The Best Secret Tellers in Washington

Washington is a city of secrets. Some old; some new. There are few institutions devoted to the mission of prying these secrets from the filing cabinets of assorted government agencies. Some media outfits periodically pick the locks and obtain scoops. Journalists occasionally receive well- or not-so-well-intentioned leaks about past or present official misdeeds. Once in a while--less so these days--a congressional investigation or a commission unearths long-buried truths about government-gone-bad. But when it comes to consistently forcing important secrets out of the US government no journalist or investigator rivals the National Security Archive, a nonprofit outfit based at George Washington University.

Why gush about it now? Today the Archive is celebrating its 20th anniversary. In 1985 journalists Scott Armstrong and Raymond Bonner. Representative Jim Moody, Ruth Chojnacki, a congressional aide, Morton Halperin, the head of the ACLU office in Washington, and Stephen Paschke, the chief financial officer of the Fund for Peace, founded the organization. At first it was, in a way, a dumping ground for journalists and scholars who had amassed large files on subjects related to national security and foreign policy. Unlike those reporters and scholars who are overly possessive of their records, these folks wanted to make their material available to others. (And who needs all those boxes in their basements?) But the National Security Archive grew into more than a depository. It became a force for openness--first in the United States, then throughout the world. Its researchers relentlessly filed Freedom of Information Act requests--and haggled with various government agencies--to obtain crucial records of historic and contemporary significance. In 1990, a lawsuit it filed jointly with Public Citizen won the release of Oliver North's Iran-contra notebooks. The Archive pressured the US government to release tens of thousands of pages on the dictatorial regime of Augusto Pinochet in Chile. It forced Henry Kissinger to relinquish control of 33,000 pages of public records he walked off with when he left the government. And as democracy spread to Eastern Europe and Russia (well, kind of) in the 1990s, the National Security Archive worked with the new governments in these countries to modernize their archives and to bring transparency to their history.

Before gushing further, let me issue this Interest Declared: When writing my book on the CIA, Blond Ghost, in the early 1990s, the Archive was quite helpful. It had collected reams of material on the CIA campaign against Cuba of the early 1960s that was rather important for my project. And I fondly (in a perverse way) recall spending weeks at the Archive poring over a massive computer printout of all the Freedom of Information Act requests the CIA had fulfilled in previous years. The Archive had pressured the CIA to release this information, and the CIA, in response, handed it a printout that listed the data in random order. Not by date. Not by subject. Not by name of requester. In other words, the CIA had organized the information in the least usable form. We figured that the CIA must have programmed a computer to achieve this, for, certainly, the CIA did not maintain its records in such a haphazard fashion. (At least, we hoped so.) The National Security Archive pressed the CIA to turn over the data in an electronic version that could be searchable. (Want to know what documents related to Vietnam the CIA had released? Type in "Vietnam" and hit "Enter.") But the CIA had said no. That meant I had to look at this printout, which covered thousands of requests, line by line. It was a worthwhile endeavor, but my eyes took a pounding. Subsequently--too late for me--the Archive succeeded in forcing the CIA to hand over this information on computer tapes.

Further Interest Declared: several longtime friends of mine work at the Archive, including Peter Kornbluh, Kate Doyle, and Tom Blanton, the director.

Anyone who gives a damn about honesty in history and openness in government ought to cheer the Archive. To celebrate its birthday, the organization has gathered statistics about its accomplishments. It has filed 32,000 FOIA and declassification requests with over 200 offices and agencies of the US government; it has obtained the release of 7 million pages of once-secret documents; its staff and fellows have written 46 books; it has participated in 39 major lawsuits, one of which resulted in the preservation of 40 million emails from the Reagan, Bush I and Clinton administrations. And the Archive this week put out a greatest hits list of 20 big-secret government records it has obtained in the past two decades. It's an impressive list that includes

* Hundreds of photos of flag-draped coffins containing the remains of US troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, which the Pentagon fought to keep secret.

* The January 25, 2001 memo that terrorism czar Richard Clarke sent to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, warning that top Bush administration officials needed to immediately come up with a plan for dealing with al Qaeda.

* The briefing notes for Donald Rumsfeld's 1984 meeting with Saddam Hussein, when Rumsfeld, acting as an envoy for the Reagan administration, was to tell Saddam that the Reagan administration's public criticism of Iraq for using chemical weapons would not interfere with Reagan's effort to forge a closer relationship with Saddam.

* An August 6, 1986 entry from Oliver North's notebook that indicated North had met with then-Vice President George Bush in the midst of the Iran-contra affair.

* The log book of a US Navy destroyer that revealed that on October 27, 1962--in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis--this ship dropped depth charges off the Cuban coast and almost hit the hull of a Soviet submarine carrying a nuclear warhead. The crew of the sub, believing war was at hand, considered firing the nuclear weapon but did not.

* Documents from CIA and FBI files that showed that Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban militant who has sought US asylum, was at two planning meetings for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner that killed 73 people.

* Guatemalan army intelligence documents and US intelligence documents that indicated that the CIA was assisting the Guatemalan military in the 1980s as that military was killing thousands of civilians.

* Documents that revealed that Henry Kissinger, as secretary of state in 1976, supported the Argentine military dictatorship's crackdown of dissent that led to the deaths of tens of thousands.

* The CIA inspector general's scathing review of the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco, which was kept secret for nearly four decades and which blasted CIA secret operations as "ludicrous or tragic or both."

* A 1967 CIA memo that revealed that the CIA had tried to implant listening devices in cats and train them to approach targets. The memo noted that the "work done on this problem over the years reflects great credit on the personnel who guided it," but that "the environmental and security factors in using this technique in a real foreign situation forces us to conclude that for our...purposes, it would not be practical." The first wired and trained cat had been released near a park and ordered to eavesdrop on two men sitting on a bench. On its way to the target, the cat was run over by a taxi.

******

Don't forget about DAVID CORN's BLOG at www.davidcorn.com. Read recent postings on the latest in the CIA leak scandal, Condi and torture, the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death, and other in-the-news matters.

******

Without the National Security Archive much of the secret history of the United States--and other nations--would remain a secret. Is this a puff piece? Certainly. There is no better institution in Washington than the Archive. The work it does is actually something a government could and should do. It's not too hard to imagine a federal openness advocate who would muscle individual federal agencies to release information about past and present activities. But governments tend to be rather reluctant to reveal to the public--the people they ostensibly serve--inconvenient and troubling secrets on their own. Consequently, a bunch of smart people dedicated to the public interest have been gainfully employed for two decades. The public here and abroad knows more about key historical episodes than it would otherwise thanks to the their toils. It is a pity there is such a critical need for the National Security Archive; it is a blessing for journalists, historians and citizens that the Archive exists.

Comments (29)

1. Amazing....those examples (love the "wired cat" one especially) paint the CIA in the 60s and 70s as inept bunglers....

   Yet, we're ALSO supposed to believe them capable of the most intricate and well-planned operations against "popular-elected revolutionary leaders for Third World economic/social justice" (i.e. left-wing dictators)?????

   Posted by Mask at 12/09/2005 @ 12:14pm

2. While I am proud of GWU's housing of such a resource, I am quite interested in NaCl's predictable comments on this piece (just go to Nichol's Hillary piece and follow our little sub-dialectic exchange) as to the Archive's apparent worthlessness and spin.

   Posted by leftofcenter at 12/09/2005 @ 12:15pm

3. Well, yeah, we could comment about what the author himself calls a "Puff Piece", and is. What, you think not knowing what the government does after it's no longer vital to national security is bad? Getouttahere. As for the Al-Qaeda hullabuloo, though... Doesn't this just put one more nail in the "Torture is an effective and efficient way to obtain vital information in times of war" argument?

   I mean, not only did the guy lie, but he lied about something that ended up HURTING our position in the war on terror, because we believed what he said while he was being tortured. Now, considering we've got more advanced truth-detecting methods in this day and age, are we what, not using these in the field for our notorious "black ops" sort of actions?

   I mean, I came to term years ago with the use of the CIA as a kind of super-secret police given extraordinary rights and powers, they're involved in one of the most dangerous, and difficult American missions possible, gathering foreign intelligence. So, why aren't they trying to at least obtain ACCURATE information if they're going to violate international law?

   Posted by Megido at 12/09/2005 @ 12:32pm

4. ZERO

   I'm sorry....just hard to figure out if the 1960s CIA was an "evil right-wing 'Impossible Mission Force' over-throwing Salvador Allende with precise and clockwork-like planning"....or Beavis & Butthead attaching walkie-talkies to neighborhood cats, when they weren't landing on the beaches of St. Thomas, VI looking for Cuban Commies?

   Posted by Mask at 12/09/2005 @ 1:11pm

5. Amazing....those examples (love the "wired cat" one especially) paint the CIA in the 60s and 70s as inept bunglers....

   Yet, we're ALSO supposed to believe them capable of the most intricate and well-planned operations against "popular-elected revolutionary leaders for Third World economic/social justice" (i.e. left-wing dictators)?????

   Posted by MASK 12/09/2005 @ 12:14am | ignore this person

   from what i understand the cia is and always has been composed of both comically inept bunglers AND wickedly clever and effective covert meddlers. the two are not mutually exclusive...as evinced by our current pres and his handlers

   Posted by ibbleblibble at 12/09/2005 @ 1:39pm

6. did they not also slip lsd mickies into unsuspecting civilian's cocktails in the late 50's/early 60's and then watch all the insane fun? or was that one of the service intelligence wings?

   Posted by ibbleblibble at 12/09/2005 @ 1:48pm

7. I'm still waiting to see the secret memos that indicate we had exhausted all other options (like, say, diplomacy) and had to opt for the last resort: invading Iraq to disarm the madman.

   Posted by nathanhale at 12/09/2005 @ 2:04pm

8. ZERO

   See, what's even MORE confusing is....we're supposed to think the CIA is a "haven for right-wing spies and operative imposing American imperialism"....and then "The Nation" posts an article about how "Bush is ignoring the CIA on Iraq" and how the CIA is "the only one telling the truth about WMDs and terrorists, but the evil Bushies aren't listening or cherry-picking intell".

   So...uh...which is it? Stooge agency for the imperialist capitalist military-industrial complex....or the guys we SHOULD have listened to about Iraq?

   Oh....and what does that make Valerie Plame?!?!?!???

   Posted by Mask at 12/09/2005 @ 4:26pm

9. I think Rese is young, and still trying to figure out how to cast their voice effectively over the internet. Granted, right now, it's ineffective, clogs discussion, and irritates everyone. I would have to say they'd be much better off just reading these, and using the information within to post a cogent response here, but not everybody works well at synthesizing information like that.

   Posted by Megido at 12/10/2005 @ 3:14pm

10. Rio:

    You just don't get it do you. With all respect to Frank and his son, I have equal empathy for the countless lives, and those of their families, which have been harmed irrepairably by the actions of our thoughtless leaders. I will not include myself within your mindset. I do not wish to be included within the enigma of your leaders' desire to portray your american image of gregarious intolerance.

    I do not want to be portrayed as the second (third, fourth, fifth...) generational "ugly american".

    Why should I ignore Reese? His posts, albeit long and laborious to read, are nontheless mind provoking. Much more than yours with the "Being a Independent and Christian and very Conservative I do trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and SAVIOR as part of the holy trinity. My hope is that I am a righteous man since the prayer of such a one is of MUCH avail with Christ our intercessor".

    Carry on Rio. You are hypocritical. You know nothing of compassion and dignity. You, of all people criticize Reese? You speak through dead sightless eyes and rote verbatim. Reese, at least makes me think and yearn to know more.How fuckin dare you? The man has an inquisitive mind? Yours...a scratchy broken record.

    And what is this: "It is my fervent hope and desire in prayer that your son and all others serving the nation now return safe and whole to their families as the will of God!"

    Are you implying that serving over there is the will of god? Or is it something else? You are indeed a sick person. AND, "they are serving the nation". Wrong! They are serving PeeWee, and his handlers.

    One more: "since the prayer of such a one is of MUCH avail with Christ our intercessor". Are you perchance referring to your self? Let me guess: just like bush, you also have a personal relationship with god. Wonderful!

    Peace to you brother. I think you need some. You do know what PEACE is right?

    Posted by doumer at 12/10/2005 @ 8:19pm

11. RIO

    Gotta side w/Frank & Doumer here. A bit of selective memory. Also, interesting is the "when the Right's going gets tough, the Right pulls out some scripture" Hmmmmm

    re: Rese, I too find some of his posts curious enough to take a peak. In Rese's case though there is a "flow control" problem....too much stuff flowing onto the page to wade thru. In his defense though, on another thread he has throttled back enough to be read. For now he is in my ignore/unignore zone (again, gotta turn it off sometimes - like on this thread - in order to read anything else.) But I turn it back on to quickly scan for the "good bits".

    Posted by leftofcenter at 12/11/2005 @ 12:03pm

12. I invite you to read the Nobel Literature Winner 2005, Harold Pinter

    http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture.html

    Your mainstream media is silent on this.

    Posted by areyouok at 12/11/2005 @ 12:04pm

13. The NSA is doing God's work -- particularly since about 99.99% -- maybe more -- of the MSM's Washington correspondents are water carriers and courtiers.

    And readers of this blog mght be interested in my blog:

    http://mitchyblog.blogspot.com

    Posted by senft at 12/11/2005 @ 7:11pm

14. To those on the Left possibly drifting into "RESE makes some interesting points" Land....a question-

    At some point code-words like "Israelis", "AIPAC", "ADL", "certain American neo-cons", etc. start sounding like statements made by people like David Duke and George Lincoln Rockwell...

    Are you sure you know the "cut-off" line?

    Posted by Mask at 12/12/2005 @ 07:01am

15. At some point code-words like "Israelis", "AIPAC", "ADL", "certain American neo-cons", etc. start sounding like statements made by people like David Duke and George Lincoln Rockwell...

    Are you sure you know the "cut-off" line?

    Posted by MASK 12/12/2005 @ 07:01am | ignore this person

    there are some parts of the masive past-a-thon that make sense - then there was that part about gray aliens....

    Posted by ibbleblibble at 12/12/2005 @ 09:30am

16. Has RESE posted this yet?....I actually DID find an answer to my question about where "Barbara Olson and the 'supposed' passengers of AA Flight 77 are"---

    9-11 crash victim Barbara Olson arrested in Europe

    by Tom Flocco

    Germany--September 22, 2005--TomFlocco.com--French and American intelligence agents have arrested Barbara Olson, the wife of a former Bush administration official, a few days ago on the Polish-German border, according to agents close to and with knowledge of the incident.

    The alleged 9.11 Pentagon crash victim was found to be in possession of millions in fake InterBank Italian lira currency, according to the agents.

    Olson was also reportedly in possession of a fraudulent Vatican passport and was held on charges of counterfeiting.

    Barbara K. Olson The former Fox News TV commentator and Independent Women's Forum activist was said to have called her husband Theodore Olson from her plane to seek help in countering hijackers who had allegedly taken over American flight 77 which the Bush administration said was crashed into the Pentagon- although the impact only left an opening approximately 16 feet across.

    Ted Olson is the former Bush 43 Solicitor General who had previously argued the President's legal interests in the controversial Bush-Gore 2000 election recount case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

    Theodore (Ted) B. Olson

    Mrs. Olson's alleged cell phone call to her husband was employed by the administration and the 9.11 Commission as partial proof that American 77 crashed into the Pentagon, despite physical evidence to the contrary.

    The Pentagon crash evidence was ignored and obstructed by both the Commission and previously by the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee in its own separate probe.

    Due to the ongoing sensitive nature of the arrest, investigation and questioning, one source who declined to be named for this story, told TomFlocco.com that Olson's call to her husband was a fraud and that another projectile impacted the Pentagon other than Olson's plane.

    The agents were said to have closed in to arrest the former television pundit because the evidence of counterfeiting and passport violations was obvious and that the timing was right.

    According to the agents, Barbara Olson is reportedly considered to be a conspirator to the obstruction of justice in the mass murders of 3,000 individuals on September 11, 2001 in the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the alleged crash in southwestern Pennsylvania.

    Olson's arrest and potential appearance at trial in the United States would undoubtedly have a profound impact upon current "Able Danger" hearings in the Senate and past probes by both the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee and the 9.11 Commission.

    Posted by Mask at 12/12/2005 @ 3:19pm

17. MARYBRET

    So, again...are you saying that Pearl Harbor, the June 25 North Korean invasion of the South, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and the lead-up to Iraq are "equivalent" in terms of some kind of duplicity?

    Posted by Mask at 12/12/2005 @ 3:58pm

18. Mask;

    Last I heard the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a fiction used to get us into war - Kind of like WMD! So at least in that regard there is a similarity.

    Posted by NO-NONSENSE at 12/12/2005 @ 4:46pm

19. Yes, Mask. That is MBB's mo with the whole pre-war justification argument. In his mind, now that we are past the invasion, everything in the lead-up was shades of gray - even though he completely ignores that before March 2003, the Bush Administration never was so wishy-washy about it.

    Posted by Hman23 at 12/12/2005 @ 6:09pm

20. Mask

    re: Are you sure you know the "cut-off" line?

    Can we not make the same claim of Dubya & Co.?

    Posted by leftofcenter at 12/12/2005 @ 9:55pm

21. NO-NON, HMAN

    I think if you read my ENTIRE post to MARY....I was also asking about Pearl Harbor and the NK invasion of June 1950. So were Roosevelt and Truman using "actions that rest on uncertain or arguable justification."?

    Posted by Mask at 12/12/2005 @ 10:40pm

22. LEFTOF

    Sorry...didn't know you and they were "equals" as well, figured you were better than them.

    Look at the "drift" of the conspiracy theorists and you'll see a decided Anti-Semitic bent, guised as "anti-Israel, anti-Jewish neo-con".

    Posted by Mask at 12/12/2005 @ 10:42pm

23. Mask

    No...not equating, but comparison of unequal quantities is fair. Whose "tall tales" should I beleive? I believe I can listen to all (with sufficient salt) and decide for myself. Yeah.....think I drop the X-files bent when we get to the anti-Semetic zone (or that Muldar has saved Dubya from alien invaders, etc)

    Certainly we know that Dubya is lying about a great many things though (after all...he's a politician and his lips are moving)

    Posted by leftofcenter at 12/13/2005 @ 12:00am

24. May come as a shock to some...but I don't particularly care one way or the other about "Dubya"...I voted for Kerry (on judges, mostly).

    I just notice a particularly NASTY set of code-words that pop up in talk of 9/11 Conspiracies...like "Israelis" and "neo-cons with names like Kristol, Lieberman, Wolfowitz, Pearle....IF you know what I mean". (BTW, in case the con-theorists bring it up...I'm Scots-Irish and as WASP as you get).

    Posted by Mask at 12/13/2005 @ 11:09am

25. Mask

    The stuff I glean out of the "Lone Gunmen" sites are the data. Granted you gotta sift to see what is "real" versus doctored, etc. It is a world of technology after all. That being said, the way the 3 WTC bldgs went down under differeing conditions - very odd....as well as the general physics involved. Data don't lie, regardless of the "empirical observation" that the bldgs went down. The Pentagon / plane geometry quandaries. The Pa plane that crashed and left no wreckage (I'm just not believing those big-old Pratt-Whitneys vaporized!) The whole war-games / radar thing on that morning. A bit too co-incidental for me.

    Long story short, I don't know what the truth is about that day in Sept. but I'm pretty sure what its not and that's what we've been told - at least to some degree.

    I voted Kerry too...more of a "anyone but Bush" vote...sadly enough

    Posted by leftofcenter at 12/13/2005 @ 12:08pm

26. LEFTOF

    Gets you in deeper and deeper the more you try to "discover the Truth"...until eventually you're "RESE" and you're trying to explain how Barbara Olson is alive and well in the Caymans and Greys from Zeta II Reticuli gave us the technology for HDTV....with a heaping dose of "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" to boot.

    Posted by Mask at 12/13/2005 @ 2:21pm

27. Mask

    With all due respect, no. Not for me. Again, just perusing the physical data. Let some other psychopath or sycophant discern the cryptic symbols and players in the cabal. I'd be happy just proving, on a scientific basis, which flavor of BS lies in what pile....

    Posted by leftofcenter at 12/13/2005 @ 3:28pm

28. (checked here before Loggin In)....and it looks like another busy night of cut&pasting from RESE.

    He's getting closer (went back to Woodrow Wilson and Bernard Baruch this time)...but he's not quite "there" yet...but it's coming, I can tell.

    Next stop..."The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and we all KNOW what THAT means.

    Posted by Mask at 12/14/2005 @ 06:56am

29. I just don;t understand that if Corn was SOOO concerned about this issue, why did he not raise HOLY HELL about Sandy Berger stealing documents that pointed fingers at Clinton?

    Read the examples he displays and see where he leads us! There is no doubt that things are kept secret. But get your head out of your ass when it comes to certain items...The Kennedy files have not all been released because they are worried that his image will be tarnished when the people realize he was hopped on pain killers most of the time and was "HIGH as a KITE" the night of the bay of pigs! oh yeah, that was 3000 men slaughtered on the "American promise" to help the "rebels".

    Posted by dancall at 12/14/2005 @ 11:49am