Posted on 04/27/2002 2:26:15 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
The Energy Department recently declassified its fifth report to Congress on "inadvertent" disclosures of classified nuclear weapons information.
For the past three years, classification experts have been scouring millions of pages of supposedly declassified government documents dumped into the public domain under the Clinton administration's misguided openness policy. They have uncovered a gold mine of nuclear warhead secrets that, according to an Energy Department assessment, "would aid an adversary in obtaining a weapon of mass destruction."
In 1993, citing the end of the Cold War and the "rapidly changing world situation," President Clinton proposed significant changes in security classification policies that were intended to promote greater openness and trust in government. How ironic that now sounds.
By executive order, he mandated automatic declassification of government documents that were more than 25 years old. The White House was in such a rush to get these materials out to the public that it eliminated the requirement of careful, page-by-page review. Instead, it permitted agencies to use a "bulk declassification" policy.
Documents 25 years old or older would not be reviewed unless risk assessments warranted a more thorough review. The risk assessment was mostly a "judgment" as to whether a box of old documents might contain nuclear weapons information. There were to be some restrictions on automatic declassification, such as information that could aid in the development of a nuclear weapon, but many agencies simply ignored these.
All the defense agencies were effected by this order, including CIA. The costs were significant, but the White House expected each agency to use existing resources to meet declassification requirements. Not surprisingly, given the potential costs and the impact on other operations, many agencies "judged" that the documents didn't contain such data and simply pushed the boxes out the door.
The documents were sent to the National Archives and Records Administration for storage. By 1997, however, it was clear that the openness policy had run amok.
Energy Department security officers discovered that bulk declassification was exposing many of the nation's nuclear secrets. They ran a test case and found that anyone with a valid driver's license could access these files at the National Archives in College Park, Md., regardless of nationality. In one test, an Energy Department official collected copies of detailed nuclear warhead design plans from the open shelves at the Archives. They also discovered documents from this collection on the Internet.
This simply reinforced suspicions on Capitol Hill about the recklessness of Clinton's national security policies, and Congress sought to impose more safeguards on declassification. Archivist John W. Carlin vehemently opposed this legislation as a "waste of time and resources" that would negate the letter and spirit of the administration's policy.
He said nearly 500 million pages were already at the Archives that would require review, with millions more anticipated. He argued that no one had ever proved that declassification had any effect on the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but Congress added a provision to the FY1999 Defense Bill that mandated a review of each document suspected of containing nuclear secrets.
Three years later, the Energy Department has found over 300 declassified documents that contain nuclear weapons secrets. Among those discovered to date: warhead design details including size, shapes and configurations; systems for boosting warhead yields; mass and dimensions of fissile materials, nuclear assembly systems, and the mass, design or operation of high explosives for nuclear weapons.
The most recent date found on any documents is 1976, but much of the warhead design information is from early generation U.S. nuclear warhead programs. The Energy Department says this information is "of significant value" to nations embarking on the production of nuclear weapons and to terrorist groups trying to assemble a simple nuclear device.
There appear to be several hundred million pages yet to be reviewed. For FY 2002, Congress appropriated nearly $12 million for the job. The Energy Department has not responded to requests by Accuracy in Media for the total costs to date, how much remains to be done and whether documents still accessible at the Archives are suspected of containing nuclear secrets.
It would be tragic if terrorists were able to attack us using information collected from our own National Archives. The Bush administration should require that all such information be secured immediately until a thorough review can be completed.
From "Dark Sun - The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb" by Richard Rhodes, Simon & Schuster, New York 1995, ISBN: 0-684-80400-X. (Also see "Betrayal at Yalta.")
Chapter 5 "Super Lend-Lease" - on pages 99-100 - list of nuclear materials (tens of tons) sent to Stalin in 1943. Note that the Trinity Test was in ... 1945.
Oh, yes, Harry (the Hop) Hopkins (as in Agent 19 via the Venona Project) was the head of the Lead-Lease program at the time.
FDR sure could pick'em!
Recall Ted Hall, the Rosenbergs, Fuchs, ... "Quantum" ...
What, no front page of the NY Times, WP?
Alamo-girl did and does a super-human job of archiving the important information.
Very often a story has been reported by five or six media outlets and all have been posted. One or two will received the majority of replies.
That "legacy" will haunt us and our children for a very long time... let's hope it doesn't end with a Chinese, North Korean, or Iranian nuke blossoming over LA...
Actually, there are several possible answers--
One theory I've heard is that when nearly all who look at these agree, they don't bother to comment. I think there's some merit to that.
Another is simply that this is very, very old news to many of us. We have been down the "treason, crime, corruption, sellout" road that is the "legacy" from the clintons and their legions of enablers, apologists, spinners, & shills so many times before that we are just commented-out.
I mean, what more can you say?
Monica was kid stuff and monkey business; this is literally life and death. Potentially the death of freedom, and our way of life.
All for cheap, sleazy money to hang on to power.
I can recall talk radio buzzing with how our Legacy Codes- the info you need to design, develop, and maintain any type of nuclear warhead we have ever had-- had gotten out over the web, maybe gotten to Cuba and North Korea, and God knows where else- and how nobody seemed to care.
The stock market was exploding up, the dotcoms were flying, we weren't at war... barf, barf!
You heard all the excuses on TV from the pack of jackals excusing the clintons in the 1990's.
Charlie Smith over at softwar.org tried to tell people on Mike Reagan's radio show how the Chinese had gotten a few of our downed cruise missiles from Bosnia and had already built over a thousand clones of them.
People just didn't want to be told about it. They preferred watching clinton strut around a podium and brag "not one warhead is pointed at your children tonight..."
( no, not one- thousands! )
Where is the outrage?
IMHO, it is difficult to keep the discussion focused on national security because it takes effort on the part of the reader. It seems altogether too easy to distract the public's attention away from national security.
In that regard, I wonder if the bombing of Kosovo which began when the Cox/Dicks committee report was due to be released, was a "wag the dog?"
Likewise, I wonder if the willingness of Monica to cooperate with Starr and fork over the blue dress - which happened just when the Chinese espionage was making front page news, was a "wag the dog?"
I heartily reccommend using the search on the "latest posts" or "latest comments" pages.
You'll find 4 years' worth of chronicles of crime, corruption, and Constitutional abuse.
It's quick and easy to learn to use it (but like FR it's addictive!).
The Bush adminisrtation went into court to block Trulock's Federal lawsuits involving Wen Ho Lee and the FBI. So far Trulock has been able to have one of the lawsuits reinstated and the other lawsuit is under appeal.
The Republican leadership is not as conservative as what many might think. When it comes to nuclear espionage and transfers, the Bush administration may be as liberal as Clinton and the Democrats. Bush has said more than once he wants to put the Chinagate matter in the past and not investigate or hold those accountable many of whom are holdovers from the CLinton administration now serving under Bush.
Also, two months ago Bush announced his agreement with Putin for the US to share US star wars missile defense with the Russians and to jointly develop the technology with the Russians. Bush and Putin set up a joint committe to do this. During the 2000 Presidential campaign and shortly after his election, Bush announced that he planned to offer the Russians joint operations of missile defense with the Russians.
Since there has been no vote by the people or Congrees on transfering US star wars technology to Russia, Bush actions in this regard are illegal and tantamont to treason in my opinion. If Bush proceeds with joint operations with the Russians this would also be dreadful and treasonous in my opinion.
Senator Shelby's aid on defense matters confirmed to me in June 2002 that the US was working directly with the Russians on developing star wars missile defense and that Shelbys constitutents in ALabama were complaining about it. Yet nothing has been done by COngress to protest the move by Bush.
The White House announced last month it was taking steps to block the COngress from learning details of US missile defense testing. Yet this same testing data is the data eventually to be shared with Russia but not COngress! This is another example of why I believe this is illegal and treason.
My opinion based on public statements made by Bush Senior and GW Bush over the years is that this is being done to establish a world government. I was also told this by nuclear scientists at Kirtland AFB when they offererd me a job on star wars development( I declined because I object to sharing the tech with Russia) as far back as 1983. I wrote articles in 2000 about this for FreeRepublic.
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