputniknews.com 2-19-16

In a fascinating academic paper, which has since made the rounds of conspiracy theory sites and serious news outlets alike, Professor Eghigian laid out a history of ufology, an area of study rife with speculation and conspiracy theories, and its tempestuous relationship with mainstream science, which did not trust ufologists, or their attempts to explain the unknown using the (limited) tools at their disposal.

Speaking to Sputnik about his paper, the professor explained that the American public's interest in UFOs was very much a product of the Cold War atmosphere in which it was born. [...]
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President Gerald Ford secretly authorized the use of warrantless domestic wiretaps for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes soon after coming into office, according to a declassified document.

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The state secrets privilege comes into play when the government asserts to a judge that letting a particular case go forward would inevitably result in the disclosure of information that would compromise national security.

But the privilege, which was established by a 1953 Supreme Court case, is premised on a lie -- literally. That 1953 case involved the widows of three civilian engineers who died in a military airplane crash and sued the government for negligence. The government refused to turn over records, citing national security. But some 50 years later, when the records in question were made public, there were no national security secrets in them, just embarrassing information establishing the government's negligence.

Since then, the way the state secrets privilege has typically worked is that when the government refuses to publicly disclose a specific item of information, it explains why to the judge.

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The Obama DOJ took the imperial and hubristic position that the court had no right whatsoever to rule on the legality of the program because (a) plaintiffs could not prove they were subjected to the secret eavesdropping (and thus lacked "standing" to sue) and (b) the NSA program was such a vital "state secret" that courts were barred from adjudicating its legality.

Those were the arguments that Judge Walker scathingly rejected. All of the court's condemnations of the DOJ's pretense to imperial power were directed at the Obama DOJ's "state secrets" argument . From the start, the Obama DOJ has engaged in one extraordinary maneuver after the next to shield this criminal surveillance program from judicial scrutiny.

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The National Security Agency broke the law when it wiretapped two American lawyers working for the El-Haramain Charity Foundation, an judge ruled Wednesday.

The government has not decided whether to appeal this long-awaited decision, as it touches on subjects ranging from the state secrets privilege to the breadth of President Bush's "Terrorist Surveillance Program."

The ruling is a major symbolic victory for civil libertarians, although its effects on future cases will be limited, and no more information about the program will be disclosed. El-Haramain v. Obama has bounced back and forth from District Court Judge Vaughn Walker, the chief judge for federal courts in Northern California, to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected a government motion to dismiss it entirely. Another important victory for civil libertarians: Vaughn held that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act should be given more weight than the state secrets privilege.

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Pope Benedict XVI's unprecedented letter to Ireland apologizing for chronic child abuse within the Catholic Church has failed to calm the anger of many victims, who accused the Vatican of ducking its own responsibility in promoting a worldwide culture of coverup.

Benedict's message Saturday - the product of weeks of consultation with Irish bishops, who read it aloud at Masses across this predominantly Catholic nation - rebuked Ireland's church leaders for "grave errors of judgment" in failing to observe the church's secretive canon laws.

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