For Your Eyes Only: House holds a rare secret session
There's a reason you couldn't watch the House of Representatives' meeting on C-SPAN this evening. If we tell you, we'll have to kill you. But here goes: They had a secret session, which turns out to be a relatively rare thing. And that's not a secret.
The House was completely emptied earlier for a "sweep'' by Capitol Police to ensure that no listening devices were present for the closed session -- for a debate about the secret surveillance of suspected terrorists, at the request of Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the House Republican whip.
So we looked back in history at previous such sessions. The last....
secret session was called in 1983, concerning support for the Contras in Nicaragua.
Before that, came one that you and Blunt might not remember. It was on December 27, 1825, to receive a confidential message from the president regarding relations with Indian tribes.
Then, five years after that on May 27, 1830, came another secret session to receive a confidential message from the president on a bill regulating trade between the U.S. and Great Britain.
Apparently, there weren't a whole lot of secrets to keep for about 149 years until June 20, 1979, for a closed session on the Panama Canal Act of 1979 and its implementing legislation.
The next year on Feb. 25, 1980, they secretly discussed the involvement of Cuba and other Communist-bloc countries in Nicaragua, followed by that most recent session on U.S. support for the Contras, July 19, 1983.
The Congressional Research Service provided this history as the Capitol Police escorted members from the House floor tonight to "secure the chamber, and sweep the premises for listening devices and other possible breaches of security,'' as Blunt's office put it.
"Once the House is fully cleared, members who have signed the oath of confidentiality -- (all but a handful have) -- will be recalled to the chamber, select staff with appropriate clearances will be administered an oath of secrecy, and an hour of debate will ensue,'' Blunt's office announced. "At the conclusion of that hour, the Secret Session will dissolve.'' Two minutes later the leaks to reporters will commence.
We hid this report online so only solid Americans with proper security clearances could read it.
--Mark Silva
Mark Silva writes for the Swamp of the Chicago Tribune's Washington Bureau.
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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if the secrecy of the session is the only information that was leaked, you might expect it to be planned propaganda. the things you're not supposed to know are usually perpetrated in plain view and hearing.
(e.g. when bush recently traveled africa setting up this continent for the dominant influence of the american empire in the years to come. hiding behind the promotion of aids relief given to african countries (pepfar - 'president's emergency plan for aids relief'), his more sincere objective was to secure the structures of usafricom, the most recent of the pentagon's six 'unified combatant commands' (ucc) all over the globe. while the purported goal of africom is to 'build democratic institutions and establish good governance across the continent...to support african leadership efforts,' the inaction of the us in the rwanda and sudan genocides or its recent installation of dictatorships in african countries, and american interests in the natural resources of the continent, are alarming not only to people in africa, who are aware of the plan to relegate all future economic dealings of the us with africa to the military. a gigantic scam you don't see published a lot in american media. now why would that be?)
Posted by: dave | March 14, 2008 at 04:23 AM