WatchDog TipSheet

Terrified CIA Urged To Shed Secrecy About Climate Threats

The Central Intelligence Agency is spending untold millions to study the national security threats presented by climate change. Now the Pentagon's Defense Science Board (DSB) is urging that another, new office be created to do the same job, for more untold millions.

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Justice Dept. Ditches Its Proposal To Lie About Existence of FOIA Records

The regulatory proposal was part of a large package of revised FOIA regulations, which will go forward without it. The Justice Department did not rescind the 1987 Meese memo the proposal was based on; instead it identified ways in which agencies could be unresponsive and uninformative without actually lying.

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Secret EPA Watchlist Yields Megastories for NPR, iWatch News, ... and You?

There are 464 facilities on the list of Clean Air Act violators. The Center for Public Integrity's iWatch News and National Public Radio got the list using the FOIA and published a powerful feature package: "Poisoned Places: Toxic Air, Neglected Communities." But they did not tell all the stories. They left some for you.

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Other Information Access News in Brief

Climate scientist Michael Mann wins bid to join emails lawsuit; BP and other Gulf oil spill CEOs won't testify before House committee; Republican House freshmen disappointed by Supercommittee's secrecy; Obama admin to issue disclosure rules for fracking on federal lands; WRI/Transparency Int'l panel on climate policy corruption, Nov. 3, 2011, in DC; proposed FOIA rule would let gov't deny existence of records; and bill to improve pipeline safety and increase access to info passes Senate.

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Corps Puts Searchable National Levee Database Online

Levees have huge environmental and human impacts, but are often neglected by news media until disaster strikes. The NLD should make reporting both routine and crisis stories a lot easier. The bad news is that after several years of work by the Corps, only a small fraction of all the levees in the US have been entered into the database.

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