Beware the ‘Flying Toblerones’: Reports of Scottish UFOs Released
The BBC reports:
Reports of “flying Toblerones” and objects travelling at 1,100 mph across the Scottish sky have been released by the Ministry of Defence. The files detail how unidentified objects have been witnessed flying over a range of locations across Scotland.Among them were one from a senior air traffic controller at Prestwick Airport who reported seeing a fast-moving UFO on the airport radar.
While four fishermen spotted a flat, shiny object hovering off the coast. The Scottish accounts are among the thousands of reports made of close encounters with UFOs across the UK which have been released in a joint project between the MoD and the National Archives.
For five years the people both you and I represent have witnessed a phenomenon in the area that has been left unexplained The Prestwick airport…
Human Bones Could Reveal Truth of Japan’s ‘Unit 731′ Experiments
Julian Ryall writes in the Telegraph:
The Imperial Japanese Army’s notorious medical research team carried out secret human experiments regarded as some of the worst war crimes in history.
Its scientists subjected more than 10,000 people per year to grotesque Josef Mengele-style torture in the name of science, including captured Russian soldiers and downed American aircrews. The experiments included hanging people upside down until they choked, burying them alive, injecting air into their veins and placing them in high-pressure chambers.
Now new detail about their victims’ suffering could be revealed after the authorities in Tokyo announced plans to open an investigation into human bones thought to have come from the unit. A new search is also due to be carried out for mass graves that may contain more victims of human experiments.
Revealed: See Who Was Paid Off In The AIG Bailout
Ryan Grim and Shahien Nasiripour write on the Huffington Post:
A key question at the heart of the controversial bailout of AIG is just how much money the government lost. The Federal Reserve and Treasury Department have worked to keep that number secret and to conceal who was on the winning end.
An unredacted document obtained by the Huffington Post list the damage in detail. Goldman Sachs alone, for instance, got $14 billion in government money for assets worth $6 billion at the time — a de facto $8 billion subsidy, courtesy of taxpayers.
The list was produced as part of a congressional investigation led by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee into the federal bailout of AIG…
Details of Iraq Whistleblower’s Alleged Suicide Sealed For 70 Years
Stephen C. Webster reports on RAW Story:
By 2080, anyone with a direct interest in learning how Dr. David Kelly died, will themselves be dead.
That’s how an Oxford coroner reacted to a recent ruling ordering the details of the former United Nations weapons inspector’s death locked away for 70 years, according to a Mail Online report.
Kelly’s story, however, was gravely important in 2003, just before he was found dead in the woods behind his home in Oxfordshire, U.K. As the BBC revealed in the wake of his passing, he had been the key source behind a story claiming intelligence on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction was “sexed up.”
Federal Reserve Seeks to Protect U.S. Bailout Secrets
David Glovin and Thom Weidlich writes on Bloomberg:
The Federal Reserve asked a U.S. appeals court to block a ruling that for the first time would force the central bank to reveal secret identities of financial firms that might have collapsed without the largest government bailout in U.S. history.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan will decide whether the Fed must release records of the unprecedented $2 trillion U.S. loan program launched after the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. In August, a federal judge ordered that the information be released, responding to a request by Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News.
“This case is about the identity of the borrower,” said Matthew Collette, a lawyer for the government, in oral arguments today. “This is the equivalent of saying ‘I…
Obama Curbs Secrecy of Classified Documents
So what do disinfo.com visitors think? Dick Cheney must be rolling in his virtual grave. What message is President Obama sending while doing this on vacation?
CHARLIE SAVAGE writes in the NY Times:
WASHINGTON — President Obama declared on Tuesday that “no information may remain classified indefinitely” as part of a sweeping overhaul of the executive branch’s system for protecting classified national security information.
In an executive order and an accompanying presidential memorandum to agency heads, Mr. Obama signaled that the government should try harder to make information public if possible, including by requiring agencies to regularly review what kinds of information they classify and to eliminate any obsolete secrecy requirements.
“Agency heads shall complete on a periodic basis a comprehensive review of the agency’s classification guidance, particularly classification guides, to ensure the guidance…
Mysterious, Maybe Murderous Yale ‘Dauphin’ Releases Video of Skull & Bones’ Secret Lair
From Gawker:
A Yale freshman who called himself the Dauphin is believed to have terrorized his peers with death threats, ritualistic vandalism, and a hit and run accident. Among his rumored loot: Secret society video footage, which has since surfaced on YouTube.
The video, uploaded by new YouTube user Dauphinish and caught first by IvyGate, looks like it could belong the vaunted secret society that counts three generations of Bushes as its members. Unfortunately, vaunted secret societies don’t really have publicists, so it’s hard to confirm. (Yalies, take a stab in comments?) There are gothic arches, dust, skull imagery, and a stray coffin lying around. Dauphinish has tracked his video with what can only be described as conspiracy theory electronica:
But here’s the rub: Though Dauphinish claims he is a 58-year-old Syrian, he sounds an awful lot like a certain Yale frosh who used to call himself the Dauphin…
Blackwater Tied to Secret CIA Raids
This goes well beyond the “auxiliary service” function documented in Robert Greenwald’s Iraq For Sale. JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI report in the New York Times:
WASHINGTON — Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.’s most sensitive activities — clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials.
The raids against suspects occurred on an almost nightly basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, with Blackwater personnel playing central roles in what company insiders called “snatch and grab” operations, the former employees and current and former intelligence officers said.
Several former Blackwater guards said that their involvement in the operations became so routine that the…
Obama Secrecy Watch: Don’t Trench on My ‘Executive Prerogatives’
Newsweek reports in its Declassified blog:
As we previously noted, our colleague Weston Kosova gave the Obama administration some much-needed grief on Friday for refusing a federal judge’s recent order to turn over documents showing how big telecommunications firms lobbied to get immunity for their participation in President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program.
But that is actually only one of many examples of how Obama appointees are standing up for Bush-era secrecy.
In just the last few days, virtually unnoticed by most of the news media, administration officials have:
* Rejected a new Freedom of Information request for White House visitor logs (despite their announced intention to start making such documents public).
* Appealed, yet again, to invoke “state secrets” to block a lawsuit that might shed light on the CIA’s extraordinary rendition of terror suspects to…
Benito Mussolini Was Recruited By MI5
Tom Kington writes in the Guardian:
History remembers Benito Mussolini as a founder member of the original Axis of Evil, the Italian dictator who ruled his country with fear and forged a disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany. But a previously unknown area of Il Duce’s CV has come to light: his brief career as a British agent.
Archived documents have revealed that Mussolini got his start in politics in 1917 with the help of a £100 weekly wage from MI5.
For the British intelligence agency, it must have seemed like a good investment. Mussolini, then a 34-year-old journalist, was not just willing to ensure Italy continued to fight alongside the allies in the first world war by publishing propaganda in his paper. He was also willing to send in the boys to “persuade”…
Anti-Leak Government Document Leaked
Nigel Constantine writes on TG Daily:
There is more embarrassment for the UK Ministry of Defence after a document about how to avoid leaks of documents was leaked onto the internet.
The British Government has been having problems with leaks since the dawn of time, particularly after an embarrassing scandal over expenses claims. According to the Daily Mail, the security manual which sets out tactics for preventing Chinese and Russian intelligence services from using blackmail or hi-tech gadgets to obtain sensitive information was unfortunately published online. It describes methods of countering the threat from ’subversive or terrorist organisations’ and those terrible investigative journalists who refuse to type out what the government hands them in press releases.
The UK MoD Manual of Security, which contains the UK military protocol for security and counter-intelligence operations,…
Taryn Simon Photographs Secret Sites
TED: Ideas Worth Spreading (Video):
Taryn Simon exhibits her startling take on photography — to reveal worlds and people we would never see otherwise. She shares two projects: one documents otherworldly locations typically kept secret from the public, the other involves haunting portraits of men convicted for crimes they did not commit.
Watch video in high res here.
