Killer Klown Klassification

Increase in the Number of Documents Classified by the Government

Driven in part by fears of terrorism, government secrecy has reached a historic high by several measures, with federal departments classifying documents at the rate of 125 a minute as they create new categories of semi-secrets bearing vague labels like "sensitive security information."

A record 15.6 million documents were classified last year, nearly double the number in 2001, according to the federal Information Security Oversight Office. Meanwhile, the declassification process, which made millions of historical documents available annually in the 1990's, has slowed to a relative crawl, from a high of 204 million pages in 1997 to just 28 million pages last year.

The increasing secrecy - and its rising cost to taxpayers, estimated by the office at $7.2 billion last year - is drawing protests from a growing array of politicians and activists, including Republican members of Congress, leaders of the independent commission that studied the Sept. 11 attacks and even the top federal official who oversees classification...

Thomas H. Kean, chairman of the Sept. 11 commission and a former Republican governor of New Jersey, said the failure to prevent the 2001 attacks was rooted not in leaks of sensitive information but in the barriers to sharing information between agencies and with the public.

"You'd just be amazed at the kind of information that's classified - everyday information, things we all know from the newspaper," Mr. Kean said. "We're better off with openness. The best ally we have in protecting ourselves against terrorism is an informed public."

With just about every Top Secret Star Wars Death Ray Cylon device easily found on the DARPA website and every Top Secret lab in the country depending on Chinese nationals to do their most sophisticated work, the Top Secret designation really only hides the details from Americans. Every other government in the world already knows what America has. The Saudis bankroll and own big chunks of the Defense industry, so Osama knows too.

But the ultra cool Alien Tripod Laser weapons Darth Rumsfeld wants aren't the reason for the increase in Classified material.

The increase is due in large part to the dire needs of the Vice President, a Presidential Advisor, and others to cover their tracks.

The motivations get murkier the more you look at them.

But once again, how can you classify what you've been bragging about the whole time?