Washington's addiction to secrecy. Calamitous decade has shown that our foreign policy elites require greater public supervision, which only leaks can provide..JR. Topics

Why massive national security leaks are good for us

Until our dystopian classification system is overhauled, leaks remain an essential public  service. Bradley Manning was charged with aiding the enemy for allegedly giving hundreds of thousands of classified US documents to whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks [AP] Today, Saturday, February 23, US Army Private First Class Bradley Manning is spending his 1,000th  day in pretrial detention for allegedly leaking classified material about our Iraq and Afghan Wars. Former  CIA official John Kiriakou just started serving a three-year sentence for a leak about his former employer's  use of torture.  Thomas Drake, a former National Security Agency analyst, has had his career (and finances) destroyed after  being prosecuted for leaking to the Baltimore Sun about waste and illegality in the NSA's domestic surveillance programmer  All this prosecutorial energy is sorely misdirected, for the simple reason  that leaks are good for us. We depend on leaks - they're often the only way to get essential information about what our government is doing. Without government officials leaking to the media, we might never have heard of the Watergate break-in, or our increasingly frequent (but still "secret") drone strikes in a growing list of countries. President Obama may insist that his is the most transparent administration ever, but the facts say otherwise. According to the Information Security Oversight Office, a federal agency, the government classified 92  million documents in 2011, up from 77 million the year before, up from 14 million in 2003 (hiding so  much from the public costs $11 billion a year, according to the ISOO). Inside Story AmericasHow does the US treat its whistleblowers? That's some pretty extreme secrecy. At the same time, Washington is wonderfully indulgent of elite officials leaking top-secret material to media (good thing too - how else would we have learned in 2007 that Iran isn't building an atomic weapon but from a leaked National Intelligence Estimate?). Obama's former Chief of Staff William Daley has bragged about how much he leaked to the media - though not as much as his predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, whom Daley affectionately referred to as "the leaker in chief". But officials in Washington find it less adorable when those of lowlier status leak items less flattering to the government. Defence analyst Daniel Ellsberg found this out when the Nixon administration filed criminal charges against him for leaking the Pentagon Papers, the top-secret study of the Vietnam War. Today, Obama's Department of Justice has launched twice as many Espionage Act prosecutions against domestic leakers and whistle blowers as all previous administrations combined. The most controversial leaks since the Pentagon Papers are the WikiLeaks disclosures, which have provided fodder for thousands of new stories about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and US statecraft  in general. This is the biggest leak in our history - yet it amounts to less than one percent of the material Washington classified last year. Three years after the release of the WikiLeaks material, no one has been able to show any resulting harm to a single soldier or civilian, despite much lurid speculation about the terrible damage to US interests.  By contrast, Washington has been rather reticent about the horrific costs, in blood and money, of extreme government secrecy. After all, it was official secrecy, distortion and even a few lies that led us headlong into disaster and carnage in Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and 4,500 US soldiers, all at  a cost measured in trillions - the wages of Washington's addiction to secrecy. In the case of Bradley Manning, his alleged leaking is a clear act of civil disobedience. Neck-deep in the  worst foreign policy disaster since Vietnam, Manning surmised that if American citizens had some clue of what was actually happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, it might help avoid such disasters in the future. In Manning's own words, he wanted "people to see the truth... because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public". What's so objectionable about well-informed decisions? After all, the notion that government ought to be as open as practicable was not dreamed up at the annual Defcon hacker convention - it's a central part of American political thought. It was James Madison who wrote that "a popular government, without popular information, is but a prelude to a tragedy or a farce, or perhaps both". And yet it was only in the summer of 2010 that the National Security Agency finally saw fit to declassify material from Madison's presidency -  two centuries earlier. The past calamitous decade has shown that our foreign policy elites require greater public supervision, which only leaks can provide. The real threat to American security isn't leaks and whistle blowers, it's our current regimen of extreme official secrecy. Until our dystopian classification system is overhauled,  leaks remain an essential public service, and those who provide them deserve both gratitude and clemency. Epson Expression Home XP-400 Small-in-One Printer C11CC07201 (Google Affiliate Ad)

Consumer group asks FDA to limit sweeteners in soft drinks.Things are moving in the right direction.. JR Topics

Consumer group asks FDA to limit sweeteners in soft drinks

The Center for Science in the Public Interest urges the FDA to require beverage makers to reduce the amount of high-fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners.

The petition follows recent actions by health advocates to curb the consumption of sugary drinks because of concerns about obesity. (Spencer Platt, Getty Images / January 23, 2013)
By Ricardo Lopez, 
A consumer group is taking aim at high-fructose corn syrup in soft drinks, arguing that it and other sweeteners are responsible for high obesity rates and health problems because Americans drink too much soda.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest filed a petition Wednesday with the U.S. Food and Drug Administrationurging the agency to require beverage makers to reduce the amount of high-fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners.

"In the past 10 years or so, researchers have done a variety of experiments and studies that connect soft drinks to obesity" and other health problems, said Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of the consumer group. "The science is now very strong."

Jacobson said current levels of high-fructose corn syrup are unsafe for daily consumption, which is why his group is calling for the FDA to study the matter.

A spokeswoman for the FDA said it had received the petition and would directly reply to the petitioner, but did not give a time frame.

The petition follows recent actions by health advocates to curb the consumption of sugary drinks.

New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, for instance, is moving forward with a measure that would ban the sale of large soft drinks in his city. Other municipalities across the country have voted on ballot measures that would impose taxes on the sale of sugary drinks.

In California, voters in El Monte last fall turned down a measure that would have taxed soft drinks — a measure that was vehemently opposed by beverage makers such as 

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PepsiCo Inc. and Coca-Cola Co.

The two soft drink companies Wednesday referred inquiries to the American Beverage Assn., a trade group.

"Everyone has a role to play in reducing obesity levels — a fact completely ignored in this petition," the American Beverage Assn. said in a statement. "This is why the beverage industry has worked to increase options and information for consumers."

Jacobson said beverage makers are offering more healthful options to consumers, who have been drinking less soda in recent years.

"Things are moving in the right direction," he said. "Consumers are drinking less soft drinks, and I think a big reason is the obesity epidemic."

The filing isn't the first by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

The group has filed similar petitions in the past urging the FDA to regulate the use of salt and hydrogenated vegetable oils.

The petition was signed by dozens of health advocacy groups, scientists and public health departments from cities including Los Angeles and Boston.

Federal lawmakers say is true, there's more to the shutdown at the San Onofre nuclear plant than the public has been told..he public in the dark. They deserve to know more. JR Topics.

                        In the dark on San Onofre

Ratepayers and the public deserve to know more about who knew what and when concerning the nuclear plant's problematic steam generators.

The San Onofre nuclear plant hasn't been producing energy for more than a year, ever since it was discovered that vibration in its new $771-million steam generators was causing unusual friction and wear on tubes that carry radioactive water. (Los Angeles Times / February 8, 2013)

If what two federal lawmakers say is true, there's more to the shutdown at the San Onofre nuclear plant than the public has been told. According to Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), a leaked internal report by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which manufactured the problem-riddled steam generators that forced the shutdown, indicates that concerns about the generators' design were raised before they were even installed but that only minimal fixes were made.

Southern California Edison, which owns the plant, denies this, which leaves ratepayers and the public in the dark. They deserve to know more.

San Onofre hasn't been producing energy for more than a year, ever since it was discovered that vibration in its new $771-million steam generators was causing unusual friction and wear on tubes that carry radioactive water. The utility has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to restart one of the reactors at partial power, saying that the reduced operating level will also reduce vibration.

Boxer and Markey have received copies of the Mitsubishi report, which the NRC also has in its possession, allegedly showing that Edison knew about the design flaws in the steam generators early on. In a letter to the NRC, the two lawmakers contend that the report, the result of an internal corporate probe of the San Onofre fiasco, gives very specific information about early concerns over possible tube friction. Purportedly, Edison rejected any major modifications because they would have required a higher level of regulatory oversight by the NRC. Edison officials contend that the quotations from the report were taken out of context in ways that distort their meaning.

The solution to these warring assertions seems simple enough: Release the report so that ratepayers, who are paying the tab for the purchase of the steam generators, and the public, whose safety depends on responsible operation of the plant, can determine the truth. But the report is stamped "proprietary," and only Mitsubishi or the NRC can decide to release it.

The NRC should make the document public, and soon. It might provide an important description of how Edison makes its safety decisions, and it could become a key aspect of the Public Utility Commission's inquiry into whether ratepayers should be forced to continue paying for the steam generators. Any truly proprietary technical data about Mitsubishi's design methods could be redacted, if they exist. What the public is entitled to is information about who knew what and when.

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Theories came up of Sandy Hook. Whom to believe. No rifle was used ? He had died a day before. What is all this..JR Topics.

Sandy Hook Hoax Theories Explained: Why Newtown 'Truther' Arguments Don't Hold Up

 BY Hunter Stuart

Video, Newtown Conspiracy, Newtown Conspiracy Theory, Newtown Exposed, Newtown Hoax, Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting, Sandy Hook Conspiracy, Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theory,Sandy Hook Exposed, Sandy Hook Hoax, Crime News

A number of conspiracy theories have grown up surrounding the shooting that claimed 27 lives at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012.

Many of these theories don’t necessarily assert that the shooting didn’t happen, but all of them claim some amount of deception has been wrought on the American publicas to what happened in Newtown, Conn., that day. Some go so far as to say the massacre was a joint government-media operation to shore up support for a federal assault weapons ban.

There have already been a number of articles debunking many of these theories, including one by The Huffington Post. But in spite of the backlash, the theories continue to grow. Even professional athletes, news anchors and tenured university professors have lent credence to them.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of videos on YouTube that have been viewed more than 25 million times in total. (Yes, we counted.) One of those videos, by user "ThinkOutsideTheTV," was viewed more than 10 million times in just 11 days, Buzzfeed points out.

HuffPost has obtained new information that sheds more light on some of the confusion that surfaced in the hours after the shooting occurred. Here are a few persistent “truther” arguments and explanations as to why they don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Choose one of the truther arguments below, or scroll to read through them all.

• Sandy Hook School Nurse Sally Cox "Got Her Script Wrong"
• Adam Lanza Didn’t Use An Assault Rifle To Kill His Victims
• Adam Lanza Died The Day Before The Shooting
• Memorial Websites And Facebook Pages Were Already Set Up
• Why Did Adam Lanza Have His Brother's ID?
• There Were Multiple Shooters
• Crisis Actors Were Used To Give Interviews To The Media
• Conclusion

Sandy Hook School Nurse Sally Cox "Got Her Script Wrong"

An argument making the rounds on YouTube and on many blogs attempts to use a clip of WUSA reporter Andrea McCarren as a way of illustrating the differing narratives supposedly given to the public.

Watch the clip of McCarren in Newtown on the day of the shooting (story continues below):

In the clip, McCarren reports that Cox said she knew the shooter's mother to be a "very caring, experienced kindergarten teacher." She also says Cox called her "just the kind of person you would want with your 5-year-old children.”

Some truthers assert that Cox must have gotten her “script” wrong, because why else would she think Nancy Lanza was a teacher at the school when that’s been reported to be false?

However, law enforcement officials did initially state that the shooter was the son of a kindergarten teacher, and their statement was widely reported by the media. Soon thereafter it was discovered to be untrue, at which time many media outlets issued corrections to their previous reports.

A source with knowledge of Cox's interview told HuffPost that Cox mentioned no names during the interview, and that questions posed to the nurse did not use the name of Adam Lanza (or even Ryan Lanza, who was initially named as the shooter). In fact, reporters didn't use any names at all, the source said, only generic terms like "the suspect" or "the shooter."

Therefore, Cox may have heard those same initial, erroneous reports that the shooter was the son of a Sandy Hook kindergarten teacher and may have assumed them to be true at the time.

When reached by phone, Cox told HuffPost that she "never said anything about anyone," although she acknowledged a group of reporters had "descended" on her outside the town firehouse. When asked if McCarren got her story wrong, Cox said "yes" and added that "those [conspiracy] theories are all manufactured lies."

McCarren provided no public comment at time of publication.

Adam Lanza Didn’t Use An Assault Rifle To Kill His Victims

The notion that Lanza didn't use an assault rifle to carry out his killings at Sandy Hook Elementary began as an erroneous report by the media in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Perhaps most notably, NBC News, citing federal and state officials, reported on Dec. 15 that there were "actually four handguns recovered from inside the school" and "apparently only handguns that were taken into the school."

NBC also incorrectly reported that an AR-15 was found in the trunk of Lanza's car.

NBC wasn’t the only one to misreport this information. CNN also incorrectly reported which weapon was found in Lanza's car. The New York Times, citing law enforcement officials, also reported that Lanza had used handguns in the shooting. (Interestingly, the Times got it right the first time by saying Lanza used a rifle.)

It's still unclear where that misinformation came from. State police spokesman Paul Vance told HuffPost it didn’t come from the Connecticut State Police; FBI spokesman Dan Curtin told HuffPost it didn't come from the Connecticut branch of the FBI, and neither NBC News or the Times returned a request for comment.

What is clear is that NBC News updated its report a few hours later to say that law enforcement officials had given out "conflicting" information. The outlet said it appeared Lanza may have only carried two handguns and that a rifle was "also found at the scene" -- information that later turned out to be true.

In spite of errors the media and law enforcement officials may have made in the hectic hours following the shooting, certain facts are now established. Here they are, in chronological order:

The day after the shooting, Chief Medical Examiner Wayne Carver said all the victims he had examined had been shot with a rifle at close range. The following day, Connecticut State Police spokesman Lt. Paul Vance said that "a Bushmaster AR-15 assault type weapon" with high capacity magazines was the weapon that was used "most of the time" during the shootings. That same day, Vance also sent HuffPost an email saying Lanza carried "many high-capacity clips" for the weapon.

The Connecticut State Police released a statement on Jan. 18 with the purpose of showing the public exactly which guns were found and where.

On Jan. 24, Vance, citing "conspiracy theorists" that were "trying to mucky up the waters," reiterated that Lanza had killed all of his victims with a semi-automatic rifle. Vance emailed HuffPost on Jan. 29 to confirm, again, that Lanza used a Bushmaster rifle in the school, that high-capacity magazines were also found in the school, and that the weapon found in the trunk of Lanza's car was a shotgun.

Hoax theorists point to a grainy video that appears to show law enforcement removing a weapon from the trunk of Lanza’s car. The video appears to have been shot from a helicopter, at night, and nothing in the video -- or anywhere else -- shows the gun to be anything except a 12-gauge shotgun, as the authorities have said.

Adam Lanza Died The Day Before The Shooting

The Social Security Death Master File appears to have printed Dec. 13, 2012 as the day of death for Adam Lanza, rather than Dec. 14 (when he killed himself at Sandy Hook Elementary). Conspiracy theorists have seized on the error as yet another reason to think that Lanza is a false flag for the shooting.

(Story continues below.)

How could the Social Security Administration have made such an error?

The mistake may not have been made by the Social Security Administration. TheDeath Master File -- a database with information on millions of dead people that is used to prevent identity theft -- is compiled from the social security records of Americans whose deaths have been reported to the Social Security Administration. Whoever reported Lanza's death may have made the error.

HuffPost contacted the Social Security Administration's Danbury, Conn., office, which is responsible for the town of Newtown, where Lanza lived. A representative for the office said it was possible they had made a mistake, but a copy of the death certificate would be needed to change the error.

However, there is no death certificate for Adam Lanza -- yet. Lanza's certificate will become available after it's been filed with the Newtown Registrar of Vital Records. That will happen once the case is completed, said Debbie Aurelia, the Newtown town clerk. But the case won't be completed until the toxicology reports are finished, which "won't happen too quickly," the office of the Medical Examiner told HuffPost over the phone. (On Jan. 17, CNSNews reported that state police said the report is still "several months away.")

Even if the Social Security Administration made the mistake, it wouldn’t be the first time it's happened. In fact, between May 2007 and April 2010, more than 36,000 people were reported as dead by the Social Security Administration although they were still alive, CNN reported in 2011. A 2012 report by the Office of the Inspector General found the Social Security Administration failed to record the deaths of about 1.2 million people. Clearly, it is not immune from making mistakes; even the agency itself refuses to guarantee the accuracy of the Death Master File.

HuffPost has requested a copy of Adam Lanza's death certificate and will update the story when the request is fulfilled.

Memorial Websites And Facebook Pages Were Already Set Up

Some hoax theorists have questioned why some websites and social media pages set up as donation sites or memorials for victims were apparently date-stamped prior to the shooting. Isn't that proof that there was knowledge of the shooting before Dec. 14,they ask?

No, it isn't. As many people with blogs know, Google crawls webpages inconsistently and, as Insquisitr notes, "if a page is repurposed to host other information than it originally displayed, it may show up as having been 'published' earlier."

It's easy to illustrate this phenomenon. As Reddit user Oltimega points out on this thread about the issue, if one uses a date-restricted search, all kinds of articles come up about the Newtown shooting with Google date stamps weeks, months and even years before the shooting occurred.

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