Author Archive

[exclusive] Floor Plans for the Plum Island Animal Disease Center

At the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, located off Long Island, New York, government scientists handle Foot and Mouth Disease and other virulent animal and animal-human diseases. The facility is being decommissioned and will be replaced by the National Bio and Agro Defense Facility (NBAF) by 2013.

The Memory Hole has obtained the official feasibility study for the NBAF. One of the surprises it contains is the complete floor plans for the hush-hush Plum Island facility. These are presented below.

For more on the feasibility study, click here.

Further reading: Official DHS website for Plum Island | Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory

CLICK ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE

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Plum Island Basement

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Plum Island First Floor

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Plum Island Second Floor

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Proposed Tillman-Lynch report released by Oversight Committee

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From the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform:

Committee Releases Proposed Tillman Report

A proposed Committee report on the investigations into the death of Corporal Patrick Tillman and the capture of Private Jessica Lynch discloses important new details about the incidents, but could not resolve “the key issue of what senior officials knew” because “the investigation was frustrated by a near universal lack of recall.” The full Committee will meet on Thursday to approve the report.

Documents and Links

Report: Misleading Information from the Battlefield: The Tillman and Lynch Episodes (383 KB)

The Memory Hole has posted an HTML version (automatically generated using DreamWeaver).

Recent docs on the web

Checking in with some of my favorite doc-posting sites over the past week.

>> Government Attic has posted the following:

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Monograph: Extremists Attack the Courts, 17-April-1970

National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance (CSNR) Bulletin, Number 2001-2, Fall 2001, and Combined 2002 issue

Air Force Entertainment Liaison Office Weekly Activities Reports, Oct-2005 – July-2006 - [05-July-2008]

>> From Cryptome:

Israeli Police Stations Eyeball

Eyeballing US Secret Service Headquarters

>> From Wikileaks:

Scientology “Justice Manual” (1959)

UK Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Recon ISTAR handbook 2002

>> And

Iranian Nuclear Science Bibliography: Open Literature References [Secrecy News]

Continuing to fight illegal surveillance

The ACLU’s lawsuit against the just-passed FISA Amendments Act [ACLU] (more)

Help EFF Continue the Fight Against Warrantless Wiretapping [EFF]

Looking Back, Moving Forward: The Continuing Fight Against Telecom Immunity [EFF]

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Preserving White House emails and other e-records

Two separate but related pieces of good news:

Court grants CREW’s stay: White House told to preserve e-mails [Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington]

House Passes Bill to Preserve Electronic Records [COGR]

>>> Some background from POGO

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Document flashbacks > gas prices | tax-exempt foundations | comic books

The Role of Market Speculation in Rising Oil and Gas Prices: A Need to Put the Cop on the Beat (2006) [PDF] (US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation via William Blum)

>> Press release: “Levin-Coleman Report Finds Speculation Adding To Oil Prices: Put the Cop Back on the Beat ” (Sen. Levin)

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Internal Memos Show Oil Companies Intentionally Limited Refining Capacity To Drive Up Gasoline Prices (2005) (ConsumerWatchdog.org) (Thanks to DM)

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Hearings on Tax-Exempt Foundations from the Reece Committee (1953) and Cox Committee (1952) [Scribd via cryptome]

>> Background article: “The Reece Committee: Social Science as a Tool for Control” [Old-Thinker News]

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* 1954 Senate Subcommittee Hearings into Juvenile Delinquency, with the special focus on Comic Books [TheComicBooks.com via Bookslut]

[DEA] Yanked Inspector General Report Reposted

On this page, the Justice Department’s Inspector General posts some of its reports concerning the Drug Enforcement Administration. In early June 2008 one of the reports suddenly went missing - the PDF and HTML versions, and all mention of the report, simply were gone.

The Memory Hole has obtained this pulled report: “Follow-Up Review of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Efforts to Control the Diversion of Controlled Pharmaceuticals, Evaluation and Inspections Report I-2006-004, July 2006″

CLICK HERE FOR THE REPORT [PDF | 3.25 meg]

Excerpt:

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) conducted this follow-up review to assess the DEA’s actions to control pharmaceutical diversion since our previous review in October 2002….

Despite these positive actions, we identified several continuing concerns. We found that although the need for special agent assistance in diversion investigations had increased significantly since our previous review, the time spent by special agents assisting diversion investigations still constitutes a small share of their total investigative effort.8 In addition, we found that the DEA still had not resolved the complicated issue of providing law enforcement authority for its diversion investigators, although it is actively pursuing the matter. Further, we found that few DEA special agents have received diversion control training beyond the 2-hour module provided during basic agent training. In addition, the support provided by intelligence analysts to diversion groups in the field has continued to be limited, and intelligence analysts still received minimal diversion control training.

With respect to the DEA’s Internet efforts, we examined several of the intelligence, technological, and investigative tools that are part of the DEA’s operational strategy, including the Online Investigations Project (OIP), telephone and online hotlines, undercover equipment, and training in conducting Internet diversion investigations. We found that the OIP, under development since 2001, has become a valuable investigative tool even though it cannot automatically identify web sites with the highest volume of suspect pharmaceutical sales as originally intended. In addition, since 2002 the DEA has established telephone and online hotlines for reporting suspicious Internet pharmacies. However, these hotlines have yielded few leads that resulted in diversion investigations. Further, while the DEA has started to provide undercover equipment to its diversion groups, as of May 2006 most diversion groups still did not have this equipment. And while over half of the 482 diversion investigators have received training in Internet investigations, most have not received the types of specialized training that diversion investigators said would prove useful for conducting Internet investigations.

Flashback: US Brass Ordered Civilian Massacres During the Korean War

The Associated Press has a major investigative story about the Korean War.:

In the early days of the Korean War, other American officers observed, photographed and confidentially reported on such wholesale executions [of political prisoners] by their South Korean ally, a secretive slaughter believed to have killed 100,000 or more leftists and supposed sympathizers, usually without charge or trial, in a few weeks in mid-1950.

Extensive archival research by The Associated Press has found no indication Far East commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur took action to stem the summary mass killing, knowledge of which reached top levels of the Pentagon and State Department in Washington, where it was classified “secret” and filed away.

This reminded me of an early Memory Hole article, which I’ve now updated with archival links and document images:

Civilian Massacres During the Korean War: US Military Documents Show Brass Ordered Slaughters

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Leaking news

Leaked World Bank report: Biofuels causing food crisis [Guardian]

White House blocking EPA report on regulating greenhouse gases emissions [WSJ]

Head of CDC Admits on CNN that Vaccines can Trigger Autism [Mercola.com]

Nutrition labels are inaccurate, and that’s OK with the FDA [ABC News]

US Allowed South Korean Massacres of Political Prisoners [AP]

DOJ Oversight Office Isn’t Releasing Reports [ProPublica]

Do We Really Know the Amounts of Greenhouse Gases Being Released by Corporations? [Dirt Diggers Digest]

Internal EPA Document Shows 500 Enforcement Cases Adversely Affected [COGRO]

New Lobbyist Disclosure Requirements [Sunlight Foundation]

Missing reels from Lang’s ‘Metropolis’ discovered [London Independent]

FBI’s summer reading list

The FBI has some heavy, Islamic reading planned this summer. According to a solicitation they’ve posted, the Bureau is looking to purchase multiple copies of 26 titles, including:

> Understanding Terror Networks (150 copies)

> Understanding Arabs: A Guide for Modern Times (30 copies)

> The Koran (Penguin Classics version) (130 copies)

> Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (150 copies)

> Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (180 copies)

> Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror (30 copies)

> American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us (30 copies)

> Islam: A Short History (30 copies) [They mislabeled this as the compelling but nonexistent "Islamia: A Short Story," but the ISBN reveals the actual title.*]

They also need 100 copies of the 2008 Federal Criminal Code Rules Book and 3 copies of PowerPoint 2003 for Dummies, among other books. Full list below:

(more…)