New US Congress

William Kelly · June 7, 2009

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/06/ho...-torture-photos
Finally some good news on the torture photos: top liberal Democrats in the House, led by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) are blocking the awful, Obama-supported Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009. The "records protection" law would allow the administration to unilaterally block the release of any photos of detainee treatment that it didn't want publicized, bypassing the Freedom of Information Act. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and the odious Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), passed the Senate by a voice vote earlier this week and was attached to the bill providing supplemental funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.....

.....The photo suppression bill is an abomination that is reminiscent of the worst Bush-era excesses. It gives the executive branch the power to withhold an entire category of information from public scrutiny without any review. This law is Example A of the theory of the Presidency that says citizens should just trust the benevolent executive to do the right thing. Even in you oppose releasing some of the photos, I don't see why you would want to give the White House the power to unilaterally decide what's best. It says a lot about the Congress that members are willing to give Obama this kind of power. It says a lot about Obama that he supports this bill....

Those who want to see these photos are pornographic whores and should be prosecuted under the child porno laws.

BK

June 7, 2009

If you are goading me, I can understand, I probably, at some level, even deserve it....I wear my outrage on my sleeve.

But, if your posted reaction is truly a sincere one, I ask you why can't we let the courts decide on all FOIA requests, after the government takes a crack at classifying and restricting what is actually necessary and lawful to keep from public access? Why is a special law needed to react to an appellate court ruling on FOIA requests that goes the wrong way for first the Bush admin, and now for the Obama?

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/etn/dic/exec-sum.asp
....Since August 2002, nearly 100 detainees have died while in the hands of U.S. officials in the global “war on terror.” According to the U.S. military’s own classifications, 34 of these cases are suspected or confirmed homicides; Human Rights First has identified another 11 in which the facts suggest death as a result of physical abuse or harsh conditions of detention. In close to half the deaths Human Rights First surveyed, the cause of death remains officially undetermined or unannounced. Overall, eight people in U.S. custody were tortured to death.

Despite these numbers, four years since the first known death in U.S. custody, only 12 detainee deaths have resulted in punishment of any kind for any U.S. official. Of the 34 homicide cases so far identified by the military, investigators recommended criminal charges in fewer than two thirds, and charges were actually brought (based on decisions made by command) in less than half. While the CIA has been implicated in several deaths, not one CIA agent has faced a criminal charge. Crucially, among the worst cases in this list – those of detainees tortured to death – only half have resulted in punishment; the steepest sentence for anyone involved in a torture-related death: five months in jail.

It is difficult to assess the systemic adequacy of punishment when so few have been punished, and when the deliberations of juries and commanders are largely unknown. ...

The point of view of the US establishment is that civilians in other countries are complicit, have a responsibility to resist, but in the US, even those making policy and giving the orders at the highest levels are not held accountable.

And, of course, it's always better when we do it, moral arbiters that we always purport to be:

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Mauthausen/K.../aftermath.html
Austrian citizens carry bodies to mass graves

In the photograph above, an Austrian

civilian (center) is dressed in lederhosen and Tyrolean jacket

as he carries an emaciated body to a burial site at one of the

sub-camps. Note that he is wearing gloves, something which was

forbidden by the American liberators, since the purpose was to

punish the Austrian civilians by forcing them to handle the diseased

bodies without protection.

According to Raymond Buch, one of the

American liberators of Mauthausen, the Austrian civilians from

the nearby towns were ordered to come to the camp, wearing their

Sunday best clothes. This policy was not unique to Mauthausen.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered that as many civilians as

possible should be brought from the nearby towns to view the

carnage in the Nazi concentration camps while the typhus epidemics

were still going on, and that civilians should be forced to wear

their best clothes to bury the bodies.

William Kelly · June 7, 2009

Tom,

I can't get the courts to do anything I want so why are you asking me?

And what does this have to do with freeing the JFK assassination records?

Why don't you start a thread on tourture and interrogation photos or whatever it is you

are harping about?

BK

William Kelly · July 4, 2009

The last public oversight hearing on the JFK Act took plcae on June 4, 1997, when the relevant subcommittee of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee held a session that heard the testimony of Judge Tunheim, Anna Nelson, Max Holland and Bruce Hitchcock, an Indiana High School teacher who made the best pitch of all to extend the JFK Act for one year.
DOES ANYONE KNOW INDIANA HS TEACHER BRUCE HITCHCOCK?

Mr. HASTERT. I thank the gentleman. And now, Mr. Hitchcock, I’d like to welcome you especially. The gentleman from Ohio asked me a little while ago if I was an attorney. Indeed, I was not an attorney. I happened to be a history teacher for 16 years before I ever got into politics. So it’s certainly a noble trade. And I’m happy that you are here. I know that the chairman wanted to introduce you personally, but he couldn’t make it this afternoon. You contributed students, I understand, to clerk for this Commission and have been involved in it to a very high degree. So we welcome you and will listen to your testimony.

Mr. HITCHCOCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I, too, would ask that my written statement be entered into the record. And I will briefly summarize.

Mr. HASTERT. Without objection, all written statements will be entered into the record.

Mr. HITCHCOCK. Thank you. My name is Bruce Hitchcock, and I am a teacher at Noblesville High School, located in Noblesville, IN, which is a community approximately 20 miles north of Indianapolis. I am currently completing my 28th year in secondary education. My teaching assignment has primarily been in the areas of U.S. history, American government, and international relations. And I want to express my appreciation to the committee for affording me the honor and privilege of being here today and permitting me to make some brief remarks about which I have very strong convictions, not only as a citizen but as an educator.

In the spring of 1994 I assigned my honors U.S. history class a project studying the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This project culminated in the students placing the Warren Commission Report on trial. Half of the class represented the prosecution and half of the class defended the Warren Commission Report.

The class became quite interested in and many would say obsessed with this subject.The project resulted in a trial which became quite intense and divisive, so much so that the class had to have a party at the end of the semester to rekindle friendships. They became so fascinated with the subject of the assassination that they requested an opportunity to travel to Washington, DC during the summer following their graduation to do additional research.

From that modest class assignment developed an internship opportunity with the JFK Assassination Records Review Board. To date, four student groups from Noblesville High School have interned with the Review Board, with the fifth scheduled for the week of June 16th of this year. When this group completes its work, a total of 56 of our students will have participated in this unique and truly educational opportunity. I might add that except for the first group, succeeding groups have studied, researched, and prepared for their internship on their own time, outside normal class meetings.

The most recent group to participate did so over spring break.

The fact that students wanted to spend their vacation working with government records reflects the interest that the JFK assassination has for students. In my 28 years of teaching I have never had a topic create as much interest as the assassination of President

Kennedy. It is a mystery, and it provides an excellent research opportunity as well as a chance for students to be actively involved in learning.

Since November 22, 1963, there have been many who have believed and still believe the government did conceal, continues to conceal, and will continue to conceal the truth. If the Review Board is permitted time to complete its work, it will assist in defusing the last two charges. We cannot prevent the speculation that someone did conceal the truth. But the argument that a cover-up continues and will continue can at least be defused or discouraged.

What has been lost cannot be replaced. However, what still exists can be made public. We should have access, and our students should have access to the information and documents still in existence.

This is an opportunity for the U.S. Government to provide a credible response to public interest. The Review Board established by the Congress is actually a group of citizens telling the government what to do and what to release.

An opportunity exists in this era of skepticism to restore some credibility and trust in the government. In his recent book, ‘‘TheApproaching Fury,’’ author Stephen B. Oates quotes John Ferling as saying, ‘‘Events by themselves are unimportant. It is the perception of events that is crucial.’’

Perhaps in 1997 the most important aspect concerning the assassination of President Kennedy is the perception shared by many of a conspiracy involving individuals and agencies of the U.S. Government.

Do we not owe our young people the opportunity to form the most accurate perception possible? Do we not owe them the chance to see as much of the truth intact as can be assembled?

It seems to me that we owe this generation and all succeeding generations the opportunity to question, to study and to form opinions on the basis of information they can view independently without solely relying on the opinions of others.

Often times while I’m in the classroom, I observe students who have opinions but little to substantiate them.

Congress has a chance before it in some small way or maybe in some large way to at least provide them with some more information so that they may have their turn in determining what the JFK assassination means.

We have been affected by this event. For 34 years we have been affected. The 56 students from Noblesville High School have, as have countless others, been affected by the events of November 22, 1963.

The study of this event has the public’s interest. It is an event to which the public and students can relate. It touches people. As an aside, last week an article was published in the Indianapolis Star—I have a copy with me today—regarding our school’s ongoing JFK assassination project. Within a day of its publication I had received phone calls from a gentleman offering 500 pages of documents for our use and from a former teacher calling me with information regarding some scholarship opportunities.

I also received a call from ABC News Nightline, and yesterday, before leaving Noblesville High School, received a call from Atlanta, GA offering information. The subject of the call from Nightline was seeking information as to what Noblesville High School students were doing with regard to the study of the assassination.

Together I think these calls reflect continued local and national interest in continuing to probe into what happened in Dallas. Congress has the opportunity to lay the facts before the American public and permit a more reasoned, rational and fact-based account and discussion of the assassination. I would hope that the committee would take into consideration the fact that the Review Board had a 1-year delay before truly becoming operational, that it is making a one time request for an extension, that the Review Board has been on task and on budget, that the Review Board has conducted its business in a professional and non-partisan manner, and in 1992, when the act was passed by this Congress and signed by President Bush, the enormity of the task was not and could not be fully appreciated.

An opportunity exists to complete a task which I believe is overwhelmingly supported by the American public. And it is important that this mission and mandate authorized by Congress be completed.

I would like to end with just a couple of quotes, one from former Senator Bob Dole, who said in a different context, ‘‘This is not about only who we are, it is about have we made a difference.’’ This is a chance to make a difference.

And as former President Reagan often said, ‘‘If not us, who, and if not now, when?’’

After 34 years, it is time to let the public know the facts that remain.

To do less would be a tragedy and a travesty.

As an educator I believe that our most important task is to provide our young people the complete story of who we are and why we are who we are.

We have the opportunity to work toward the accomplishment of that goal. It is an opportunity I believe we cannot afford to miss.

In his last speech in Fort Worth on November 22, 1963 President Kennedy said, ‘‘We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.’’ History can only be served by permitting the public to see the evidence.

Mr. Chairman, as a further aside, if I might just have a few seconds.

Reflective of our students’ interest in this event, I have my honors government classes perform the project of a model Congress.

And one of the students this year—they could write a bill on whatever subject they wished—and one student who worked with the Review Board last year introduced House Concurrent Resolution 1 in support of the Review Board, and concludes, after all the whereases, ‘‘The Congress of the United States firmly supports the Assassination Records Review Board in all endeavors leading to the collection, review and release of the documents regarding the assassination of President Kennedy, and supports the extension of the life of the AARB for an additional fiscal year.’’

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HASTERT. Thank you very much. Mr. Hitchcock, I wanted to ask you. As bringing students into the real realm of research and learning in that respect, how important is it that records like this be made available to the public so that folks like yourself can have the availability of them for students?

Mr. HITCHCOCK. I think, Mr. Chairman, it’s extremely important for not only teachers of history and historians, but also for students and future generations that the—one of the things so special about our relationship with the Review Board: it has not only been an opportunity for students to travel to Washington—they pay their own way, and they do their own research on their own time—but it has helped change opinions in many cases by students about not only the assassination but about government, politics, agencies and people who work for the government.

I cannot overstate the importance it has had for the 43 thus far and soon to be 56 students from Noblesville High School that have had this research opportunity, that have been able actually to see, handle original documents, to work with documents, to see first hand the evidence that exists. And to have that opportunity is something that no teacher, no classroom, no film, no laser disk, nothing in the classroom can simulate or stimulate such interest and focus as a trip to Washington, DC, the review of documents, the working with people that we’ve had an opportunity to be with at the Review Board on a firsthand basis.

It is just something that cannot be duplicated or, as I said, simulated in any classroom anywhere in the country. And it’s just been a fantastic opportunity and will provide students in the future with a place to go to find those records, to look at the records, to look at the documents, and be at least assured that as much as available and is in existence, can now be made available to them as ordinary citizens of this country, whether they be students at a university, students in high school, or in their just curiosity and interest as an American citizen.

So I don’t think it can be overstated. The impact that this will have in helping bridge that gap of skepticism—if this is the correct way to say it. I just cannot imagine what the many conspiracy theorists would think if the Review Board has to finish its stay without completing its work.

July 4, 2009

Bill,

Looks like a right wing extremist exposing his students to extremist partisan whacko, Dan Burton...and Hitchcock either has to be aware that he is doing this to his students, or he is aligned politically with Burton.

As far as a role model or other influence for Hitchcock's students, how could it get any worse, or more hypocritical, as far as Burton's personal background than this "record"?

Dan Burton did co-sponsor a bill to extend the Assassinations Review Board by a year, back in 1997, along with two democrats, including Rep. Henry Waxman, but do not embrace any illusion that Burton is a friend of the truth, or of the

cause of opening government records....he hired and backed David Bossie and Barbara Comstock, two extremists even more

extreme than Dan Burton, as hard as it is to believe that is even possible:

http://www.salon.com/news/1998/05/07news.html
http://firedoglake.com/2006/02/11/its-evil...rbara-comstock/

....David Brock in "Blinded by the Right" described her passion to bring them down as "almost unhinged." Served as "chief investigator" for Dan Burton.

No, Bill, Bruce Hitchcock is tainted by exposing his impressionable students to this human garbage who the good people of Indiana have sent, time and again, to represent the district in it's majority commitment to criminalize safe, legal abortion, and, even when they controlled the presidency and both legislative branches, republicans didn't find time to do that, because if they did pass an abortion ban, Dan Burton and his ilk would have no bait to lure the votes of these one issue, bible blinded voters.

Having one issue you want achieved more than anything, is what brought Dan Burton into power, Bill....it's a bargain with the

devil!

http://www.intranetportfolio.com/nobl.nsf/...33;OpenDocument
...."This simulation attempts to fully provide students with an opportunity to experience being a member of Congress and the law-making process," Mr. Hitchcock said.

Also each year, Mr. Hitchcock organizes week-long trips to Washington, D.C., where students serve as interns in the offices of congressmen or with congressional committees. Over spring break 2000, five students interned in the office of U.S. Rep. Dan Burton. To date, Mr. Hitchcock has organized more than 30 trips and taken about 300 NHS students to Washington, D.C.

"To a great extent, the focus has been to improve students' understanding of the Congress," Mr. Hitchcock said.

Until 1994, students participated in the Washington Workshops Congressional Seminar program. Since then, the trips have centered on student internships in the offices of Senator Richard Lugar, Representative Dan Burton, and the JFK Assassination Records Review Board.

Students have met with several members of Congress, toured the Capitol, visited the House and Senate floors and the Vice President's office, and have observed Congress in session.

In 1997, one group working for the JFK Assassination Records Review Board was able to lobby a congressional committee for a bill which would extend the life of the Review Board.

Because of individuals with whom Mr. Hitchcock and the students have become acquainted, students have experienced "behind the scenes" tours of the Supreme Court and visits to the West Wing of the White House.

"What separates Bruce from his colleagues is his passion for exposing the students to their government in a practical, tangible way," Rep. Burton said in a letter supporting Mr. Hitchcock for the award.

U.S. Senator Richard Lugar and State Representative Jim Atterholt also wrote letters in support of Mr. Hitchcock for the award. Both noted that in addition to the Model Congress and the internships, Mr. Hitchcock takes students to the Congressional Youth Leadership Conference and the Richard G. Lugar Symposium for Tomorrow's Leaders, both on college campuses in Indianapolis.

"I can tell you, firsthand, his kids are always the best prepared," Atterholt said.

"If you don't mind me saying so, I believe this award was designed with Bruce Hitchcock in mind," Atterholt wrote. "Over the years, I have spoken to many different government classes around Central Indiana. With respect to teaching about how Congress really works, no teacher I have seen compares to Bruce Hitchcock."

Edited July 4, 2009 by Tom Scully

William Kelly · July 4, 2009

Bill,
Looks like a right wing extremist exposing his students to extremist partisan whacko, Dan Burton...and Hitchcock either has to be aware that he is doing this to his students, or he is aligned politically with Burton.

HEY TOM,

You still don't get it?

When Burton was chairman of the responsible committee he only held ONE hearing on the JFK Act, and that was to extend the life of the ARRB, and then he went a decade without bothering to hold another.

When Burton got to call the shots, and was forced into holding that one hearing, he also got to call the witnesses, and he chose Anna Nelson, whose published comments show that she didn't even know what she was suppose to be doing as a member of the ARRBoard, Max Holland, whose part of the responsible network, and Hitchcock, a real teacher who got his students jobs as ARRB interns.

Just like the interns from Cornell that G. Robert Blakey brought in to work at the HSCA, they didn't become mindless zombie deciples of Blakey, but knew exactly what was happening and wrote about it (See Fonzi, Lopez, even Cornwall, et al), and we should expect the same from ARRB staff (See Doug Horne) and the Hitchcock ARRB Interns.

Now that your man Dan Burton isn't the chairman, nor even the ranking minority member, he's pretty much out of the picture, or power, within the committee, a power that was once weld by Henry Waxman, who we had much faith in and issued bills that are now being considered policy by the Omaba Task Forces on these issues.

The only persons who can call a public hearing on the JFK Act is Rep. A. Towns or the chairman of the Subcommittee, W.L. Clay, both long time members of the Congressional Black Caucus who have previously supported our issues and who we've worked with in the past.

Whether it is a hearing before the full committee or the subcommittee doesn't matter, as it all goes into the official record, and since Burton is now lurking powerless in the wings, we believe we can get Towns and Clay to allow us to recommend witnesses, and of course, we don't have Hitchcock or Holland at the top of the list.

As far as a role model or other influence for Hitchcock's students, how could it get any worse, or more hypocritical, as far as Burton's personal background than this "record"?

Corn wrote that?

Dan Burton did co-sponsor a bill to extend the Assassinations Review Board by a year, back in 1997, along with two democrats, including Rep. Henry Waxman, but do not embrace any illusion that Burton is a friend of the truth, or of the

cause of opening government records....he hired and backed David Bossie and Barbara Comstock, two extremists even more

extreme than Dan Burton, as hard as it is to believe that is even possible:

http://www.salon.com/news/1998/05/07news.html
No illusions about Burton, but he's been neutralized, though his pit bulls will still be trying to derail the Oversight Hearing on the JFK Act from becoming a true and serious Congressional investigation. If that happens, look for the committee chairman to come under the same extremest attacks.

http://firedoglake.com/2006/02/11/its-evil...rbara-comstock/

....David Brock in "Blinded by the Right" described her passion to bring them down as "almost unhinged." Served as "chief investigator" for Dan Burton.

The real question is, if we get the Congressional Oversight Committee to hold initial hearings on the JFK Act, and they determine to investigate the issues further, who will be hired to be the chief investigator for that? Will it be someone like Richard Sprague or G. Robert Blakey?

No, Bill, Bruce Hitchcock is tainted by exposing his impressionable students to this human garbage who the good people of Indiana have sent, time and again, to represent the district in it's majority commitment to criminalize safe, legal abortion, and, even when they controlled the presidency and both legislative branches, republicans didn't find time to do that, because if they did pass an abortion ban, Dan Burton and his ilk would have no bait to lure the votes of these one issue, bible blinded voters.

Abortion? I'm glad you bring that up, because I just pulled up an excerpt I liked from A Citizens Guide to Congress - which I'm going to quote in full because it explains a lot of how things work, and it works the same if you are right wing biggot or a liberal jackass.

“Why would coalitions recruit so widely for allies, even going so far as to include organizations with whom they have never worked on any issue? Just imagine the reaction of a legislator who opens his office door only to find lobbyists on both sides of the abortion issue working together on another issue. ‘Unlikely alliances’ make decision makers and the public sit up and take notice: If people who disagree on so many things agree on this issue, then maybe there’s some merit in their position.”

Get it?

Having one issue you want achieved more than anything, is what brought Dan Burton into power, Bill....it's a bargain with the

devil!

http://www.intranetportfolio.com/nobl.nsf/...33;OpenDocument
...."This simulation attempts to fully provide students with an opportunity to experience being a member of Congress and the law-making process," Mr. Hitchcock said.

Also each year, Mr. Hitchcock organizes week-long trips to Washington, D.C., where students serve as interns in the offices of congressmen or with congressional committees. Over spring break 2000, five students interned in the office of U.S. Rep. Dan Burton. To date, Mr. Hitchcock has organized more than 30 trips and taken about 300 NHS students to Washington, D.C.

"To a great extent, the focus has been to improve students' understanding of the Congress," Mr. Hitchcock said.

Until 1994, students participated in the Washington Workshops Congressional Seminar program. Since then, the trips have centered on student internships in the offices of Senator Richard Lugar, Representative Dan Burton, and the JFK Assassination Records Review Board.

Students have met with several members of Congress, toured the Capitol, visited the House and Senate floors and the Vice President's office, and have observed Congress in session.

In 1997, one group working for the JFK Assassination Records Review Board was able to lobby a congressional committee for a bill which would extend the life of the Review Board.

Because of individuals with whom Mr. Hitchcock and the students have become acquainted, students have experienced "behind the scenes" tours of the Supreme Court and visits to the West Wing of the White House.

"What separates Bruce from his colleagues is his passion for exposing the students to their government in a practical, tangible way," Rep. Burton said in a letter supporting Mr. Hitchcock for the award.

U.S. Senator Richard Lugar and State Representative Jim Atterholt also wrote letters in support of Mr. Hitchcock for the award. Both noted that in addition to the Model Congress and the internships, Mr. Hitchcock takes students to the Congressional Youth Leadership Conference and the Richard G. Lugar Symposium for Tomorrow's Leaders, both on college campuses in Indianapolis.

"I can tell you, firsthand, his kids are always the best prepared," Atterholt said.

"If you don't mind me saying so, I believe this award was designed with Bruce Hitchcock in mind," Atterholt wrote. "Over the years, I have spoken to many different government classes around Central Indiana. With respect to teaching about how Congress really works, no teacher I have seen compares to Bruce Hitchcock."

Edited July 4, 2009 by William Kelly

William Kelly · July 6, 2009

A Citizen’s Guide To Politics In America – How the System Works & How to Work the System, by Barry R. Rubin (M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, New York/London; 1997-2000)

p.57: “Beyond Legislation: Implementing the Law”

“For every page of federal laws there are dozens of pages of regulations and administrative interpretations of the law. For every legislator (every member of Congress or state legislature) there are thousands of bureaucrats busily writing regulations and implementing the laws those legislators pass. These bureaucrats toil in the executive or administrative branch of government and are in many ways the source of the greatest power in any government. It is no surprise, therefore, that issue advocates devote considerable attention to influencing and persuading them. But what do bureaucrats do? They, and the agencies and departments and offices for which they work, interpret, enforce, and administer the law.”

“The thousand daily decisions bureaucrats make administering laws can cause issue advocates more consternation – and require more time and attention – than the legislative process. Hard-fought legislative success can turn to pyrrhic victories in the hands of an unfriendly or unresponsive bureaucracy. Indeed, issue advocates who win legislative battles barely have time to pop the champagne corks before they must turn their attention to how the law, for which they fought so hard, will be implemented. Or those who thought they had tamed the legislative process may learn that the executive branch has implemented policy changes that accomplish the goals they sought to avoid. As one commentator observed: ‘Nothing in law ever seems finally settled because there is always one more step in the process where both winners and losers may try to negotiate different terms.’”

p. 60: “Administrative discretion may be broad, but it is far from absolute. First, administrative action is limited to the authority afforded the agency by the legislative branch. By contrast, Congress is limited in its lawmaking activities only by the Constitution.”

“Second, agencies afford the public opportunities to make their views known to, and considered by, the agency. Congressional committees may choose to hold public hearings on legislation, but they need not do so, and they are free to ignore all the witnesses and all the evidence presented to them.”

“Third, agency action, as we saw in the last section, can be reviewed by the courts to ensure the actions comply with all applicable laws and procedures. When Congress passes a law, it can be challenged in court only on the grounds that it violates the Constitution.”

“The main vehicle to control agency discretion at the federal level is the Administrative Procedures Act. The law requires agencies to make most decisions in the open and to afford the public meaningful opportunities to comment on proposed agency actions. It also allows those who disagree with the agency decisions to ask courts to invalidate them if they are not in accordance with applicable law and procedure or if they are not solidly grounded on the facts and the law.”

“These limitations on administrative discretion reflect the fact that agencies can exercise their discretionary powers by issuing rules or regulations. These ‘minilaws’ codify administrative interpretations and establish clear guidelines for bureaucrats and the public.”

“….The broad policy discretion afforded bureaucrats provides issue advocates good

reasons to attempt to influence how laws are enforced and administered. And the processes of administrative decision making – the requirement that, for the most part, it be open to the public and subject to judicial review – provide advocates important tools to accomplish that goal….”

“…The courts are most often the last resort of those who seek to influence public policy. Litigation is costly and time-consuming, appeals can drag on for years, and tangible results are often hard to achieve. Yet, the federal and state courts provide critical outlets – safety valves – for issue advocates who are unable to get a full and fair hearing before the administrative or legislative branch of government.”

“The doors of the courthouse are open to all. Legislatures are accountable only to the electorate and only at the ballot box. Bureaucracies can be slow and unresponsive. But advocates who seek redress in the courts are guaranteed a hearing by an impartial arbiter who will decide a case on its merits.”

p. 76: “…Would public support for sending American troops pass what Senator John Glenn termed the ‘Dover test’? Dover Air Force Base in Delaware would be the point of return for the bodies of American troops who died on foreign soil. Would American’s, who initially supported sending troops, maintain their support after American soldiers died? How reliable were polls that showed people supporting these actions? No American politician wanted to rely on poorly formed public opinion that did not recognize and accept that Americans might die in Somalia or Haiti. The quality and reliability of the public’s opinion mattered.”

p. 126: “Finding Words that Work.”

“Words and symbols can shape public attitudes about issues. The right ones can position an issue so that it favorably resonates with prevailing public concerns and attracts a broad and deep base of diverse supporters.”

p. 132: “A coalition is an alliance, usually limited in time and purpose, between organizations with different agendas, working together for a common policy advocacy goal. The term coalition encompasses a great diversity of alliances formed to advance a shared public policy goal. Coalitions can be formal or informal, permanent or temporary.”

“Coalitions can unite diverse civil rights or environmental groups as they formulate and advance complex, long-term agendas. Or they can provide a mechanism to coordinate short-term activities, such as opposing a Supreme Court nomination…or supporting the balanced budge amendments to the Constitution…”

“Networks often precede coalitions, just as individuals or organizations sharing information and common concerns may gradually coalesce into an association or organization – an interest group – designed to influence policy.”

“A coalition is an alliance between organizations, each of which brings its own agenda and decision-making processes to the coalition table. Since coalition members are organizations, not individuals, they do not have the same freedom of movement that individuals have. Interest groups that join coalitions must be sure that the coalition shares the fundamental goals of the organization and its members.”

“…Coalitions are at the mercy of their members and can achieve only what the members permit them to achieve. Their only resources-people and money – are those that members provide.”

“Large, permanent coalitions, such as trade associations, have permanent staff, office space, and resources, all dedicated to achieving the coalition’s goals. Member organizations pay substantial dues to support the coalition and its infrastructure.”

“But most coalitions are ad hoc, voluntary assemblages of organizations, with little power to compel the member organizations to commit time and resources to the coalition or to fulfill their coalition commitments. They are usually staffed by ‘volunteers’ from the member organizations, some of whom may even be detailed to work exclusively on coalition projects.”

“The coalitions are composed of different organizations with different agendas working together, there are numerous ways to organize and manage coalitions. The best coalitions are flexible enough to adapt to their members’ needs and the common goal that has brought them together…”

p.140: “Coalitions begin with organizations whose issue agendas largely overlap. The initial recruitment process locates those whose agendas, while different, still show substantial areas of agreement. Finally, coalitions attempt to recruit organizations whose agendas rarely overlap with those of core coalition members. In some cases, core coalition members may even try to persuade other organizations to stretch their issue agendas to include the coalition’s issue.”

“Why would coalitions recruit so widely for allies, even going so far as to include organizations with whom they have never worked on any issue? Just imagine the reaction of a legislator who opens his office door only to find lobbyists on both sides of the abortion issue working together on another issue. ‘Unlikely alliances’ make decision makers and the public sit up and take notice: If people who disagree on so many things agree on this issue, then maybe there’s some merit in their position.”

Edited July 6, 2009 by William Kelly

William Kelly · July 18, 2009

Congress finally decides to investigate something.

Yesterday I wrote:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...mp;start=0& - entry169906

I think this is the most important story going, CIA Assassins - and its still only beginning to take shape.

It is also refocusing the attention of the House/Senate Joint Intelligence Committee and their Oversight responsibility might be stimulated into holding Watergate type hearings on the intelligence community, and not just the CIA. This would encompass the interrogation torture, renditions, wiretapping and intelligence failures.

This would also be preferable, as a non-partisan issue, than a blatently partisan congressional hearings - like the Republicans held when Clinton was pres.....

Then today, Congress finally makes a move:

House Looks Into Secrets Withheld From Congress

"... in addition to the plans for killing Qaeda leaders, the review would cover what she described as the failure to inform Congress fully or accurately about three other issues: C.I.A. involvement in the downing of a missionary plane mistaken for a narcotics flight in Peru in 2001, and two matters that remain classified.

In addition, the inquiry is likely to look at the Bush administration’s program of eavesdropping without warrants and its detention and interrogation program."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/us/politics/18intel.html

By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE

Published: July 17, 2009

WASHINGTON — The House Intelligence Committee opened an investigation Friday into whether the Bush administration broke the law by not informing Congress about several classified programs, including efforts by the Central Intelligence Agency to develop assassination teams to kill senior leaders of Al Qaeda.

The committee has already begun to collect C.I.A. documents about the assassination program, which was created shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and was abandoned, officials have said, without ever having taken on a mission. Democratic lawmakers said Friday that the C.I.A.’s failure to notify members of Congress about the secret program may have been illegal.

The agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, called emergency meetings with the House and Senate Intelligence Committees last month to inform them about the program, which he had canceled a day earlier. Mr. Panetta told the lawmakers that the program had initially been concealed from Congress at the behest of Dick Cheney, then vice president.

One Democratic member of the House committee, Representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, said that in addition to the plans for killing Qaeda leaders, the review would cover what she described as the failure to inform Congress fully or accurately about three other issues: C.I.A. involvement in the downing of a missionary plane mistaken for a narcotics flight in Peru in 2001, and two matters that remain classified.

In addition, the inquiry is likely to look at the Bush administration’s program of eavesdropping without warrants and its detention and interrogation program.

Current and former intelligence officials have said that the scuttled assassination program was troubled by logistical problems and never progressed beyond the planning stage. Ms. Schakowsky, however, said she believed that the program had gone beyond planning and training, though she declined to discuss details.

The committee’s top Republican, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, criticized its chairman, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, for “offering a partisan plan.”

Some intelligence officials and Republican lawmakers, maintaining that planning was as far as the assassination program ever went, have said there was therefore no requirement that Congress be informed of it. Mr. Hoekstra said in a statement Friday that “the current facts do not support” Democratic claims that the law’s requirement that Congress be kept informed of intelligence activities was violated.

But Mr. Hoekstra has himself often complained about the C.I.A.’s failure to inform Congress of its activities. And he has already accused the agency of covering up information about the shooting down of the plane in Peru, which killed a missionary family from his district in Michigan.

Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, said the agency would work closely with the committee as it conducted its investigation.

“Like Chairman Reyes,” Mr. Gimigliano said, “the agency’s goal is that this new investigation not become a distraction to the men and women of C.I.A., who have the vital mission of protecting the United States from foreign threats.”

William Kelly · August 19, 2009

While Congress is in recess for the rest of the summer, until after Labor Day, I was going to suggest that those who want to see JFK Act Oversight hearings to attend the Town Meetings, but it seems that health care reform is taking over the stage and that is not the proper venue to discuss the JFK Act.

Rep. Carolyn Mahoney will be in my neighborhood soon promoting her new book on women's rights, and I will try to go out of my way to talk to her for a few moments about her role on the the House Oversight Committee. I will inform her about our efforts to get them to conduct JFK Act Oversight hearings, and give her a copy of the petition and a few short pages that define some of the issues and explain that this is a Non-Partisan, not just a Bi-Partisan issue that both sides agree on. The need for holding these hearings is something everyone agrees on and it is one way to bridge the bi-partisan gap. I will also ask her if I could meet with her in DC to follow up when Congress resumes the next session in September.

If you live in the USA, your Congressman will be home for the next few weeks, and now is the best opportunity to meet with them whenever they appear in public, or back at their home office, especially if they are on the House Oversight Committee, or the Subcommittee on Information Policy/NARA.

They will give you a few minutes of their time, and listen, and if you make a good two minute presentation on why JFK Act Oversight hearings are important, they will support it when it comes up, and may even go out of their way to say something to Rep. Towns and Clay about it.

And if they are on the Committee or sub-committee, you can get into some details about records destroyed (Secret Service Advance Reports), records missing (Air Force One tapes), and records withheld (ie. Joannidies), and suggest witnesses and questions for them, because only those members of the committee holding the hearing get to ask questions.

The important point is, your Representative is home for the holiday and making the rounds and finding out what are the most important issues their constituents are interested in, and now is the time to try to persuade them that the JFK Act oversight is important, and its their job to do it.

BK

William Kelly · March 12, 2010

John Judge Update:

Friends,

On Thursday, March 18, 2010, the House Information Policy, Census and

National Archives Subcommittee will hold a hearing entitled:

"Administration of the Freedom of Information Act: Current Trends."

The hearing will take place at 2:00 p.m. in room 2154 Rayburn House Office

Building. The Rayburn Building is south of the Capitol on Independence

and 2nd Street, SW in Washington, DC.

This event falls within Sunshine Week activities in Washington, DC, held

from March 14-20 in DC this year. For more on their plans nationwide see

http://www.sunshineweek.org/About.aspx#howcan.

A group of researchers including Bill Kelly, Bill Simpich, Adele Edisen

and others will be visiting the members of this subcommittee to lobby

for both oversight hearings on the implementation of the JFK

Assassination Records Act as required by legislation, and for hearings

on and passage of a Martin Luther King. Jr. Records Act, as proposed but

not yet introduced by Senator John Kerry and Rep. John Lewis. The

members of the subcommittee are listed at

http://oversight.house.gov/index.php?optio...cle&id=2229

%3Amembership&catid=37&Itemid=20

Please check to see if your representative is listed here and contact

them asking them to support these efforts by calling for hearings and

voting for the new bill when it comes to the floor.

Rep. Lucien Clay, Chairman of the subcommittee was a co-sponsor of the

MLK Records Act when it was introduced by Rep. Cynthia McKinney in 2005

and is sympathetic. If your representative is not listed, ask them to

contact Rep. Clay to urge him to move forward on hearings and to push

for introduction of the MLK bill. Once the bill has a number in the

Senate and House, we will be in touch for ask for further support. This

is an early lobbying effort. The hearings for the MLK Records Act may

combine with the oversight hearings on the JFK Act because they are

closely related.

Thanks for your support, and hope to see you in Dallas this year

November 19-22!

John Judge

--

John Judge

Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA)

PO Box 772

Washington, DC 20044

copa@starpower.net

Check out our new website:

www.politicalassassinations.com

Annual meeting in Dallas in November

Hotel Lawrence - 214-761-9090 - discount room reservations

Speakers, films, books, resources, email for details

National organization of medical and ballistic experts, academics and

authors, researchers and interested individuals investigating major

political assassinations in America and abroad. Responsible for creation and

implementation of the JFK Assassination Records Act. Promoting a Martin

Luther King Records Act and a grand jury process to reopen all the major

assassinations.

We are not allergic to donations, donations NOT tax deductible. DVD set of

last year's COPA meeting in Dallas for any donation of $50 or more.

William Kelly · March 25, 2010

Four Articles published over Sunshine Week -

Interview with Mariam Nisbet, head of new Office of Government Information Service (OGIS)

SHARON THEIMER Associated Press Writer

Office of Government Information Services: http://www.archives.gov/ogis/

WASHINGTON (AP) — As part of Sunshine Week, when news organizations highlight the importance of government openness, the nation's new Freedom of Information Act ombudsman, Miriam Nisbet, took part in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press.

Nisbet heads the new U.S. Office of Government Information Services, which was created to help people who encounter obstacles using FOIA. Here are some questions and answers from the interview Friday:

Q: Why is this important to the average citizen, someone who doesn't work for a newspaper?

A: "If people are going to know how their government is operating, what they are doing that affects them, what they are doing on behalf of the people, they have to be able to see the records that reflect that. The documents that are being created, the data that are being produced. Particularly, you look at huge government programs and all the data that come out of that. Those data belong to the people, and they should have a right to see them and then do with them what they want."

Q: Why is it even after the president issued a directive to presume that information is public, that they're still dragging their feet, the message is not getting to the agencies?

A: "You have to have people at the very top, people in leadership positions who not only are believing it and saying it and doing it but who are themselves accountable and who are willing to be accountable if it doesn't work. There's really got to be a culture change and that's just something that doesn't happen overnight."

Q: What can the public do to try to take back this information, change this culture, if anything?

A: "First of all, I'm not going to say, 'Everybody out there start using the Freedom of Information Act,' because really and truly that is, it's the least efficient way for people to get information. The much better way is to demand and to also appreciate efforts to get the information out there. ... If people can really interact with government personnel just like they have no hesitation, it seems, to going to their members of Congress. Why? Because they think that when they go to their member of Congress they are going to get an answer. Somebody's going to help them get the answer they want, the information they want, the service they want. They need to be doing the same thing with any agency that affects what they do."

Q: What are your top tips for successfully pursuing a FOIA request?

A: "The most important thing you can do is actually have a conversation with somebody who's handling the request. ... That is sometimes the biggest obstacle, is just there's a lack of understanding from the agency side about what the requester wants and the requester can't know what records the government has."

Q: At what point should people ask your office for help?

A: "Wherever we can help, we will try and make it happen."

Q: What has been the typical problem in the cases you see?

A: "One of the most common problems has been — no surprise there — delays in responding to the request. And that could be a matter of weeks, or months or years in a requester getting a response from the agency."

Q: When you investigate, what is the cause of the delay?

A: "FOIA professionals are for the most part very hard-working ... A big problem is when they go to other people in their agency to look for records, other people that they deal with do not necessarily appreciate that the FOIA people are working under time constraints. They aren't necessarily well-versed in why FOIA is important."

Q: How big of a factor is the lack of technology or knowledge of the use of technology in slow responses? It seems incredible sometimes how much government still keeps on paper.

A: "It's a big problem, and again it's resources, it's always resources. ... You know, we're still in a world in the federal government where the official record of e-mail is paper. If it's a record, you print it out and put it in the file that it goes with."

Q: Is money needed to fix some of these problems?

A: "The answer is yes, money will definitely make a difference, and I think particularly as agencies are focusing on and being directed to focus on FOIA as a big piece of the open government plans, we will perhaps see some greater attention to that."

Q: Would you like to see an economic stimulus for FOIA so that everyone gets their information faster?

A: "Sure. Resources is the first thing that everybody mentions. It's the resources and it's the culture change. The culture change, definitely that's beginning, but it's certainly going to take time.

Holland (Michigan) Sentinel Editorial

By Sentinel editorial board

The Holland Sentinel

Posted Mar 18, 2010 @ 10:19 AM

Holland, MI — http://www.hollandsentinel.com/opinions/x427975221/OUR-VIEW-Sunshine-Week-Insist-upon-a-culture-of-open-government

Every year, newspapers across America promote "Sunshine Week," an observance that draws attention to the need for openness in government. We do so because too many bureaucrats and elected officials forget what the word "public" in the phrases public official, public meeting and public records actually means.

There's a natural tendency for people in any organization to identify with their own group and divide the world into "us" and "them." For government officials, that means a temptation to consider the documents they work with, the records they file and the deliberations they hold to be "theirs." In reality, by law and by all standards of good government, those documents and meetings are "ours," whether we are a a CEO or an unemployed line worker, a Tea Party member or a MoveOn.org activist. It doesn't matter whether we're dealing with the Pentagon Papers or a local development proposal, public records belong to the public. That's why we have the Freedom of Information Act and the Open Meetings Act — laws with too many exemptions but still statutes critical to a functioning democracy. And that's what we have to remind government officials about over and over.

The tendency to try to keep the public in the dark knows no partisan affiliation. Open-government advocates lamented the record of the Bush administration in classifying documents and finding excuses not to release government records. President Obama campaigned on a platform of openness, but in his first year in office, a recent Associated Press report found, federal government compliance with the Freedom of Information Act has gotten even worse. Seventeen federal agencies claimed FOIA exemptions more than 70,000 times in the 2009 budget year, many claiming the documents were part of internal decision-making — despite a directive from Obama telling them not to use that exemption.

Locally, clear attempts to get around the Open Meetings Act and the Freedom of Information Act are rare, so it gets our attention when it occurs, as it did last month when the mayor of Zeeland and the Zeeland Board of Public Works chairman met with council members individually to get input on a vacant position — and avoid forming the council quorum that would have required a public discussion. What is more common in our area is a grudging acknowledgment of and minimal compliance with open government laws. It's an attitude that slows down or discourages the sharing of public information.

There are some exceptions, but in general a culture of openness is lacking in our government offices. We see it in meetings whose "public notice" is a paper posted on the bulletin board of a government building or in skimpy meeting agendas that give little clue as to what actually will be discussed. We see it when government agencies tell reporters to file Freedom of Information Act requests to get facts that are readily available, and in officials charging dollars for photocopies that we know cost pennies.

These rules, of course, apply not just to journalists but to everyone. They protect the rights of all citizens to get the information they need to hold government accountable. When it comes to keeping an eye on government, the press is merely the public's proxy.

Good government needs the bright light of public scrutiny to grow and flourish. The weeds of corruption and abuse thrive in the dark. We must make sure that the sun always shines in.

http://www.nonprofitquarterly.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2038:nonprofits-transparency-and-sunshine&catid=149:rick-cohen&Itemid=117

Last week was "Sunshine Week", an effort led by the American Society of News Editors—and funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation—"to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information." Sunshine Week started in Florida in 2002 when the press and the public mobilized to defeat state legislators' attempts to create hundreds of exemptions from the state's public records laws. Although President Obama issued a public statement endorsing Sunshine Week, both Public Citizen and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington expressed concerns that the Obama Administration hasn't been the model of public sector sunshine that many had hoped.

But what about the intersection of government and nonprofits for the purposes of sunshine? When is a nonprofit organization sort of like a public agency for the purpose of levels of transparency and disclosure beyond what all nonprofits (above a specific threshold annual revenue level) provide to the Internal Revenue Service in their Form 990s?

According to a New Hampshire court, when a nonprofit is largely paid for with government dollars, it has enough governmental DNA to make it subject to public agency-like Right-to-Know disclosure requirements (Read more from the Nashua Telegraph).

For several years, the Local Government Center of New Hampshire has resisted calls for disclosing its schedule of salaries. The LGC's argument was that the organization is a private nonprofit organization and its salaries were not subject to public interest disclosure. The LGC is the home of the state's association of municipalities and administers some benefits packages for participating municipal workers such as health insurance and workman's compensation.

Charging that there was some financial misbehavior in the organization, the state's firefighters union went to court asking for, among other things, a list of the organization's salaries. The state supreme court just ruled against the LGC, concluding that while the LGC is not a government agency, the wages of its staff are paid for mostly by tax dollars and the work of the organization (such as the health care and workman's comp) are programs for the benefit ultimately of taxpayers.

The result was the revelation that 21 of the LGC's employees earn more than $75,000 a year and seven make more than $100,000. Because of the multiple functions of the LGC including its benefits programs for municipal workers, the court found LDC is "conducting the public's business" and therefore should be subject to the Right-to-Know law provisions.

At what point does the proportion of a nonprofit's budget that comes from governmental funds make the nonprofit subject to public sector right-to-know laws? What kind of activities might a nonprofit do that would be considered "the public's business?" On the other hand, what kinds of standards and thresholds should apply to largely government-funded nonprofits regarding the information that the public has a right to know about and should not be camouflaged behind nonprofit 501©(3) confidentiality standards? A New Hampshire state legislator, Democratic State Rep. Dick Watrous, introduced a bill to compel the state's nonprofits to comply with public sector right-to-know standards. But just last week, the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted 214 to 80 to kill the Watrous bill, which would have classified nonprofits as public agencies if they exceeded $100,000 in annual revenue and got half of their funding from state or local government (Read the Eagle-Tribune story).

Nonprofits in New Hamphire were united in opposition to the Watrous bill. The state's nonprofit association declared that the bill would have been a "huge burden" on nonprofits. One major charity called the bill a "slap" against nonprofits. Nonprofit sector spokespersons declared that nonprofits are "all about transparency," making the bill unnecessary, and that the disclosure requirements, including financial disclosure, would make people "less willing to serve on nonprofit boards of directors if they knew they could come under increased public scrutiny."

While Watrous might have been engaged in legislative overkill, some of the "all about transparency" counter-arguments don't ring true about a sector that is as diverse as ours, particularly when some nonprofits are created or function to camouflage government activity. In some states, public universities have created nonprofit foundations, ostensibly to raise charitable money for schools, but often to conduct some business, such as adding to the salaries of university officials and college sports coaches, out of the eyeshot of the public (go ask newspapers that have tried to FOIA these entities for how less than transparent those 501©(3) arms of state universities have been). At the municipal level, this author is quite aware of local governments that have created ©(3)s to pull some activities, such as economic development programs, out of the grasp of city councilmembers.

Enhanced disclosure requirements for publicly funded nonprofits is not a new battle. In 1998, San Francisco adopted the Non-Profit Public Access Ordinance, requiring nonprofits with more than $250,000 in government contracted funds to release basic budget and tax information that largely tracked what is publicly transparent through other sources, with little or no powers to compel nonprofits to disclose more.

A few years later, the San Francisco supervisors had extensive discussion of a Sunshine Ordinance that would apply to nonprofits, in part because the City ran over $1.5 billion in funding to and through 835 nonprofits during a period of a couple of years. Activists pushed the issue because of the purported secrecy of local AIDS nonprofits, according to the San Francisco Bay Guardian News, operating with "unaccountable operations that spend money, often public money, with little effective community input." In 2008, the San Francisco board of supervisors narrowly killed a bill that would have given the city the ability to limit the CEO salaries of nonprofits largely funded by the city.

Nonprofits appear to have staved off tougher requirements in San Francisco and New Hampshire, but the issue is not going to go away: if you want transparency to follow the money in the public sector, then the path of sunshine might lead to publicly funded nonprofits with demands that they disclose more than they typically do under typical state and federal regulations. For example, the National Academy of Public Administration has called for more transparency of government-funded nonprofits: "Non-profit organizations receiving funds from the government are often supporting people who are traditionally under-served and who do not have a choice in what service provider to use, so they can't hold them accountable in the same way that someone who has a market choice can. The service provider essentially has a monopoly. Therefore, it is extremely important that the government regulates and evaluates these organizations to ensure quality."

The Sunshine Week campaign is increasingly touching on nonprofits as well as government agencies as needing more disclosure when they use government funding, note these examples from the Baltimore Sun (citing some $302,000 in "staff training" grants for the Montgomery County Collaboration Council for Children, Youth and Families), the Atlanta Journal Constitution (on the selection of a nonprofit closely linked to the city's top school officials to conduct an investigation of cheating on standardized tests at two-thirds of Atlanta's elementary and middle schools), the Detroit Free Press (citing the American Red Cross), the Montgomery Advertiser (addressing pending legislation that would require lobbyists to report on their interactions with government-funded nonprofits) and the Decatur Daily (on the government-endorsed sale of a nonprofit hospital).

Follow the money, advocates of increased sunshine say. With the increasing shift from governmental agencies providing services to handing off that function to nonprofits, the nonprofit sector should prepare for more demands for increased transparency and reporting and sunshine.

BK notes: OMB Watch started out taking a peek inside the Office of Management and Budget and blew the whistle, and now they've taken on the whole government. Here's their summary of new open government legislation in the works.

Sunshine Week 2010 Concludes with a Number of Federal Initiatives

Posted on March 23, 2010

http://www.ombwatch.org/node/10857

Each year, advocates of open and accountable government celebrate the birthday of former president James Madison, a founding father and advocate of open government, by hosting a week of events and increased public advocacy called Sunshine Week. In 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder released a memo during Sunshine Week regarding Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) implementation that encouraged disclosure of agency records. This year, transparency was highlighted through public events, legislative initiatives, and op-eds.

Sunshine Legislation

Several important new legislative initiatives at the federal level marked the open government week. In the Senate, Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) reintroduced the Faster FOIA Act (S. 1111), which they first sponsored in 2005. If passed, the bill would create a congressional advisory panel to identify problems related to agency FOIA backlogs and processing delays and then recommend legislative changes to Congress, as well as advise on possible executive actions the president could take to reduce the processing time for records requests.

Another Sunshine Week bill, the Public Online Information Act (POIA) (H.R. 4858), was introduced in the House by Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) on March 16. The bill creates a new standard in government, calling for public information to be posted online. Several transparency advocacy groups signed a joint letter calling for congressional hearings on the bill.

In addition to making most public records permanently available on the Internet, the bill would also establish an advisory board to determine best practices. However, the bill permits agencies to seek exclusions from the requirement to post public records online, should their online availability be deemed dangerous despite the records already being public under laws such as FOIA. Such exclusions would need authorization from the E-government administrator within the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). This is the first time the bill has been introduced.

Also in the House, a bill to reform the Federal Advisory Committee Act began to move forward. The bill to amend the act (H.R. 1320), introduced in June 2009, was expected to be considered via expedited procedures for noncontroversial bills. The bill would expand the requirement on government agencies to publicly report accounts of federal advisory committee meetings. The bill would also increase public knowledge of who the government gets advice from and the specific issues that are discussed. The legislation was pulled from the expedited track when Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) objected on procedural grounds to changes that were made to the bill without bringing it under a rule. Issa has asked for a committee vote on the bill before it is taken up by the full House.

During Sunshine Week, the House also passed the Plain Writing Act of 2010 (H.R. 946) and sent it to the Senate. The legislation would require agencies to use plain language in any document issued to the public other than a regulation. This bill would reduce the overly legalistic and difficult-to-understand language that is confusing to many Americans. The bill calls for agencies to submit proposals on how they intend to train employees and ensure compliance with the act and establishes a central point person in the agencies who is responsible for implementation. The bill was introduced by Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) on Feb. 10, 2009, and passed with strong bipartisan support on a vote of 386 to 33.

Finally, measures in the Electronic Message Preservation Act (H.R. 1387), introduced on March 9 by Rep. Paul Hodes (D-NH), would require the preservation of certain electronic records by federal agencies. Further, the National Archives and Records Administration would be required to establish standards for the management, retrieval, and preservation of agency and presidential electronic records. This bill is aimed at addressing the problem of e-records management that has plagued the executive branch for decades. The bill passed the House by voice vote on March 17 and was received by the Senate on March 18.

Sunshine Reports

The need for new legislation concerning government openness was underscored by several reports and releases that emerged during Sunshine Week. In particular, the National Security Archive released an audit report concluding that only a third of federal agencies have made significant strides toward complying with the Obama administration's new FOIA policies. The Archive filed FOIA requests with 90 agencies requesting any records that demonstrate how the new policies are being implemented. The report noted that 38 agencies had either circulated the new FOIA guidance, launched new training efforts, or implemented concrete changes in practice. However, 35 agencies responded that they had no records about changes to their implementation of FOIA, and 17 didn't respond or withheld their records. The report also noted that several agencies had reduced their backlogs of outstanding requests, though some agencies continue to have requests as much as two decades old. So far, only four agencies, according to the report, show both increases in releases and decreases in denials under FOIA. The Archive noted that it is "too early to render a final judgment" but that "more pressure and leadership will be necessary."

Unlike previous administrations, the Obama White House addressed Sunshine Week directly in public statements. The administration disagreed with the Archive's findings of limited progress, contended that agencies have already made significant strides on FOIA, and noted that the most recent data support such a conclusion. In a post on the White House blog by administration counsel Norm Eisen, a brief memorandum by Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, and a statement by President Obama, officials lauded the successes of the administration such as releasing visitor logs and data reporting through Recovery.gov and Data.gov. Further, Eisen stated that "we believe that the first-year Chief FOIA Officer Reports that are forthcoming from the agencies will show progress on FOIA…"

The Justice Department posted these FOIA officer reports on its website on March 17. The data that is publicly available from the FOIA Annual Reports shows that while full granting of FOIA requests is down, as the Archive demonstrates, the combination of both full and partial granting of FOIA requests is on par with previous years. Further, the data from the reports also show a clear drop in agency backlogs to a level consistent with the level of backlogs that existed under the Clinton administration. These data are collected on a fiscal year basis, meaning that data collection ended September 30, 2009, roughly six months after the Obama FOIA policies were announced. Given this brief timeframe, it

Edited March 25, 2010 by William Kelly

William Kelly · March 27, 2010

At one of the Sunshine Week meetings with the staff of the NARA subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee, Dan Alcorn suggested that one thing that can be done is to expedite the release of the records withheld by the JFK Act from 2017 to now, or the 2013 anniversary.

This would speed up the process and is actually something that can be done.

Would there be any public support for such an action, or any resistance?

Or doesn't anybody care?

BK

John Dolva · March 27, 2010

With regards to the dictabelts timing. Is there a controversy?

Steve Rosen · April 4, 2010

One of those documents is listed at NARA as
104-10269-10104 CABLE DISCUSSING QUESTION OF GO-NO-GO SIGNALS FOR CISNEROS OPERATIONS Dated 10/22/63

... In this case, this document reads roughly:

Mr Harvey Summ, State Rep. Miami, advised Reuteman PM 21 Oct that Cisneros visited Summ AM 21 Oct. During interview Cisneros stated he wanted permission mount infil GP which would leave 20 Oct. Summ indicated he told Cisneros OP would have to be run at Cisnero’s own risk. i.e If he got caught Customs would confiscate his boat, arms etc. Summ asked if Reuteman wanted help Cisneros clear Miami by calling Customs Coast Guard etc. as WAVE has had no word from Cisneros re this departure date. Reuteman indicated no WAVE intent to intercede on Cisneros behalf at this time. Summ asked if Reuteman could get word to Cisneros that OPS question go or no go was not state problem but one which would have to be resolved by Cisneros with Intel agencies. Summ stated he did not want to be in position of trying to broker go or no go signals for Cisneros although most sympathetic Cisneros desire do anti-Castro mission. Reuteman stated WAVE had no direct contact Cisneros but would see if word could be gotten Cisneros by some devious channel.

That OPS go or no go signals were not states problem. Summ advised that [sic] the be advised when and if such word passed Cisneros. How does HQS desire handle this matter?

C/S comment “Cisneros advised 15 Oct obtaining new infil point thru local contact.”

Document linked at http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...amp;relPageId=1

Thanks for that transcription and commentary, Robert. Interesting that Reuteman, alias for JMWAVE Miami CIA station chief Ted Shackley* was discussing high-risk JURE leadership operations with State Representative Harvey Summ. The state, federal, and Cuban exile nexus working as one.

Two other examples of Shackley's relationship with local politico Summ are in this Dispatch on Operational Activities report from August 1964 from Shackley to (likely) Desmond Fitzgerald, Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division. The document contains a number of JMWAVE ops from 1963 and 1964.

In July 1963, Shackley wrote that Summ asked him to sponsor a Cuban radio broadcast, and when Shackley refused, Summ angrily told Shackley he'd go over his head.

In April 1964, Summ later told Shackley that he thought that Jorge Volsky, a Cuban citizen from Poland, was reporter Tad Szulc's "penetration of USIA"

Also in Cisneros document, Shackley noting for the record that "WAVE had no direct contact Cisneros", a senior JURE leader. Similar to George Joannides, underling to Shackley & diligent case officer, who supposedly did not file reports for the 17 months he controlled and funded the DRE from 1962 to 1964.

- Steve

* Reuteman as alias for Shackley: See Sixth Declaration of Jefferson Morley, Morley v. CIA, C.A. No. 03-2545, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, July 2009, page 3.

http://thefoiablog.typepad.com/files/sixth...declaration.pdf

Dispatch on Operational Activities links:

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/....do?docId=27439

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...mp;relPageId=13

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...mp;relPageId=14

William Kelly · April 7, 2010

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Threats-V...100405-654.html

I know the link no longer works and I don't know why but here's the article - BK

By Thom HartmannFor OpEdNews: Thom Hartmann - Writer

from the Huffington Post Co-authored by Lamar Waldron

Sunday, April 4, 2010 marked the forty-second anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. The recent spate of violence and threats directed at members of Congress evoke all too well the tumult of the 1960s. Seeing a hero of the Civil Rights movement like Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia) facing an angry gantlet of protestors -- some using the N-word -- as he left the Capitol brought back memories of similar scenes from the 1960s, when Rep. Lewis worked with Martin Luther King.

The resurgence in violent acts and rhetoric was building even before the surge that accompanied passage of health care reform. This not only includes white supremacist shootings of several police officers over the past year, but arrests in ten different states for serious plots to assassinate Obama, most by white supremacists.

Some of the large corporations and mainstream politicians stoking the anger at President Obama may not realize how quickly such an atmosphere of hate can get beyond their control. For them, it's just a matter of money and power, by making sure populist anger that should be directed at them is instead diverted to President Obama and others.

It's been said that those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. But thanks to Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), Representative John Lewis, and others, Americans have a rare chance to finally bring the hidden history of Martin Luther King's assassination to light.

The Boston Globe reported that Sen. Kerry is getting ready to introduce a Martin Luther King Records Act, which would finally preserve and declassify all the records about Dr. King's assassination. The Globe said that Rep. John Lewis would introduce the new King Records Act in the House.

While many FBI files about Dr. King's murder have been released to the public -- often pried out of the Bureau by Freedom of Information lawsuits -- many of the most important files remain unreleased. That's why several weeks ago, Sen. Kerry wrote a letter to the head of the National Archives, saying he wants to release to the public "all records related to the...death of Dr. King, including any investigations or inquiries into his assassination by federal, state, or local agencies."

Unsolved Civil Rights crimes have been in the spotlight in recent years, with cases reopened due to the dogged efforts of reporters like Mississippi's Jerry Mitchell, who helped to put the assassin of Medgar Evers behind bars. But many people don't realize that Dr. King's assassination is another of those unsolved civil rights crimes.

In 1979, a Congressional investigation headed by Rep. Louis Stokes "concluded that there was a likelihood of conspiracy in the assassination of Dr. King" and that "the expectation of financial gain was [James Earl] Ray's primary motivation." Yet the Congressional committee wasn't able to figure out who was putting up the money that motivated Ray, in part because of material withheld from the committee by the FBI and other agencies. Some of those files withheld from Congress are available now online, through private organizations like the Mary Ferrell Foundation (maryferrell.org), though others have never been released.

One example is the case of Joseph Milteer, a white supremacist from the tiny south Georgia town of Quitman, who was affiliated with an unusually wide range of racists and racist groups, ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to the more respectable White Citizens Councils. Milteer also worked with violent white supremacist J. B. Stoner, who eventually became James Earl Ray's lawyer.

Rep. Stokes's committee investigated not only Dr. King's murder, but also that of President Kennedy, and they were given information tying Milteer to the assassination of JFK. That's because Milteer was recorded on Miami Police informant tape on November 9, 1963 -- thirteen days before JFK was killed -- describing "a plan to assassinate the President with a high-powered rifle from a tall building" and saying that authorities 'will pick up somebody within hours afterwards." Milteer also talked on that tape about an associate's unsuccessful plot to assassinate King.

The FBI didn't give Rep. Stokes's committee any information about any investigation they did in 1968 about Milteer and Dr. King's assassination. Even though the FBI was concerned about Milteer as late as 1967, there is no indication in released FBI files that the Bureau made even a routine inquiry as to where Milteer was when Dr. King was shot, something the FBI did for racists far less notorious than Milteer. It's a shame the FBI (apparently) didn't try to find out, because after Milteer's death, a Miami reporter found in his burned out house a letter indicating that Milteer was in Atlanta in the unusual area where James Earl Ray was abandoning his getaway car on the day after Dr. King was killed.

Milteer's presence in that area of Atlanta that day -- over 200 miles from Milteer's Quitman home -- helps to explain several things that have puzzled investigators for decades. After Dr. King was shot in Memphis, James Earl Ray fled to Canada. But first, while Ray was the most wanted man in America, he took an unusual 450-mile detour south, to Atlanta, where Ray had been living in a small rooming house. Then, when Ray arrived in Atlanta, he parked almost in the shadow from Georgia's heavily-guarded State Capitol building.

More bizarre, Ray left his much sought-after getaway car just nine short blocks from Dr. King's office and church, but over three miles from Ray's Atlanta rooming house, where he was headed. Despite intense efforts, the FBI and Atlanta police were never able to find any cab or bus driver who took Ray to his rooming house.

New information that we detail in our recently updated book Legacy of Secrecy shows that Ray had called one of Milteer's three Atlanta business partners shortly before abandoning his car. We also show how Milteer and his racist partners had put up most or all of the money for the hit contract on Dr. King, and likely aided Ray's improbable two month escape, in which Ray went from Atlanta to Canada, to England, then to Portugal, and finally back to England (where Ray was arrested).

As we noted earlier, Rep. Stokes's Congressional committee was given information about Milteer and JFK's 1963 assassination, but nothing about Milteer and Dr. King's 1968 murder. In March 2010, author Stuart Wexler was told in writing that the FBI and National Archives can't locate the FBI's Atlanta Field Office File for Milteer. Even worse, the FBI wrote Wexler that they had routinely destroyed the Atlanta Field Office file for another racist who traveled in the same circles as Milteer -- even though other FBI files show this racist had boasted of knowing James Earl Ray, provided information to an FBI informant about King's assassination, and was himself investigated for a 1963 plot against King.

The FBI actually has a file destruction schedule that allows them to destroy important material about King's assassination. That's one reason the King Records Act is needed so badly, to prevent the further destruction of important files, especially those that were withheld from Congress or that have never been released.

Other important King assassination files withheld from Rep. Stokes's committee related to Louisiana godfather Carlos Marcello. In 2000, the Justice Department released a report in which they were supposed to investigate claims arising out of the 1998 civil suit victory of the King family, concerning a conspiracy that prominently involved Carlos Marcello. However, the Justice Department report barely mentioned Marcello, and ignored material in their own files linking Marcello to King's murder.

According to one 1968 Justice Department memo -- withheld from Rep. Stokes's committee, but since released and quoted in Legacy of Secrecy for the first time -- information from a reporter's sources that included a "well placed protégé of Carlos Marcello" said that the Mafia had "agreed to 'broker' or arrange the assassination [of Dr. King] for an amount somewhat in excess of three hundred thousand dollars after they were contacted by" a group "of wealthy segregationists." The group was linked to "the KKK and White Citizen's Councils. Quitman...was said" to be a possible base of their operation.

Congressional investigators did turn up information indicating that in the months before Dr. King's murder, James Earl Ray had been a low-level heroin courier for Marcello's drug network. But files not yet released include those identifying Ray's two main criminal contacts in New Orleans, and several people connected to Marcello's organization who were interviewed by the FBI about Dr. King's assassination.

In addition, the 2000 Justice Department report on King's assassination -- which was supposed to look at Marcello's possible role -- failed to mention the fact that the FBI had in its files since 1986 Marcello's clear confession to JFK's assassination. (One would think that a godfather's confession to one assassination might at least rate a mention in a report about his role in another.) We found the uncensored files in the National Archives in 2006, and they also reveal that the FBI secretly recorded "hundreds of hours" of secret audio tape of Marcello in 1985 and 1986, when Marcello was in federal prison. The FBI's undercover operation against Marcello was code-named CAMTEX. Marcello often spoke to a trusted associate from New Orleans while he was secretly being recorded, so those CAMTEX tapes could have information about Ray's New Orleans contacts. But those tapes and transcripts have never been released.google_protectAndRun("render_ads.js::google_render_ad", google_handleError, google_render_ad);

At least some of those "hundreds of hours" of secret Marcello tapes should be released under the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Act, since on the tapes, Marcello rails against the John and Robert Kennedy, and talks about meeting Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby.

News reports say that Senator Kerry is modeling the new King Records Act on the 1992 JFK Act. The JFK Act did result in the release of over four million pages of files, including the (very incomplete) Marcello CAMTEX files mentioned above. But the King Act needs to avoid several problems that plagued the JFK Act.

First is that fact that according to NBC News, "millions" of pages of JFK assassination files remain unreleased, despite the law requiring their release. A report by OMB Watch quoted an official who helped to implement the JFK Act as saying that "well over one million CIA records" pertaining to JFK's assassination were not released.

Even worse, the Final Report of the Review Board created by the 1992 JFK Act said that the Secret Service admitted destroying important JFK assassination files in 1995, at a time when the law said they were supposed to be preserved and released. Some of the files destroyed by the Secret Service covered the time in November 1963 when Milteer's taped remarks first became known to the Secret Service and FBI.

In addition, despite the Obama administration's attempts at more open government, the CIA continues to fight a lawsuit seeking records that should have been released under the 1992 JFK Act, as detailed in an October 17, 2009 New York Times article. Those files -- and perhaps a million more -- are to remain secret until 2017 or even beyond.

A Congressional hearing in the House of Representatives could help to ensure that those problems are not repeated with the new King Act. We believe that in the long run, releasing all the files about the assassinations of Dr. King and JFK will not only be good for America, but also for the FBI, CIA, Justice Department, Secret Service, and other agencies. Until all the files are released, many Americans will continue to view those agencies with suspicion.

The new King Act can insure the privacy of innocent individuals, while going after the files about those who killed Dr. King. The tapes generated by J. Edgar Hoover's vendetta against Dr. King -- part of a huge domestic surveillance network against progressives later exposed by Senator Frank Church -- are of no value in documenting those who killed Dr. King.

The best way to ensure quick passage of the King Act then is for it to have as many co-sponsors as possible. You can help by asking your own Senators and Representative to co-sponsor the legislation. To find out how to contact your members of Congress, you can go do legacyofsecrecy.com, and click the "Tell Congress" link. A short, polite email or phone call--asking them to co-sponsor the Martin Luther King Records Act when Sen. Kerry introduces it in the Senate and Rep. Lewis introduces it in the House--would be most effective.

This is a rare opportunity for Americans to actually to do something about needless government secrecy. The 1992 JFK Act was passed unanimously by both houses of Congress, and while that level of cooperation seems unimaginable today, it' s hard to think of any legitimate reason why a member of Congress wouldn't want to co-sponsor the new King Act.

Edited April 7, 2010 by William Kelly

New US Congress

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