By Cliff Montgomery – Sept. 28nd, 2011
In 2009, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) set up a Center on Climate Change and National Security. Top heads at the Agency apparently understood the need for America’s intelligence community to establish an initiative on this matter.
Of course such an understandable, well-reasoned approach was immediately attacked by congressional Republicans, who seem to be deathly afraid of anything that smacks of moderation or reason.
But the GOP leadership was afraid of a mere shadow. The “Center on Climate Change” appears to have recently declared that its every action, decision, finding and policy must be withheld from the American public for ‘security reasons’.
The CIA Center on Climate Change and National Security released a statement dated Sept. 13th, which flatly denied a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for copies of any Center on Climate Change report or study concerning the effects of global warming.
The FOIA request was from the National Security Archive, a leading governmental secrecy watchdog group.
“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…,” declared the Center’s Susan Viscuso to FOIA requester Jeffrey Richelson.
Mr. Richelson is affiliated with the National Security Archive, and is a well-known intelligence historian.
“With some effort, one can imagine records related to climate change that would be properly classified,” recently stated an analysis on the matter from the Federation of Scientists, another top governmental secrecy watchdog.
“But…[the CIA’s Center on Climate Change has] said that all of the Center’s work is classified,” declared the Federation analysis. It added that the Center actually claims “there is not even a single study, or a single passage in a single study, that could be released without damage to national security.”
“That’s a familiar song,” boldly stated the Federation, “and it became tiresome long ago.”
