The U.S. Government classifies over 500 million pages of documents each year, offering little transparency to the public. How can we know anything about what is happening on our planet if so much information is kept hidden from us?
“According to our best estimates, more than half of all U.S. government records are classified. For an archivist seeking to preserve and understand our history, that means most of our history is kept secret from us, think about that for a moment ”
– Richard Dolan (4)
The United States has a history of harbouring secret government agencies. While the National Security Agency (NSA) was founded in 1952, for instance, its existence was hidden until the mid 1960s. Even more secretive is the National Reconnaissance Office, which was founded in 1960 but remained concealed for 30 years.
Recent leaks from
Edward Snowden, a former intelligence contractor, have shed light on the Black Budget world, which is full of Special Access Programs (SAP) and garners trillions of dollars every year to conduct operations the general public knows nothing about (2). These programs do not exist publicly, but they do indeed exist. They are better known as ‘Deep Black programs.’
A 1997 US Senate report described them as “so sensitive that they are exempt from standard reporting requirements to the Congress.” One aspect of these programs is the development of deep underground military bases, which can exist up to several miles underneath the surface.
Known underground facilities also exist. Take, for example, the Swedish underground military facility at Musko. It’s a large naval base built underneath a mountain. The hospital alone within this facility holds over 1,000 beds. Musko engineers blasted out 1,500,000 cubic meters of stone in order to build it (4)(5)..... [
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