“One wants to be sure that terrorism is not used as a pretext for withholding information that the public needs to assess government policy and performance. … It looks to me like the government is overreaching in some cases.”
~ Steve Aftergood
Steve Aftergood is our hero this week for the work he did during his long career with the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) from which he retired at the end of 2021. Steve directed the FAS Project on Government Secrecy from 1991 to 2021, which aimed to reduce the scope of national security secrecy. His efforts to bring more transparency and accountability within the government, especially around federal finances, have been invaluable. Steve is the person who put us on to FASAB-56.
The Federation of American Scientists is a nonprofit policy research and advocacy organization founded in 1945 to meet national security challenges with evidence-based, scientifically-driven, and nonpartisan policy, analysis, and research.
Related Reading
Comment on FASAB 56 in January 2019
FASAB Statement 56: Understanding New Government Financial Accounting Loopholes
I’m reading a book called Lawrence in Arabia, by Scott Anderson. A lot of people criticize us for “conspiracy theories” but you just have to read a book like this, which is describing in detail events of over a hundred years ago, to realize that people who called a spade a spade back then, for example, T. E. Lawrence, would be tarred with the same brush today. Lawrence, however found himself in a position to effect what he considered a just result, which held for a time, and actually helped the British, but he understood that his own home country was not a square dealer in international relations, stereotyping the Arabs as having unreliable predilections towards duplicity, exactly as they practiced themselves. They used the Fleet Street media to sway public opinion to back the designs of the Crown. There was a great deal of human carnage, injustice, and plenty of trading with the enemy, to boot.
Speaking as a former accountant, Steve Aftergood is indeed a hero who tried. Wishing him a blessed retirement.
Great, thank you.