The Commonwealth Club has made the audio of the event available here:

http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive/08/08-09pathstozeropanel-audio.html

For a quick review of this event you may visit the following link: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2008/10/01_weapons.shtml

The event will air on public radio within the next week or so and we will post as much scheduling information as possible.

As promised, to access video presentations and the panel discussion from the event as well as PDF's of two of the presentations please visit: http://www.citris-uc.org/FAS

Hi Steve:

We'll make sure to post either the link to watch the live webcast or the link to the web archive and the paper that Mark Levine will present.

FAS

Written by Steven Aftergood

Mr. Aftergood is a nationally recognized expert in Government Secrecy. The Project has been in operation for 14 years and is equally critical of those from either party who choose to obstruct and limit transparency. I.E. Our collective ability to be informed about what OUR government is doing.

From Gabriel Shoenfeld Commentary Magazine (Commentary is considered a Right of Center Publication) : "Steve Aftergood, the proprietor of the blog Secrecy News, knows more about secrecy in government than just about anyone else in the United States. He has also thought deeply about the issue. He and I disagree about a great many things, including his contention that the Bush administration has been excessively secretive about what he calls its "shameful" activities in the realm of national security.

But unlike some of his colleagues in the open-government lobby, Aftergood believes that "genuine national security secrets such as confidential sources and legally authorized intelligence methods should be protected from disclosure"...

The FAS Project on Government Secrecy works to promote public access to government information and to illuminate the apparatus of government secrecy, including national security classification and declassification policies. The Project also publishes previously undisclosed or hard-to-find government documents of public policy interest, as well as resources on intelligence policy. You may find out more about the Government Secrecy Project and FAS by visiting www.FAS.org

Post Script:

James D. Watson, the eminent biologist who ignited an uproar last week with remarks about the intelligence of people of African descent, retired yesterday as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, and from its board.

Ivan: I've excerpted some from today's Washington Post:


Bruce Stillman, the president of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (where Watosn is the Chancellor), said in a statement Wednesday that his faculty members "vehemently disagree" with the published comments and that the lab "does not engage in any research that could even form the basis of the statements attributed to Dr. Watson."
(FAS Note: Watson has been suspended by the board of Cold Springs).

"Scientific prestige is never a substitute for knowledge," said Elias A. Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, in his own statement. "As scientists, we are outraged and saddened when science is used to perpetuate prejudice."

Watson has become known for his caustic and controversial comments. In 2000, he said in a lecture at Berkeley that heavy black people have better sex lives than skinny white people. He has said that women should be able to abort homosexual fetuses, and that eugenics could be used to "cure" stupidity or make all girls pretty. In 1998, he predicted a cure for cancer within two years.

The full article is here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/18/AR2007101801693.html?sub=AR

Long story, short: Steve B. What we find "sickening" is your revisionist history of the Civil War.

Micky: FAS is not supporting Senator Clinton - - We are however, in support of the idea that the overall national intelligence budget should be made public as was called for by the bi-partisan 9/11 Commission as Steve cites in the article (please note that the current General Counsel to President Bush, Fred Fielding was one of the 9/11 Commissioners):

"The 9/11 Commission went further and said "the overall amounts of money
being appropriated for national intelligence and to its component
agencies should no longer be kept secret." (Final Report, p. 416)".

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thomas H. Kean
Chair

Lee H. Hamilton
Vice Chair

Richard Ben-Veniste
Fred F. Fielding
Jamie S. Gorelick
Slade Gorton
Bob Kerrey
John F. Lehman
Timothy J. Roemer
James R. Thompson

The link we provided to the Surgeon General Carmona's testimony does not include his Q & A time with Senators. Below are some key quotes from Carmona's testimony. It is in this back-and-forth that he is quite direct about there being political manipulation.



On Political interference:

"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is often ignored, marginalized or simply buried,"

"The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds."

"The vetting was done by political appointees who were specifically there to be able to spin, if you will, my words in such a way that would be preferable to a political or an ideologically preconceived notion that had nothing to do with science. . . .

"I recall during my tenure that from time to time we would receive invitations, sometimes they were called 'mandatory meetings' of quote, unquote political appointees. . . . I went to a couple of those initially, but I recall early on that I recognized that these were really more political pep rallies. . . .

On stem cells:

"Much of the discussion was being driven by theology, ideology, [and] preconceived beliefs that were scientifically incorrect,"

"I thought, 'This is a perfect example of the surgeon general being able to step forward, educate the American public.' . . . I was blocked at every turn. I was told the decision had already been made -- 'Stand down. Don't talk about it.' That information was removed from my speeches."

On abstinence only education:

"There was already a policy in place that did not want to hear the science but wanted to just preach abstinence, which I felt was scientifically incorrect,"

On Emergency preparedness:

"[To write an] emergency preparedness report . . . I brought my colleagues in, as I always do to achieve consensus. . . . I then, as they say, ran it up the flagpole, went to domestic policy at the White House, spoke to HHS [Department of Health and Human Services] officials and I was given lots of different reasons. Well, this might incite, you know, scare the people. . . . I could get no traction whatsoever to move this agenda forward . . .

On Global warming:

"The issue of global warming came up . . . with senior officials, where they were heralding global warming to be nothing more than -- you know, a liberal cause and had no merit. . . . I remember thinking . . . 'Well, I understand why they want me here now. They want me to discuss the science because obviously they don't understand the science.' And I had this scientific discussion for about a half an hour, and I was never invited back."

On mentioning the President's name:

"In my first year, clearly I was told a number of times that the president's name wasn't mentioned in the speech and I was told it should be mentioned -- at one point, at least three times on every page. And I said, 'I'm not going to do that.' . . .

On meeting with people with disabilities:

I put in my paperwork to go to this meeting [of the Best Buddies program, a program for people with intellectual disabilities that was founded by Anthony Kennedy Shriver and has long been championed by other members of the Kennedy family]. . . . I was admonished for doing that. . . . I was told that I would be helping a politically prominent family who is -- this is one of their endeavors, and why would I want to help those people? . . . I said, 'This is about sick kids. It has nothing to do with who's moving the project.' . . . I took a weekend vacation, I paid for it myself, and I went up there. . . ."

based in part to the work of FAS's Hans Kristensen, Newsweek & MSNBC have created an on-line map of the worlds estimated 26,000 nuclear Weapons. Visit:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19377175/site/newsweek/

This is the "hot" story of the last few days and Steve has been interviewed by CNN, the NY Times and the Washington Post among many others as an expert in Secrecy... but, few are pointing out that it was Steve's original complaint to the National Archives that has propelled the story forward. Steve's letter from a year ago requesting that the Vice Presidents office be compelled to comply with executive branch reporting requirements may be found here: http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2006/05/isoo-ovp.pdf

You all may be interested in some media coverage of this issue from Commentary Magazine and ABC News (Blog)


Put Steven Aftergood in the Brig

Gabriel Schoenfeld - 5.8.2007 - 9:36AM

"The men and women who are defending our country, whether in the field or in the Pentagon, deserve our gratitude and respect. But sometimes the U.S. Army does things that are wrong, and sometimes it does things that are dumb".

"The trouble is that the OPSEC document is now widely available on the web. Published first by Wired News, it was then replicated by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), the Left-leaning advocacy group which runs a website that is one of the world's best private repositories of documents pertaining to U.S. security and secrecy" (emphasis mine)

What will happen next? I do not know. But Aftergood, who is a thoughtful critic of government secrecy—he and I have debated issues of secrecy and government leaks in the pages of COMMENTARY—would seem to have the law on his side.

If the U.S. Army is serious about operational secrecy, it would do well to keep its secrets truly secret and not let them slip into the hands of the Federation of American Scientists. Trying to recall a secret once it is out only compounds whatever damage has been done. Even before the advent of the Internet, it was impossible to squeeze toothpaste back into the tube.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/contentions/index.php/schoenfeld/408

ABC News: Army Threatens Critic Over Blog Policy

May 09, 2007 12:01 PM

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/05/army_threatens_.html

We love the debate but ask for civility in your exchanges.