More governmental scrubbing

More evidence today of the government scrubbing various web pages of potentially embarrassing information.

1. Kevin Drum at Calpundit notes that the USAID (United States Agency for International Development) has removed the transcript of an interview by Nightline's Ted Koppel in which USAID Representative Andrew Natsios says that the cost to US taxpayers for rebuilding Iraq will be right around $1.7 billion once international assistance and oil revenues are taken into account.

TED KOPPEL
(Off Camera) All right, this is the first. I mean, when you talk about 1.7, you're not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is gonna be done for $1.7 billion?

ANDREW NATSIOS
Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do, this is it for the US. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges, Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan, Canada, and Iraqi oil revenues, eventually in several years, when it's up and running and there's a new government that's been democratically elected, will finish the job with their own revenues. They're going to get in $20 billion a year in oil revenues. But the American part of this will be 1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this.

Kevin also points to a Google cache of the page in question. I've made some .gif screenshots of the page in case the Google cache gets overwritten or otherwise disappears (I'm not suggesting that it would disappear by nefarious means, I just don't know how long Google keeps their cache pages, and I've had times when the cache didn't exist any longer for pages I was trying to find.) I've also made a screenshot of the page at the USAID site where the article used to be, which now shows up as a 404.

On the screenshots, I've pointed an arrow over to the URL in the address page on the 404, so you can verify that it's the page in question, and on the Google cache, I've got the URL highlighted in the status bar showing what page the Google cache was taken from.

Google cache screenshots: page 1 | page 2 | page 3 | page 4 | page 5 | page 6
USAID original page, now 404

2. Josh Marshall points out that in the original transcript of Bush's recent speech to the Australian Parliament, it'd reported one of his quotes as "We see a China that is stable and prosperous, a nation that respects the peace of its neighbors and works to secure the freedom of its own people." This quote was widely reported, including in a copy of the transcript posted by FOX News.

Thinking the quote had sounded odd, Josh made a .PDF of the original transcript as posted by the White House website. If you scroll down near the bottom, you'll see the original quote, complete with the "We see...." phrasing.

Now, take a look at the current web page showing the same speech. It NOW reads "We seek a China that is stable and prosperous -- a nation that respects the peace of its neighbors and works to secure the freedom of its own people." As Josh says:

Now, I've heard some speculate that the president had meant to say 'seek' but somehow misspoke or perhaps was supposed to say 'seek'.

Maybe.

But I find that a touch dubious because I think that on such a delicate matter the White House would check the 'transcript' against the prepared speech that the president read from.

I've made screenshots of the revised page in case things ever get changed again. The quote in question is on page 5.

Archived copy of original page .pdf (in case something happens to Josh's)
Screenshots of "corrected" page: page 1 | page 2 | page 3 | page 4 | page 5 | page 6

[UPDATE - 4:26pm 11/5 - Josh Marshall has the scoop on what happened with the Austrailian speech. Apparently Bush was supposed to say "seek", but flubbed it. The White House initially defended the "see" version, until they realized he'd made a mistake, and then they just quietly changed the transcript to reflect what he should have said, as opposed to what he really did say. Not the worst case of revisionism, but still not great. More of my thoughts here, if you're interested.]

3. Slate's Fred Kaplan writes about a report originally posted on the Center for Army Lessons Learned website, which has since been removed:

Two pieces of evidence shine all too glaringly: 1) an official, unclassified, and highly critical report on the U.S. Army's inefficient-to-shoddy intelligence practices in Iraq and Afghanistan, written by the Center for Army Lessons Learned in Ft. Leavenworth, Kan.; and 2) the removal of this report from the center's Web site, after the Washington Post published a story summarizing its contents.

Global Security.org has maintained a copy of the report on their side, and I've copied one to my own files as a backup.

These can be added to the apparently growing list of pages that have been changed or removed after they've become embarrassing to the President or the administration. The most well-known of these incidents is, of course, the changing of the White House website pages referring to Bush's May 1st speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

I find the White House making these kind of changes to be a serious violation of the public trust. The documents on that site are to be a reflection of what our government has said and done, not what they wish they had said and done or what they now realize they should have said or done. Changing the truth after the fact is "revisionist history" at its worse, and seems to be one of the few things this administration seems to do well at.

While I'd hate to have to see our congressional leaders waste their time dealing with an issue like this, I'm beginning to think that maybe there needs to be some kind of legislation put in place that would disallow the changing of any web pages on any official government site without some kind of notation being left behind to explain what the change was and why it was made. It's the least we should expect from a government that has a responsibility to keep us informed.

What's really sad is that these are just the one's we catching. There's so much information being put up on the websites - and possibly being changed - every day that it's almost impossible to track it all.

If you're interested in more about issues related to secrecy, be sure to check out Stephen Pizzo's "Hiding the Truth", a report on secrecy in the Bush administration.

Update - looks like Mark Kleiman is on the case, too - he has information on the Center for Army Lessons Learned report and the Slate article as well.

UPDATED 6:24am 11/4/03 - I neglected to include a few necessary links, so I went back and added them. Sorry 'bout that!

Posted by thorswitch at November 3, 2003 10:20 PM | TrackBack