New BS Secrecy Classification By the Shrub
The ultimate in secrecy has been reached courtesy of the secretive Bush administration whose motto could be: Keep it secret so we don't get impeached.
Bushites have created a new category of secrecy called: "Controlled Unclassified Information" as a new government category that will replace "Sensitive but Unclassified." according to a report by Walter Pincus of the Washington Post.
"Sometime in the next few years, if a memorandum signed by President Bush this month ever goes into effect, one government official talking to another about information on terrorists will have to begin by saying: 'What I am about to tell you is controlled unclassified information enhanced with specified dissemination.'
"All CUI information, either produced by or for the federal government, is to be marked "controlled," regardless of how it is conveyed. Bush's memo specifically requires that 'oral communications should be prefaced with a statement describing the controls when necessary to ensure that recipients are aware of the information's status.'
"The president declared that the purpose of the new classification is "to standardize practices and thereby improve the sharing of information, not to classify or declassify new or additional information." But some critics described it as continuing an expansion of secrecy in government and a potential bureaucratic nightmare.
"Michael Clark, a contributing editor to the blog Daily Kos, who first wrote about the Bush memorandum, said the White House "seems to have used the crafting of new rules as an opportunity to expand the range of government secrecy." Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, described it as a "not even half-baked" exercise in policymaking.
Dubya is the 21st century's Maxwell Smart. He should have been cast as the bumbling Smart in the new "Get Smart" movie; it would have been perfect typecasting. The Shrub would even get to use the shoe phone and the cone of silence which he could rename the "Cone of Controlled Unclassified Information."
Bushites have created a new category of secrecy called: "Controlled Unclassified Information" as a new government category that will replace "Sensitive but Unclassified." according to a report by Walter Pincus of the Washington Post.
"Sometime in the next few years, if a memorandum signed by President Bush this month ever goes into effect, one government official talking to another about information on terrorists will have to begin by saying: 'What I am about to tell you is controlled unclassified information enhanced with specified dissemination.'
"All CUI information, either produced by or for the federal government, is to be marked "controlled," regardless of how it is conveyed. Bush's memo specifically requires that 'oral communications should be prefaced with a statement describing the controls when necessary to ensure that recipients are aware of the information's status.'
"The president declared that the purpose of the new classification is "to standardize practices and thereby improve the sharing of information, not to classify or declassify new or additional information." But some critics described it as continuing an expansion of secrecy in government and a potential bureaucratic nightmare.
"Michael Clark, a contributing editor to the blog Daily Kos, who first wrote about the Bush memorandum, said the White House "seems to have used the crafting of new rules as an opportunity to expand the range of government secrecy." Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, described it as a "not even half-baked" exercise in policymaking.
Dubya is the 21st century's Maxwell Smart. He should have been cast as the bumbling Smart in the new "Get Smart" movie; it would have been perfect typecasting. The Shrub would even get to use the shoe phone and the cone of silence which he could rename the "Cone of Controlled Unclassified Information."
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