secrecy news: AT CIA, CLIMATE CHANGE IS A SECRET

[Peter Lemkin]

AT CIA, CLIMATE CHANGE IS A SECRET

When the Central Intelligence Agency established a Center on Climate Change and National Security in 2009, it drew fierce opposition from congressional Republicans who disputed the need for an intelligence initiative on this topic. But now there is a different, and possibly better, reason to doubt the value of the Center: It has adopted an extreme view of classification policy which holds that everything the Center does is a national security secret.

Last week, the CIA categorically denied (pdf) a request under the Freedom of Information Act for a copy of any Center studies or reports concerning the impacts of global warming.

"We completed a thorough search for records responsive to your request and located material that we determined is currently and properly classified and must be denied in its entirety...," wrote CIA's Susan Viscuso to requester Jeffrey Richelson, an intelligence historian affiliated with the National Security Archive.

As an environmental scientist, I find this doubly disturbing as well as absurd...... Other than some information on effects of climate change on secret facilities, I can't imagine what they would know that is not publicly known by the scientific community, in general. That they don't care to share any of it should make people wonder what they are up to. Oh yes, there would be one other category they might not want to talk about...and that would be human produced [on purpose - as a covert operation] climate changes. Not a pretty picture to contemplate. Enough harm being done by human inattention to the effects of regular human activities. Nasty bunch there in CIA - seems it just got a little more nasty and [if possible] more secretive.