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U.S. Reclassifies Many Documents in Secret Review
In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives,
intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of
historical documents that were available for years, including some already
published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by
private historians....
Under existing guidelines, government documents are supposed
to be declassified after 25 years unless there is particular reason to keep
them secret. While some of the choices made by the security reviewers at the
archives are baffling, others seem guided by an old bureaucratic reflex: to
cover up embarrassments, even if they occurred a half-century ago.
Source: The New York Times (online), February 21, 2006
Cold War Nuclear Tests Exposed
Americans To Radioactivity
Warning: The Surgeon General has
determined that the U.S. Government is hazardous to your health.
That's the grim warning the Libertarian Party wants to slap on
politicians, after the federal government confessed this week that Cold
War nuclear tests exposed 230,000 Americans to high levels of
radioactivity -- and may cause 75,000 people to develop fatal thyroid
cancer. This week, the National Cancer Institute admitted that government nuclear
tests in the 1950s and 1960s showered the lower 48 states with Iodine 131
-- and exposed people in five states to enough radiation to cause lethal
thyroid cancer. Especially vulnerable: Children under age five, who
received radiation dosages three to seven times above the average. Source: Libertarian Party Press Release, August 8, 1997
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