Category Archives: BBC

BBC won’t deny if Jimmy Savile was at the 28Gate seminar

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Yes, they won’t. From “Solve BBC bias”, a new low in the BBC’s incompetent lawyering:

Today the BBC replied to my FOI request with the predictable “Please note that the information you have requested is excluded from the Act because it is held for the purposes of ‘journalism, art or literature.’” So despite the names of the seminar delegates now being freely discussed in the public domain, the BBC won’t confirm or deny that Jimmy Savile was present, let alone comment on who was present at the seminar which resulted in the BBC changing their editorial policy towards climate.

Whose presence shall we ask about then? Dr Mengele? Frankenstein? Elvis?

The CIA is even worse than the BBC

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Funny June 2012 FOI story showing a distracted CIA even less internet-capable than the BBC /sarc

From techdirt.com:

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For editor’s choice, we have a combination of two comments on our story about a freedom of information request to the CIA about its own rules for declassifying a document. The CIA came back with a letter saying that it searched for the regulations — which were clearly named in the request (32 C.F.R. 1908) and came back empty, saying “We processed your request in accordance with the FOIA…. Our processing included a search for records as described…. We did not locate any records responsive to your request. Although our searches were thorough and diligent, and it is highly unlikely that repeating those searches would change the result….” ReaderAnymouse_cowherd discovered that perhaps the CIA needs better search tools:

FWIW… I diligently typed “32 C.F.R. 1908″ into Google and found a copy in .035 seconds.

I’m now officially better than the CIA and especially Michele Meeks.

And Oblate took it one step further:

Not sure if this is what he was looking for:
http://www.foia.cia.gov/32CFR.asp
That’s right, the CIA has a link on their own website to download an electric copy of the document they said they don’t have an electronic copy of. In their FOIA section. Maybe it’s on a domestic server, and the FBI should have looked for it?

Of course you can always download CFR from the GPO. It seem ridiculous to submit an FOI for a whole section of the CFR when it’s freely available, but it’s even worse for the CIA to give this response. Is there a ‘secret’ subsection of 1908 that was specifically requested? The article doesn’t indicate anything other than the entire section being requested.

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Halpern joins the 28Gate dance

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(comment posted at Rabett Run)

Am always surprised by these calls for a “conspiracy narrative”. AFAIK there is no “conspiracy” involved in this case as the seminars were put together in the open by known organizations.

What has happened is that a Big Bully in the form of a Big Corporation has lost its $200+k fight against a pensioner (Newbery), and a felllow internet user (me).

It would be quite strange to find out you guys prefer to be on the Big Bully’s side after all the mentions of Big Oil and the likes. But strangeness is the name of the game.