I wanted to put this diary entry out as a compilation of some recent news stories and developments in terms of media watching, secretive and/or falsiness activities, etc. First up: a story I haven't seen diaried (though I may have missed it).
Cheney's Office Declares Exemption from Secrecy Oversight by Michelle Chen in The New Standard.
A few quotes starting below the fold:
In its 2005 report to the president released last month, the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), a branch of the National Archives, provides a quantitative overview of hundreds of thousands of pages of classified and declassified documents. But the vice president's input consists of a single footnote explaining that his office failed to meet its reporting requirements for the third year in a row.
Though not the only government entity to shrug off the reporting duties, Cheney's office is unique in that it has actually issued a public justification for its non-compliance. Cheney's office argued on Monday that its dual role in the federal government places it above the reporting mandate.
"This matter has been carefully reviewed, and it has been determined that the reporting requirement does not apply to [the Office of the Vice President], which has both executive and legislative functions," Lea McBride, a spokesperson for Cheney's office, told The NewStandard.
Cheney's press aides declined to specify to TNS how the office's legislative role effectively exempted it from the executive order, or why the office had complied prior to 2003.
Aftergood said that the ISOO could try to compel Cheney to comply with the executive order through enforcement mechanisms. These could include sanctions, which under the ISOO's mandate might entail "termination of classification authority" or "denial of access to classified information" - or officially requesting an advisory ruling from the attorney general to clarify the vice president's obligations.
Since receiving the letter, Leonard of the ISOO told TNS that he is "currently pursuing the matter." Noting the novelty of Cheney's defense, he added, "I am not aware of any other entity claiming any such 'exemption.'"
Of course,
we've also read that the OVP has been responsible for the 750 or so "signing statements" from our vetoless 'leader', as I diaried
here.
The officials said Cheney's legal adviser and chief of staff, David Addington , is the Bush administration's leading architect of the ``signing statements" the president has appended to more than 750 laws. The statements assert the president's right to ignore the laws because they conflict with his interpretation of the Constitution.
so the secrecy should really come as no surprise.
Okay, on to some more encouraging notes- The Eat the Press feature over at Huffington Post has been greatly expanded and looks really good. I know I for one will be checking over there with frequency. From Rachel Sklar's latest post- Welcome to "Eat The Press!"
Welcome to the Huffington Post's newest feature, "Eat The Press!" This page will be the nexus of all of HuffPo's media coverage, from blog posts to news briefs to top headlines every day, plus blogosphere reaction, spin, whispered conjecture, appropriately disclaimed rumors and all the chatter from across the national conversation. We're pretty excited.
The crux of "Eat The Press" will be our coverage of all areas of the media, from newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, podcast, vidcast, blogging, vlogging, and whatever else is out there. Between new assaults on freedom of the press, attacks on its coverage (rightly or wrongly), and the most secretive administration ever during some pretty scary times, a healthy, functioning Fourth Estate is more essential than ever. We'll be keeping a watchful eye out for blunders, bias and conflicts, but "Eat The Press" will also be celebrating the best of the profession, from incredible investigative work to evocative, moving prose to hilarious observations to just great writing that is in turn charming, funny, thoughtful, insightful, challenging, witty and twin-riffic. We will also be using words like "twin-riffic."
and as I posted in a couple of comments earlier in the day, Craig Unger is working on a new book, a sequel to House of Bush, House of Saud.
about the neoconservatives and the Christian Right(I wrote about them in VF as well, http://www.vanityfair.com/... ) and that I'm hoping to advance some of the issues I write about in the current piece.
If anyone has new leads for me, they could email me at craigunger at houseofbush dot com
The current piece, being, of course
The War They Wanted, The Lies They Needed which has been well diaried already
here, but I can't resist putting a couple story quotes anyway, since quite a bit of the article is devoted to Michael Ledeen:
The Bush administration invaded Iraq claiming Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium in Niger. As much of Washington knew, and the world soon learned, the charge was false. Worse, it appears to have been the cornerstone of a highly successful "black propaganda" campaign with links to the White House
Then, in the last week of October 1980, just two weeks before the election, The New Republic in Washington and Now magazine in Great Britain published a story co-authored by Michael Ledeen and Arnaud de Borchgrave, now an editor-at-large at The Washington Times and United Press International. According to the story, headlined "Qaddafi, Arafat and Billy Carter," the president's brother had been given an additional $50,000 by Qaddafi, on top of the loan, and had met secretly with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat. The story had come dramatically back to life. The new charges were disputed by Billy Carter and many others, and were never corroborated.
In 1981, Ledeen played a role in what has been widely characterized as another disinformation operation. Once again his alleged ties to SISMI were front and center. The episode began after Mehmet Ali Agca, the right-wing terrorist who shot Pope John Paul II that May, told authorities that he had been taking orders from the Soviet Union's K.G.B. and Bulgaria's secret service. With Ronald Reagan newly installed in the White House, the so-called Bulgarian Connection made perfect Cold War propaganda. Michael Ledeen was one of its most vocal proponents, promoting it on TV and in newspapers all over the world. In light of the ascendancy of the Solidarity Movement in Poland, the Pope's homeland, the Bulgarian Connection played a role in the demise of Communism in 1989.
Anyway, I may have more to add to this diary as the night goes on, but thought I'd share those things which were of interest to me today.