It’s not something I personally understand wanting, so I can’t say that I can sympathize. Though, like most obsessions, they drive us rather than we drive them. And when something is in control of your life, especially something absent, it’s easy to see how it can go out of control in a hurry.

The difference I can see historically, is that once they have power the reichwingers in particular are just crappy at legislating. And that has as much to do with the agenda that they start with as anything.

I think it’s extremists on either side of the fence – the neo-cons and neo-liberals who want to force their theories and rules on others aside from all reason and reality. Anyone who thinks they can solve all the problems on his or her own has lost touch with humanity. And once that connection is gone, it’s easy to see people as demographics to control rather than individuals with Constitutional Rights.

Of course I think a large part of the problem is too many people. When you have a limited number of resources and a population that is competing for them, you have to decide who gets and who does not. And in that tug o’ war, it’s the people who get the short end of the stick.

Some of the biggest aholes I’ve ever met have been in the Green party – yet once again we’re talking about the ‘extreme’ again aren’t we?

Comment by Ryan Neat — April 12, 2006 @ 9:19 pm

Yeah, you know, I think so. I always go back to that philosophy of ‘All things in moderation’. Though there are always exceptions, it is generally the most sage approach that I’ve come across.

I agree with you. Clinton like many (wo)men who drift to politics definitely was looking for some power in his life. It’s kind of like owning the ‘one ring’ for those who saw lord of the rings. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The difference I can see historically, is that once they have power the reichwingers in particular are just crappy at legislating. And that has as much to do with the agenda that they start with as anything.

Some of the biggest aholes I’ve ever met have been in the Green party – yet once again we’re talking about the ‘extreme’ again aren’t we?

Ironic coming from a Nazi b!tch like yourself who can’t even get a ‘timeline’ for their own personna to add up. Propaganda and whacking people for not towing the Bush party line is your specialty ‘miss bightie’.

And those aren’t ’shots’, they’re ‘adjectives’, something you must have skipped over in that ‘private’ education your mother wasted her money on. What was it, joe’s bait, tackle and school for lonely young girls? I bet you learned lots of valuable skills there suited to your mental capacity. After all, who’s a bigger HO to bush than you are?

“Watching him eat “one of his own” is a frightful sight – what was the name of that last prog Ryan sent to the “time-out corner”? Hmmm… As I recall, the argument descended to his usual sandbox name -calling: “reichwingers”, “traitors”, “moron”, “retard” (a little un-PC??).
Until later….. Comment by mighty Glib”

Ah, we’re back to ‘glib’, the common symptom of sociopaths who ‘think’ they’re being funny. Straightjackets surely come in extra large, you should go get fitted for one.

If you can’t recall the case, are you sure it’s real? After all, you have a habit of posting claims that never pan out – much like Bush and the WMDs. As for PC, you’re the QUEEN of that. After all, what’s more PC than republicans constantly WHINING about the opinions of the left wing getting airtime – and how it hurts their feelings – wah, wah…

There’s never been a bigger bunch of PC crybabies than you and the rest of your christianReich. Which religious holiday is there a war on today – oh that’s right the pagan rights of Easter…

Gene Campbell
Central Florida

Can’t you borrow some new material? This is beyond old, it is seriously pathetic. Stop trying to be funny. You aren’t. It just comes across as incoherent babble.

Until later…..

Comment by mighty aphrodite — April 12, 2006 @ 11:12 am

Dear God I hope not.

Careful, unbelievable, any diversion from the the STRICT “party line” touted by the “progressively sanctimonious” RYanne Goebbels is bitingly (are your shots up to date?) “dispatched”. Watching him eat “one of his own” is a frightful sight – what was the name of that last prog Ryan sent to the “time-out corner”? Hmmm… As I recall, the argument descended to his usual sandbox name -calling: “reichwingers”, “traitors”, “moron”, “retard” (a little un-PC??).

Complete and utter bullshit.

mighty aphrodite, you have comepletely lost it and nobody here believes your bullshit.

The great thing about being progressive is that there is no STRICT party line and you know that. We don’t all agree 100% of the time, but we can spot a troll a mile away.

Until later…..

Comment by Andrew T. — April 12, 2006 @ 8:39 am

You’re awfully presumptive. I am not a Bill Clinton fan. Never said I was. You shouldn’t infer. you’re not good at it.

The Genesis of the Document Reclassification Program

The beginnings of this classified multi-agency historical document reclassification program can be traced back almost eleven years to April 17, 1995, when President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12958 Classified National Security Information. The central provision of E.O. 12958 was the requirement that U.S. government agencies declassify all of their historical records that were 25 years old or older by the end of 1999, except for those documents that fell within certain specified exempt categories of records, such as documents relating to intelligence sources and methods, cryptology, or war plans still in effect. (Note 1)

This declassified intelligence estimate, written only 12 days before Chinese forces crossed into North Korea, said that Chinese intervention in the Korean War was “not probable in 1950.” The document was reclassified in October 2001 despite the fact that the intelligence failure is well known and has been written about extensively.

Some U.S. Government agencies moved rapidly to comply with the terms of E.O. 12958. The State Department and Department of Energy (DOE) were notable in this regard, moving quickly to begin declassifying many of their older historical records. In 1997, the Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy specifically commended the State Department for aggressively declassifying historical documents on U.S. foreign policy and making them available to the public as part of its acclaimed Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series of publications. Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary declassified historical nuclear weapons stockpile figures and other formerly classified information, such as 1.6 million pages of historical records on human radiation experiments. This was an enormous advance in transparency, especially because Secretary O’Leary worked closely with the Russian government in prompting their release of information on the entire series of nuclear tests undertaken by the Soviet Union under strict secrecy during the Cold War. Secretary O’Leary’s ‘Openness Initiative’ was strenuously resisted by the Defense Department. Both State and DOE also aggressively moved to dramatically reduce their backlogs of FOIA requests. (Note 2)

But by 1999, however, there had been a sea-change within the Clinton administration concerning security classification issues. A controversy over Chinese nuclear espionage, epitomized by the 1998-1999 Wen Ho Lee spy scandal, led to a number of investigations into DOE security practices, and Hazel O’Leary’s successor as Energy Secretary, Bill Richardson, tightened the agency’s security and halted the Department’s document declassification program. (Note 3) Moreover, security officials at DOE had become concerned that the implementation of EO 12958 had led to the inadvertent release in State Department and other agency records at NARA of “unmarked” restricted and formerly restricted data on nuclear weapons. In the fall of 1998, Congress formally authorized the Department of Energy to remove from public document repositories any and all sensitive nuclear weapons design-related information pursuant to Section 3161 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999, entitled “Protection Against Inadvertent Release of Restricted Data and Formerly Restricted Data.” This legal provision is better known as the Kyl-Lott Amendment, named after its two principal sponsors, which was signed into law on October 17, 1998 by President Bill Clinton. (Note 4) (For a skeptical look at the Kyl-Lott process see “DOE Puts Declassification Into Reverse,” by George Lardner Jr., The Washington Post, 19 May 2001.)

According to press reports from this time period, the Defense Department and the U.S. intelligence community were also strenuously resisting implementing the provisions of E.O. 12958, with Defense Department and CIA officials making no secret of the fact that they were pressing for a general rollback of the mandatory declassification provisions of E.O. 12958. These agencies used a range of tactics, including delay. For example, at the request of the Department of Defense, E.O. 12958 was amended in November 1999 to extend the automatic declassification deadline another 18 months until the end of October 2001.

By the fall of 1999, the CIA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community had become increasingly intransigent in terms of their willingness to declassify documents concerning past covert action operations needed for inclusion in the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series. In April 1998, a State Department advisory committee comprised of outside historians and chaired by Dr. Warren F. Kimball wrote a letter to then-Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright warning that the official record of U.S. foreign policy was in danger of becoming “an official lie” because of the CIA’s continuing refusal to declassify documents for the FRUS series. (Note 5) More than a year later, the relationship between the State Department and the CIA had further deteriorated. According to comments made before in September 1999 by the then-head of the State Department’s History Office, William Z. Slany: “What has become apparent and obvious is the Agency’s unwillingness to acknowledge amounts of money, liaison relationships, and relationships with organizations, information that any ‘reasonable person’ would believe should be declassified. The process has revealed the bare bones of the CIA’s intransigence.” (Note 6)

The battle between the State Department and the U.S. intelligence community over the declassification of historical records came to a head in the fall of 1999, when shortly after the Kyl-Lott Amendment took effect, six U.S. government agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Department of Defense, all three of the military services, and the Department of Justice, wrote a letter to NARA stating that it was the shared belief of all of the agencies signing the letter that a number of State Department documents at the National Archives had been inadvertently declassified when they had been released by the State Department, in some cases ten years before. According to NARA officials, the agencies stated that four specific groups of State Department intelligence records, or Lot Files, totaling 55 records boxes had been improperly declassified in that the initial declassification review did not take into account their “equity” in the classified information contained in the documents. (Note 7)

In 1999, NARA officials withdrew from the public shelves at the National Archive’s main College Park, Maryland archival facility all 55 boxes comprising the four “INR Lot Files.” According to information provided by NARA, all 55 boxes were once again reviewed by security teams belonging to 13 government agencies between 1999 and 2000, resulting in approximately 1,400 documents totaling 9,750 pages being reclassified and withdrawn from public circulation. The 55 boxes of State Department records were not, however, returned to the open shelves at College Park. Instead, they were retained in the classified storage area on the sixth floor of the College Park facility. The fact that these 55 boxes of State Department records had been withdrawn from the public shelves was not discovered until the author submitted a request to review these records in November and December 2005.

Outside historians who were members of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation vehemently objected to the reclassification of historical documents long residing on the public shelves at NARA, but to no avail. According to the transcript of a December 17, 2001 meeting of the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation, committee chair Dr. Warren F. Kimball: “… strongly and repeatedly expressed his concern over the reclassification of material that was already in the public domain.” (Note 8)

Trying to Put the Toothpaste Back in the Tube:
Expanding the Document Reclassification Program in 2001

Apparently, at some point after the Bush administration took office in 2001, the expanded group of U.S. government agencies engaged in the security review of the State Department INR records, now demanded the right to go through all other records held at NARA’s College Park facility. The central contention of the multi-agency group was that the same widespread inadvertent declassification of documents that they had discovered in the four State Department Lot Files in 1999-2000 almost certainly had occurred in virtually every other declassified record group at the National Archives containing defense, foreign affairs, and/or intelligence-related documentary materials. At the heart of their argument was the claim that because of a lack of “equity recognition” by the original declassification review teams, in some cases going as far back as the 1970s and 1980s, many additional cases of inadvertent release of classified information had occurred. As a result, the government agencies in question told NARA that they intended to re-review all national security document holdings then sitting on the open shelves of the National Archives in order to find and remove any other documents containing classified information that might also have been inadvertently disclosed.

NARA, which has no classification authority, and as such, no control whatsoever over the records it is a custodian of, had no choice but to comply with the demand of the government agencies. According to NARA officials, a classified interagency Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) lays out the underlying nature and purpose of the historical document reclassification program, and governs the conduct of the reclassification effort at the National Archives. Presumably, NARA is a party and/or signatory to this classified MOU. NARA officials have refused to provide any details concerning the contents of the MOU, citing the fact that it is secret. The National Security Archive has a pending FOIA request for the MOU.

Comment by Ryan Neat — April 12, 2006 @ 2:11 am

You know Ryan, I think there’s something to that for all people who want to be ‘elected officials’ in our country. Regardless of party affliation.

My last boyfriend was a liberal who had future inspirations toward politics. There were traits about him that, inspite of his desire to do good for the public he would serve, were still egotistical and although it was slight, he had a control freakish tendancy to want to be in charge. Not just the normal Alpha Male, but the Alpha who needed the power no matter what the sacrifice. There’s something about politics in our country that attract a lot of people who want to control – no matter how well intended. I’m starting to wonder if there’s a gene (nature) or if these people are a product of their environment (nuture) as so many of us are.

I’m not saying ‘all’, as I don’t think it’s all this way, but after you are close to someone of that mindset, I think you begin to notice patterns in others. And even Bill Clinton, as well intentioned as he was, still needed that power. And to some degree it did corrupt his principals.

Comment by Tundra — April 12, 2006 @ 1:34 am

Now that’s just rich ;)

By the way – are you from Alaska?