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U.S. Reclassifies Many Documents in Secret Review
In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians….
Under existing guidelines, government documents are supposed to be declassified after 25 years unless there is particular reason to keep them secret. While some of the choices made by the security reviewers at the archives are baffling, others seem guided by an old bureaucratic reflex: to cover up embarrassments, even if they occurred a half-century ago.
Source: The New York Times (online), February 21, 2006
Cold War Nuclear Tests Exposed Americans To Radioactivity
Warning: The Surgeon General has determined that the U.S. Government is hazardous to your health. That’s the grim warning the Libertarian Party wants to slap on politicians, after the federal government confessed this week that Cold War nuclear tests exposed 230,000 Americans to high levels of radioactivity — and may cause 75,000 people to develop fatal thyroid cancer.
This week, the National Cancer Institute admitted that government nuclear tests in the 1950s and 1960s showered the lower 48 states with Iodine 131 — and exposed people in five states to enough radiation to cause lethal thyroid cancer. Especially vulnerable: Children under age five, who received radiation dosages three to seven times above the average.
Source: Libertarian Party Press Release, August 8, 1997
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