On Jan. 24, 2003, a new law enforcement and investigatory agency whose duties include functions taken from as many as 22 other federal agencies came into existence. The reorganization of these operations reportedly marks the biggest government bureaucratic shake-up since the creation of the Department of Defense half a century ago.
Even before the new Department of Homeland Security opened its doors, controversies arose over not just how it would operate and exercise its powers, but what level of access to information it would allow, and how it would respond to news media requests. Will new exemptions be carved out of the FOI Act, either by law or by practice? Will officials and agents feel free to tap phones of journalists, or subpoena their records during investigations? Will the new director consider procedural safeguards, like those adopted years ago by the Department of Justice, to ensure that freedom of the press will not be denied? And will those practices be followed?

But "homeland" security is not the only concern for journalists covering anti-terrorism initiatives; military actions abroad often present a greater challenge, as questions over disclosure of information, access to troops, and restraints on reporting seem to resurface anew with each conflict.

Questions and issues like these led the Reporters Committee to launch this "weblog," so that there will be a centralized site on the Internet for journalists who want to follow these issues and pass along information they learn while covering — or worse, being covered by — the new department and other anti-terrorism actions. Please submit comments and pass along tips to make this project as useful, thorough and up-to-date as possible.

A few words about what this project will not do. We do not intend to cover many of the issues that will undoubtedly come up as the Department takes shape, even if those issues are the ones generating headlines. We will cover information access and free press issues, but will not follow debates over many civil liberties issues that, while important, are outside of our domain.

Funding for the launch of this site was provided by The Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation.

Jul. 30, 2004

U.S. STILL BLOCKING RELEASE OF INFORMATION TO GERMAN PROSECUTORS. Germany's federal prosecutor has said the United States was still holding up efforts to gain access to intelligence that could help convict one of the suspected Sept. 11 hijackers, Reuters reported. In comments published Friday, Federal Prosecutor Kay Nehm said he had traveled to the United States in April to urge U.S. authorities to release information that would help gain a conviction in the re-trial of Moroccan Mounir El Motassadeq. Motassadeq, the only man found guilty over the Sept. 11, 2001 hijack attacks in the United States, won an appeal against his conviction in the German Supreme Court in March and now faces a re-trial which is due to start on August 10. While the United States shares much intelligence with German security services, it has refused to allow such information to be made public and submitted to court scrutiny on national security grounds. — Posted at 5:00 pm

Jul. 29, 2004

TRANSLATOR FIRED PARTLY BECAUSE OF WHISTLEBLOWING. A classified Justice Department investigation has concluded that former F.B.I. translator Sibel Edmonds was dismissed in part because she accused the bureau of ineptitude, and it found that the F.B.I. did not aggressively investigate her claims of espionage against a co-worker. The Justice Department's inspector general concluded that the allegations by Edmonds, "were at least a contributing factor in why the F.B.I. terminated her services," and the F.B.I. is considering disciplinary action against some employees as a result, Robert S. Mueller III, director of the bureau, said in a letter last week to lawmakers. A copy of the letter was obtained by The New York Times. — Posted at 6:10 pm

WHITE HOUSE DEBATES DISCLOSING INTELLIGENCE BUDGET. The New York Times reports that of the 40 main recommendations spelled out in the Sept. 11 report, one of the few that the White House could carry out immediately would be to lift the veil of secrecy on how much the government spends on intelligence. If the White House released the information, it would have to contend with years of resistance by intelligence agencies that have long warned that making that budget public could aid American foes. Only twice before, in 1997 and 1998, has the top-line budget number been declassified. Advocates of greater disclosure now nevertheless have begun to hope that the commission report might turn the tide. — Posted at 6:06 pm

CONTRACTS SHOW CIVILIANS SUPERVISED DETAINEE INTERROGATIONS. Contracts released by the Defense Department raise new questions about whether civilian employees of CACI International Inc. supervised the interrogation of some prison detainees in Iraq, The Washington Post reports. The Pentagon provided copies of the Arlington company's government contracts to the Center for Public Integrity, which sought them under the Freedom of Information Act. The center, based in the District, made the documents public yesterday. The $19.9 million contract for CACI to provide interrogators, awarded last August, calls for the civilian workers to "provide oversight and other directed intelligence support to [military] screening and interrogation operations, with special emphasis on High-Value detainees." But the contract for interrogation services also says that CACI employees are to be "directed by military authority" and that "the contractor is responsible for providing supervision of all contractor personnel." — Posted at 6:01 pm

ENEMY COMBATANT CAN MEET WITH LAWYERS, U.S. SAYS The Justice Department has finally agreed to let alleged enemy combatant Ali Seleh al-Marri meet with his attorneys, the Charleston Post and Courier report. Despite the Supreme Court's ruling last month that alleged enemy combatants must be allowed to challenge their captivity before a neutral factfinder, the Justice Department had persisted in denying legal counsel to al-Marri, who is being held in secret detention in the Navy brig in South Carolina. A meeting between al-Marri and his lawyers could take place within two weeks. — Posted at 5:58 pm

NIMJ SEEKS BETTER ACCESS TO MILITARY COMMISSIONS Eugene R. Fidell, a Washington, D.C., attorney and President of the National Institute of Military Justice, has sent this letter to Maj. Gen. John D. Altenburg, Jr., the appointing authority for the military commissions that will try suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Fidell seeks two measures that would enhance the public's access to proceedings: the establishment of clerk's offices at which the news media would have prompt access to filings; and the creation of an electronic filing system, similar to that used by federal courts, that would allow members of the public to view non-classified pleadings online. No word yet on a response by Altenburg. The military commissions are expected to begin soon, though the Pentagon has not announced a date. — Posted at 4:46 pm

Jul. 28, 2004

IRAQ IMPOSES RESTRICTIONS ON MEDIA. Iraq's prime minister has established a media committee to impose restrictions on print and broadcast media, a government official announced Monday. The step underlines an aggressive new attitude towards press freedoms, in spite of U.S. efforts to nurture independent media, the Financial Times reported. Ibrahim Janabi, appointed to head the new Higher Media Commission, said the restrictions had yet to be finalised, but would include unwarranted criticism of the prime minister. He singled out last Friday's sermon by Moqtada al-Sadr, a firebrand Shia cleric, who mocked Mr Allawi as America's "tail". Outlets that broadcast the sermon could be banned, he said. — Posted at 6:17 pm

PARENTS SUE OVER SON HELD IN SAUDI ARABIA. The parents of an American citizen who has been secretly jailed for more than a year in Saudi Arabia filed suit today against U.S. government officials, the Associated Press reports. Ahmed Abu Ali, of Falls Church, Va., was arrested 13 months ago in Saudi Arabia as part of a U.S. terrorism investigation. Ali was attending college there. He has not been charged with a crime or allowed to see a lawyer. Ali's parents sued in federal court in Washington, D.C, in what the AP describes as the "first lawsuit filed on behalf of a U.S. citizen detained in a foreign country at the U.S. government's request." — Posted at 4:34 pm

Jul. 27, 2004

FOUR FRENCH NATIONALS FROM GUANTANAMO ARRIVE IN FRANCE. Four French nationals captured by US troops in Afghanistan have been transferred home from the US military base in Guantanamo Bay. The detainees - among seven Frenchmen seized during the war against the Taleban in late 2001 - arrived at the Evreux air base, west of Paris. The men were identified by the BBC. In a brief press release, the Pentagon acknowledged that detainees had been sent to France, but refused to release any more details because of "operational and security considerations." — Posted at 6:20 pm

NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON\'T, NOW YOU SEE IT AGAIN. thememoryhole.org has posted three previously public but recently classified letters concerning FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. The letters, written by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt) and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), were unclassified and posted on the Senators websites until they were classified by the FBI. Two of the letters, but inexplicably not the third, were then pulled of the websites. Edmonds and the Project on Goverment Oversight have filed a lawsuit challenging the retroactive classification. — Posted at 11:22 am

Jul. 26, 2004

DETAINEE APPEALS PROCESS TO BEGIN SOON. The U.S. military plans to convene panels starting next week to review the cases of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, giving hundreds of prisoners captured during the war in Afghanistan their first formal opportunity to argue for their freedom. The military says those on the panels - which the Pentagon calls Combatant Status Review Tribunals - will be neutral and that detainees will be freed if found to be wrongly held. The names of panel members and detainees who appear before them will not be made public, The Associated Press reported. — Posted at 6:07 pm

ARCHIVES INSTALLS SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS. Officials at the National Archives were so concerned about Samuel R. Berger's removal of classified documents last year that they imposed new security measures governing the review of sensitive material, including the installation of full-time surveillance cameras, government officials told The New York Times on Friday. The new policy, issued March 31 to security officers at the archives, lays out toughened steps for safeguarding research rooms used by nongovernmental employees who are given special access to classified material. And it demands "continuous monitoring" of anyone reviewing such material. — Posted at 6:04 pm

BUSH NATIONAL GUARD RECORDS FOUND. The New York Times reports that some of President Bush's Air National Guard records, previously thought destroyed, have been found and disclosed through a Freedom of Information Act request. The Pentagon previously said the records were lost in transfering them to microfiche, but determined on Friday that they had been misplaced due to "incorrect accession numbers." "We're talking about a manual process for records that are over 30 years old," Defense Finance and Accounting Service spokesman Bryan Hubbard told Reuters. The records answer few questions about whether Bush completed his service, but confirm that he did not serve in the third quarter of 1972 after transfering from the Texas Air National Guard to Alabama to work on a political campaign, a fact previously acknowledged by the White House. — Posted at 6:01 pm

SENATE SHOULDN\'T HAVE BEEN SURPRISED BY ARMY REPORT. A weekend editorial in The New York Times was sharply citical of a report issued last week by the Army's Inspector General that found no "systemic" problems in connection with the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. The editorial said senators on the armed services panel were outraged at the report's shoddiness and timing, but should not have been surprised. "The Defense Department has consistently tried to stymie Mr. Warner's investigation. It "misplaced" thousands of pages from Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba's report on Abu Ghraib, the only credible military account so far. It stalled the completion of a pivotal look at Army intelligence by two other Army generals until lawmakers went off to the political conventions and summer vacations. And it ignored Senate demands for the Red Cross reports on American military prisons for months," the editorial said. "The Pentagon finally brought those documents to the Senate in the last two weeks, in a way that ensured they would be of minimal use. The voluminous reports were shown briefly to senators and a few members of the Armed Services Committee staff after the senators' personal aides were ushered out. Then the reports were hauled back to the Pentagon." — Posted at 5:53 pm

MOUSSAOUI\'S LAWYERS SAY COMMISSION REPORT THREATENS A FAIR TRIAL. In its report issued Thursday, the 9/11 commission, drawing on much of the same material and evidence as prosecutors, said that Zacarias Moussaoui was personally selected by Osama bin Laden and that he was being "primed as a possible pilot" for Sept. 11. Moussaoui's attorneys criticized the report, saying the commission had imperiled Moussaoui's right to a fair trial by asserting so publicly that he is guilty. They expressed concern that the massive publicity will affect potential jurors. — Posted at 5:49 pm

\"EXTRAORDINARY RENDITIONS\" BECOMING MORE COMMON. Sunday's Washington Post reported on the CIA's increasingly common practice of "extraordinary renditions," the fast and forcible transfer of foreign terrorism suspects to other countries, often their places of origin, where they can be detained or interrogated more freely, often without all the legal protections available in the country they left. Details of such operations are almost always secret. CIA officials have testified in Congress about engaging in about 70 renditions before 2001. Security analysts said the number has increased substantially since then, as the U.S. government has become more aggressive in its global hunt for people considered a threat to national security. Critics have charged that the practice is vulnerable to abuse, noting that suspects are usually deported to countries that are friendly to U.S. intelligence agencies but also have records of permitting torture or other human rights violations. — Posted at 5:43 pm

Jul. 23, 2004

TERROR COMMISSION REPORT SAYS OVERCLASSIFICATION IS A PROBLEM. Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News writes that The Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, published Thursday, identified overclassification as a problem requiring attention. Aftergood says it will take time to read and digest the Report's full contents, but the recommendation on secrecy immediately stood out: "Secrecy stifles oversight, accountability, and information sharing. Unfortunately, all the current organizational incentives encourage overclassification. This balance should change; and as a start, open information should be provided about the overall size of agency intelligence budgets." Click here for a copy of the Final Report of the 9-11 Commission. — Posted at 2:17 pm

MAGAZINE ASKS WHY NEWS MEDIA DELAYED ON ABU GHRAIB STORY. An in-depth story in this month's American Journalism Review asks why it took so long for the news media to uncover the Abu Ghraib scandal. The degradation at the prison finally became major international news three-and-a-half months after it came to light when CBS' "60 Minutes II" on April 28 aired ghastly photographs of U.S. military police posing and grinning next to naked, hooded Iraqi prisoners. Two days later, The New Yorker posted Seymour M. Hersh's scorching account of prisoner mistreatment at the prison. — Posted at 2:13 pm

Jul. 22, 2004

COMMISSION ISSUES 9/11 REPORT. The terrorists of Sept. 11, 2001, succeeded because the government of the United States - shackled by a mentality and a national-security bureaucracy more appropriate for a bygone cold war era - failed at many levels, the commission investigating the attacks said today as it warned that other, even deadlier attacks are likely. The commission chairman, Thomas H. Kean, said the worst failure of all was "a failure of imagination," in the sense that the signs had existed for years that an attack was coming. As the report itself put it, "The 9-11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise." Click here to read the executive summary of the report, published by The New York Times. — Posted at 4:47 pm

REPORT SAYS 94 CONFIRMED CASES OF ALLEGED PRISONER ABUSE. Army investigators announced 94 cases of confirmed or alleged prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan - a number higher than previous estimates - in a report issued today that concluded no systemic failures were at fault, The Associated Press reported. — Posted at 4:43 pm

IRAQI NEWSPAPER WILL REAPPEAR JULY 29. Ali Al-Yasseri, managing editor of al-Hawza, the newspaper shut down last spring by U.S.-led coalition forces and reopened by the new Iraqi government, says the paper's first, post-closure edition, will come out July 29. Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi issued an order Sunday allowing the paper to reopen, explaining that the action reflected his ``absolute belief in the freedom of the press.'' — Posted at 4:38 pm

Jul. 21, 2004

MCAULLIFFE FILES FOI REQUEST ON BERGER INVESTIGATION. Democratic National Committee Chair Terry McAuliffe filed a Freedom of Information Act request today for the release of correspondence between the Department of Justice and the White House regarding the investigation of former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger's use of classified documents. McAuliffe said the request is in response to "the questionable timing of the public release of information" regarding the investigation into Berger's actions. Click here to be connected to McAuliffe's FOI request, which is posted on The Drudge Report. — Posted at 4:55 pm

Jul. 20, 2004

FBI INVESTIGATING REMOVAL OF CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS FROM NATIONAL ARCHIVES. The FBI is investigating Clinton administration national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger's removal of classified documents from the National Archives, attorneys for Berger confirmed on Monday. Berger inadvertently took copies of several versions of an after-action memo on the millennium bombing plot from the Archives last fall, his attorney, Lanny Breuer, told The Washington Post. Breuer said one or more of the copies were then inadvertently discarded. The New York Times reports today that Republicans are speculating that Berger took the copies so he could turn them over to the campaign of Democratic candidate John Kerry. — Posted at 5:14 pm

Jul. 19, 2004

ADMINISTRATION WITHHOLDING AUDIT INFORMATION FROM UN. The Bush administration is withholding information from U.N.-sanctioned auditors examining more than $1 billion in contracts awarded to Halliburton Co. and other companies in Iraq without competitive bidding, the head of the international auditing board said last week. Jean-Pierre Halbwachs, the U.N. representative to the International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB), said that the United States has repeatedly rebuffed his requests since March to turn over internal audits, including one that covered three contracts valued at $1.4 billion that were awarded to Halliburton, a Texas-based oil services firm. It has also failed to produced a list of other companies that have obtained contracts without having to compete. — Posted at 3:17 pm

NEW IRAQI LEADER REOPENS NEWSPAPER. Iraq's interim prime minister issued a decree Sunday allowing a rebellious Shiite Muslim cleric to reopen a newspaper whose closure sparked a rebellion against U.S. forces, The Washington Post reported. The al-Hawza newspaper was closed by U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer on March 28 in an attempt to squelch criticism from the cleric, Moqtada Sadr. The closure became a rallying cry for Sadr's forces, and ensuing fighting across Shiite areas took a bloody toll on U.S. forces. Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's move was a clear rejection of Bremer's approach and an attempt to bring the powerful cleric and his followers into the political mainstream. — Posted at 10:47 am

Jul. 15, 2004

IDAHO SOLDIERS GIVEN APPROVED \"THEMES\" TO DISCUSS WITH MEDIA. The Idaho National Guard has told soldiers to use five approved "themes" when talking to the media, including support for war in Iraq and confidence in the superiority of American troops, according to The Associated Press. The suggestions were made on the front page of "Snakebite," the official newsletter of the 116th Brigade Combat Team. It does not prohibit soldiers from speaking about other issues, but says that referring to the themes "adds continuity to the message we are portraying as a unit." The other approved messages include pride for being on active duty, eagerness to work with coalition forces and appreciation for family and employers. — Posted at 6:10 pm

FBI TARGETED AGENT WHO COMPLAINED TO MEDIA AND CONGRESS. The Chicago Tribune reported this week that a Chicago-based FBI agent who has complained to the media and Congress that the bureau bungled terrorism investigations had been targeted for firing by supervisors who vowed to "take him out." According to a memo written by a former high-ranking official in the FBI's disciplinary office, the FBI opened an internal investigation against Agent Robert G. Wright Jr. in 2003 just days after his appearance at a news conference and on a national television news program. The top two agents in the FBI's disciplinary office at the time, Robert J. Jordan and J.P. "Jody" Weis, ordered an investigation into Wright for insubordination and had already made up their minds to have him fired, according to the memo obtained by the newspaper. — Posted at 6:05 pm

HOUSE COMMITTEE GETS CONFIDENTIAL RED CROSS REPORTS FROM PENTAGON. Members of the House Armed Services Committee reviewed nearly two dozen confidential reports Wednesday about U.S. prison operations in Iraq, documents that some Democrats said should have alerted officials to a pattern of problems and potential abuses of detainees long before the Abu Ghraib prison scandal became public earlier this year, The Washington Post reported. The Pentagon provided the International Committee of the Red Cross reports to Congress beginning Wednesday, allowing restricted access to about 150 pages of material that detailed prison conditions for detainees across Iraq. Members of the Senate are scheduled to have access today, although Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) told members yesterday that the ICRC documents are not a complete set. — Posted at 6:02 pm

MIAMI U.S. ATTORNEY BLACKBALLED A TV REPORTER. Taking message control in the war on terror to an extreme, the U.S. Attorney in Miami, Marcos Jimenez, took the bizarre step of trying to ban a particular reporter from covering a press conference by Attorney General John Ashcroft, reports the Miami New Times. Jimenez reportedly ordered a subordinate to tell WTVJ-TV, an NBC-owned station, that it would be excluded from the event entirely unless it agreed not to send correspondent Ike Seamans, with whom Jimenez had a disagreement over a prior story. Seamans happened to be overseas at the time, so WTVJ sent a different journalist, who confronted Jimenez about the issue. Ashcroft was visiting Miami to trumpet the Bush administration's conduct of the war on terror. — Posted at 3:53 pm

POST CRITICIZES HIDING OF PRISONERS. The lead editorial in today's Washington Post criticizes the Bush administration for apparently hiding prisoners from the Red Cross in violation of U.S. and international law. The prisoners are believed to be in the CIA's custody in detention centers around the world. "What is known, mostly through leaks to the media, is that several of the CIA's detainees probably have been tortured," the Post says, citing reports on the treatment of detainees Abu Zubaida and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The editorial calls upon Congress or the courts to intervene. — Posted at 12:10 pm

Jul. 14, 2004

MORE INFORMATION ON TAGUBA REPORT AVAILABLE. Secrecy News reports that the voluminous annexes to the classified Army investigative report by Maj. General Antonio M. Taguba regarding the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in U.S. custody were obtained by U.S. News and World Report, which has made several of them available on its web site. U.S. News offered additional reporting on the matter this week in an article entitled "Hell on Earth" by Edward T. Pound and Kit R. Roane. — Posted at 6:11 pm

VOICE OF AMERICA STAFF REVOLTS. More than a third of the Voice of America's staff has signed a petition accusing the federal government of "dismantling" the international broadcasting agency, while financing a pair of newer, semi-private and separate media operations that the staffers said do not live up to VOA standards, The Washington Post reports. Their complaints have sparked a nasty brawl with the program's parent agency - the Broadcasting Board of Governors - which created the new media groups. The board has rejected the staffers' charges, defended its young offspring and accused the VOA dissidents of being slow to adapt to necessary change. USA Today reports that the percentage of employees signing the petition is even higher. It says that nearly half of VOA's 1,000 staffers have signed the petition protesting what they call the ''piece-by-piece'' dismantling of the 62-year-old service, which reaches 87 million people in 44 languages. — Posted at 6:05 pm

ASHCROFT LAUDS PATRIOT ACT SUCCESSES. The Justice Department unveiled on Tuesday extensive new details of its use of the USA Patriot Act in a bid to shore up support for the embattled anti-terrorism law, asserting that it has helped thwart al Qaeda plots and led to scores of criminal convictions since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, The Washington Post reported. According to a 29-page report to Congress released by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, Justice Department terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against 310 people and have yielded 179 convictions or guilty pleas. The report says the Patriot Act was central to those cases. In a speech, Ashcroft said "the report provides a mountain of evidence that the Patriot Act has saved lives." The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, told The Los Angeles Times, "The report is more of John Ashcroft's doubletalk on the Patriot Act." — Posted at 5:54 pm

SENATE INTELLIGENCE REPORT HEAVILY REDACTED. Tuesday's Washington Post editorial noted that at least one U.S. Senator - Trent Lott (R-Miss.)- was appropriately outraged by the lack of information found in the Senate intelligence committee's report on prewar intelligence. The editorial says "you'll find instance after instance in which lines, paragraphs, even entire pages are blacked out." It could have been worse, though, the Post says: "If intelligence officials had their way, nearly half of the 511-page report would have been redacted, rather than the 15 percent or so that was excised in the final version." — Posted at 5:48 pm

FORMER ARMY SCIENTIST SUES NEW YORK TIMES AND COLUMNIST. Former Army scientist Steven J. Hatfill filed a lawsuit against the New York Times and columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, alleging that he was defamed by the paper in a series of columns that pinned him as a "likely culprit" in the 2001 anthrax attacks, the Washington Post reports. Attorney General John Ashcroft identified Hatfill as a "person of interest" in the investigation in 2002. The attacks, which involved anthrax-tainted letters mailed to government and media offices, killed five people and injured 17. Kristof wrote several columns criticizing the the FBI for failing to aggressively pursue the investigation, referring to Hatfill initially as "Dr. Z." The investigation is still being pursued and no one has been charged. — Posted at 5:12 pm

TROUBLING DEVELOPMENTS IN GITMO. The Red Cross suspects that the U.S. is hiding detainees in secret prisons across the globe, according to The Associated Press. Some terror suspects who have been reported by the FBI as captured have not turned up in detention centers, the Red Cross says. The Bush administration continues to stonewall requests for a list of everyone it is holding. Meanwhile, the Pengaton has begun notifying Guantanamo detainees of their right to challenge their captivity. But Knight Ridder reports that the one-page notice provides "scant information" about their right to petition a federal court, as opposed to the newly created Combatant Status Review Tribunal. And the document makes "no mention" of the recent Supreme Court ruling affirming that right, Knight Ridder says. — Posted at 3:13 pm

Jul. 13, 2004

ASSESSMENT OF DISCREDITED DEFECTOR REDACTED FROM SENATE REPORT. About one-fifth of the Senate Intelligence Committee's 511-page report on Iraq still has not been made public, The New York Times reports, including a "detailed assessment that casts doubt on the credibility of an Iraqi defector whose claims about Iraq's mobile biological weapons laboratories have been discredited." The information was deleted from the report "in deference to British intelligence, which originally relayed the information provided by the defector to the United States and has maintained a continuing relationship with him." — Posted at 6:58 pm

ICRC WARNS OF MORE SECRET DETENTIONS. The International Committee of the Red Cross said today that it suspects the U.S. is holding suspected terrorists in secret locations around the world, with no public notice that the individuals are even detained. Some suspects, whose arrests were announced by the FBI on its Web site, are unaccounted for, the group said. — Posted at 5:22 pm

Jul. 12, 2004

SOME SECREY REMAINS AT GUANTANAMO; SOME IS LIFTED. Despite pledging yearly reviews for all prisoners held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Pentagon officials tentatively agreed during a high-level meeting last month to deny that process to some detainees and to keep their existence secret "for intelligence reasons," senior defense officials said last week. The Los Angeles Times reported that under the proposal, some prisoners would in effect be kept off public records and away from the scrutiny of lawyers and judges. meanwhile, The Chicago Tribune reports that recent information from Guantanamo has derailed plans for attacks during the Athens Olympics next month and possibly forestalled at least a dozen attacks elsewhere. The detention facility has been cloaked in secrecy since the U.S. decided in early 2002 to bring prisoners from Afghanistan and elsewhere to Guantanamo. Now, the veil is lifting in the wake of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision giving prisoners held as enemy combatants the right to challenge their detention, the Tribune reported. — Posted at 5:55 pm

INTELLIGENCE SHOWED IRAQ-AL QAEDA LINK \'MURKY.\' The New York Times reported Friday that a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report found that the White House was told repeatedly after the Sept. 11 attacks that evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda "was 'murky' and conflicting," and that the agency's judgment stood in stark contrast with the administration's depiction of "a close, well-documented relationship." The Senate complimented the CIA on its analysis and pointed to five highly classified intelligence summaries the agency distributed after Sept. 11 suggesting that any significant ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda were difficult to prove. — Posted at 5:52 pm

Jul. 9, 2004

TOUGH VISA RENEWAL RULES TO TAKE EFFECT. New rules banning the estimated 20,000 foreign journalists working in the United States from renewing their visas without leaving the country first take effect next week, and may lead to chaos for overseas news organizations as the political conventions and presidential election approach, The Guardian reports. — Posted at 6:15 pm

HOUSE REJECTS EFFORT TO CURB PATRIOT ACT A law that would have curbed government powers granted by the USA PATRIOT Act failed to pass in the House of Representatives yesterday by one vote. The measure would have prevented the government from accessing library and bookseller records -- including library patron reading lists and book customer lists. Although the measure seemed to have enough support before yesterday's vote, the Washington Post reports that House Republicans, under intense pressure from the White House and the threat of a Presidential veto, prolonged the vote "for 23 tumultuous minutes while they corralled dissident members." — Posted at 6:10 pm

PRESS RELEASES CAN BE KEPT SECRET. Forbes Magazine reports in its July 26 edition that a Department of Justice unit has refused a Freedom of Information Act request from a private party for copies of press releases issued by the agency concerning terrorism-related indictments. — Posted at 4:19 pm

Jul. 8, 2004

ADMINISTRATION HASTILY ARRANGES FOR DETAINEE REVIEWS In what The New York Times calls "a last-ditch effort by the administration to retain control" over the Guantanamo detainees, the Pentagon yesterday announced a process under which the nearly 600 prisoners can challenge their confinement. The review process, outlined in this memorandum by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, does not include Fifth Amendment protections or the right to counsel. It is also doubtful that the proposed Combatant Status Review Tribunal -- composed exclusively of military officers, who are ultimately commanded by President Bush -- constitutes the kind of "neutral decision-maker" that the Supreme Court had in mind in its June 28 ruling that the detainees must be permitted to challenge the legality of their detention. The Pentagon continues to refuse to provide the names of the accused, their alleged crimes or the nationalities, the Times notes. — Posted at 7:24 pm

WHISTLEBLOWER SUIT DISMISSED. A claim by whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, fired by the FBI after revealing alleged security lapses in the translation of documents, was thrown out yesterday by a federal district judge in Washington, D.C. Judge Reggie Walton explained only that he accepted the representations of Attorney General John Ashcroft and a senior FBI official that the suit itself would reveal state secrets. — Posted at 7:23 pm

Jul. 7, 2004

CRITICAL ARMY REPORT DECODED FOR WEB A "revealing and fairly critical" book-length study of Operation Iraqi Freedom can be found at Global Security's Web site, the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News reported today. FAS editor Steven Aftergood wrote that the Army took extraordinary steps to limit access to the new report entitled "On Point." coding it on the Army site so that it could not be downloaded, copied or printed, and attempting to eliminate any chance of its being read except at the Army site. Aftergood called the notion of coding a Web site to prevent downloading or copying "antithetical" and like "an artifact from an alternate universe." Aftergood credits Francis Boo of GlobalSecurity.org with a "feat of textual engineering" in overcoming the Army's coding and making the report publicly available. The report reveals among other things that the seemingly spontaneous toppling of the statute of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad was engineered by Army Psyops. — Posted at 5:44 pm

NINE MORE DETAINEES MARKED FOR MILITARY TRIBUNALS The Pentagon announced today that President Bush has designated nine more detainees to stand trial by military tribunal, bringing the total to 15. The names of the nine, who are being held in secret detention in Guantanamo, were not released. Specific charges have not yet been approved, the Pentagon said. — Posted at 4:54 pm

Jul. 6, 2004

JUDGE ADMITS TALKING TO FBI, REPORTER IN DETROIT TERROR CASE The Associated Press reports that U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen, who presided over the trial of four Detroit men accused of operating a terror cell, was interviewed June 19 by FBI agents investigating whether prosecutors in the case withheld evidence and leaked sensitive information. Rosen also acknowledged to the AP that he met with a reporter who later wrote about the case, citing "courthouse sources." Ironically, Rosen had imposed gag orders forbidding lawyers in the case to talk to the news media. The AP report is the latest in a series of strange twists in the Detroit case, which has included embarrassing revelations of prosecutorial misconduct and a flap over Attorney General Ashcroft's violation of a gag order. — Posted at 4:44 pm

Jul. 2, 2004

AD CAMPAIGN STRESSES CIVIC ENGAGEMENT. The Ad Council launches its latest round of "Campaign for Freedom" public service announcements over the Independence Day weekend. The original ads addressed the impact of freedom on people who have lost it, fought for it, suffered to get it, and truly appreciate it. The new series of Public Service Announcements moves beyond reminding Americans about their freedoms to actually encouraging Americans to engage in everyday civic activities and express freedom in action. The goal is to help Americans to make the connection - both intellectually and emotionally - between protecting freedom and taking personal responsibility for the freedoms they enjoy. — Posted at 4:21 pm

TRANSPORTATION BILL CRITICIZED FOR SECRECY PROVISION. Columnists and editorial writers are speaking out against a proposed federal highway bill that, in the words of the Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune, "hides a scary little hobgoblin." At the request of the Bush administration, the senate bill includes a clause that allows the Department of Homeland Security to clamp a lid of secrecy over almost any information related to transportation. Anything considered "Sensitive Security Information" would override all state and federal public disclosure laws. The public, for example, could lose the ability to find out how many school bus drivers have DUI or drug convictions. The Freedom Forum's Paul McMasters writes that "in a democracy, over-reaching secrecy does not make us safer; rather it creates only the equality of ignorance." — Posted at 4:14 pm

NEWS MEDIA SHUT OUT OF SADDAM HEARING. The Guardian [U.K.] reports that most of the world's press was shut out of the court appearance of Saddam Hussein, following an unusual ruling by an Iraqi judge. Only one Western print reporter, John Burns of The New York Times, was permitted to attend, and his copy was not shared with other reporters under the usual pooling arrangement. — Posted at 10:31 am

Jul. 1, 2004

SADDAM\'S HEARING TELEVISED. Television channels around the world began broadcasting this afternoon the first images of Saddam Hussein at a hearing in which he was charged with an array of offenses during his time as president of Iraq. (If Saddam was being tried by U.S. officials under U.S. law, the appearance undoubtedly would have been closed to broadcast coverage.) CNN's Christiane Amanpour, who was in the courtroom, described Saddam's statement to the court as "a bizarre rant." — Posted at 5:07 pm

FEDERAL HIGHWAY BILL WOULD SEAL PUBLIC RECORDS. The Louisville Courier-Journal reports that deep inside a voluminous highway-spending bill before Congress are two sentences that would allow the federal government to seal information now available to the public, including records related to the transportation of hazardous materials through cities. One sentence would supersede states' open-records laws. The other would give the federal Transportation Security Administration wide latitude in defining what is "sensitive" and should be kept secret, letting the agency's director withhold information deemed "detrimental to the safety of passengers in transportation, transportation facilities or infrastructure or transportation employees...." — Posted at 5:00 pm

NIGHTMARE IN NEW YORK: INNOCENT NEPALESE MAN HELD IN SOLITARY COFINEMENT. A Nepalese man whom the federal government now acknowledges to be innocent was secretly imprisoned for three months without charges after Sept. 11, The New York Times reports. Even worse, his detention dragged on long after the FBI agent responsible for the case concluded that the man, Purna Raj Bajracharya, was totally harmless. The cause? A "byzantine" world of "secret detention and secret hearings," the Times reports. Bajracharya was picked up after he happened to film a building that houses an FBI office while videotaping the streets of New York to show his family. He was detained, interrogated, and held in a 6-by-9 foot cell with the lights on 24 hours a day. A spokesman for the Justice Department told the Times that the system of secrecy that enveloped Bajracharya is "an unfortunate reality, post-9/11." — Posted at 4:20 pm

JUDGE RULES \"NO JUSTIFICATION\" FOR WITHHOLDING. A federal judge has ruled that the FBI and Transportation Security Administration improperly categorized "innocuous" information as "sensitive security information," Secrecy News reports. The ruling from Judge Charles Breyer of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California came in a case filed over FOI Act access to "no fly" lists that restrict airline travel by certain people. The suit was brought by two people on the list and the ACLU of Northern California. — Posted at 2:37 pm

FISA RECORDS GIVEN TO DEFENSE, BUT NOT PUBLIC, IN HASSOUN CASE. Dan Christensen of the Miami Daily Business Review reports that 10,000 pages of FBI records and transcripts obtained by covert wiretaps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) have been provided to defense attorneys for accused terrorist Adham Amin Hassoun. But the materials will not become public anytime soon, thanks to a sweeping protective order issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge Ann Vitunac of Miami. Vitunac wrote that "FISA intercepts, or any copies thereof, are now and will forever remain the property of the U.S. government." Hassoun was secretly detained on an immigration violation in June 2002, and, much later, was accused of lying about his ties to alleged terrorists. — Posted at 2:35 pm

MINNESOTA MAN FACES DEPORTATION, CHARGES FOR ALLEGED TERROR TIES. The Washington Post reported this week that newly unsealed court papers accuse Mohamed Kamal Elzahabi, a 41-year old Lebanese national residing in Minneapolis, of lying to the FBI when he denied shipping field radios to Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. According to the Post, Elzahabi was approached by the FBI three months ago, taken to New York, and held for 90 days there as a material witness. He now faces two counts of making false statements and is mired in deportation proceedings. The Post quotes a "senior Justice Department official" who requested anonymity - a marked departure from the high-profile announcements that have accompanied many of the Bush administration's terror charges. — Posted at 2:33 pm

UNNATURAL CAUSES. The Associated Press reports that the Army has refused to provide information about re-opened prisoner death probes. New information has prompted Army officials to conduct homicide investigations into a number of POW and prisoner deaths previously attributed to "natural causes." While the Army has refused to declined to provide further information, the Associated Press has complied a list of 11 possible homicides from other sources. — Posted at 2:32 pm

PUBLIC RECORDS INACCESSIBLE. The Department of Justice says it can't provide an electronic copy of a public database on foreign lobbyists because it would crash an outdated computer system, the Center for Public Integrity said in a press release. The Center requested the data in an FOI Act request, but the request was denied because "implementing such a request risks a crash that cannot be fixed and could result in a major loss of data, which would be devestating," said Thomas McIntyre, Chief of the Freedom of Information/Privacy Act Unit of the DOJ Criminal Division in a written response to the request. The information is still accessible and available to requesters, but at a significant printing cost and only if they know the precise files they want. DOJ is "currently engaged" with a contractor to upgrade their systems. — Posted at 2:30 pm

SECRECY ERODES ENVIRONMENTAL LAW. The Society of Environmental Journalists reports that the Department of Homeland Security has proposed making its Environmental Impact Statements secret. The statements are required to be disclosed by the National Environmental Policy Act before the govenrment may take any major actions that might impact the environment. The policy, proposed in the Federal Register and currently open to public comment, would allow the DHS to restrict access to all or part of the documents at its discretion. — Posted at 2:27 pm