{"id":8883,"date":"2010-12-24T20:36:42","date_gmt":"2010-12-25T04:36:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=8883"},"modified":"2010-12-24T20:36:42","modified_gmt":"2010-12-25T04:36:42","slug":"santa-tracking-as-national-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/24\/santa-tracking-as-national-secret\/","title":{"rendered":"Santa Tracking as National Secret"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NORAD officials are adamant that their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/25\/santas-covert-operations\/\">annual Santa-tracking exercise<\/a> does not interfere with their ordinary operations, and officials have made on-again, off-again claims that the operation costs either nothing or very, very little (which in Pentagon terms could be anywhere from $20 to $20 billion). But what do we really know about the intricacies of the program?<\/p>\n<p>Very little, as it turns out. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wickedlocal.com\/berkley\/newsnow\/x1882982572\/Secret-Santa-NORAD-mum-on-how-it-tracks-St-Nick\">Officials are careful to decline to provide any information about Operation NORAD Tracks Santa, making only vague references to Christmas magic<\/a>. Officials insist that the Santa exercise is ingrained in NORAD&#8217;s culture. So too is the secrecy.<\/p>\n<p>Clearly no executive order exists defending the notion of NORAD Tracks Santa as a national secret. In spite of this, officials appear to have provided none of the intricacies under the Freedom of Information Act.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally troubling, at least one person indicated that there is a &#8220;secret&#8221; list of Santa&#8217;s eventual targets at NORAD, pointing to more untoward international dealings which, one can only hope, will emerge from some State Department document.<\/p>\n<p>The damning truth about the administration&#8217;s dealings with the elven kingdom of the North Pole is perhaps as closely guarded a secret as exists, and its revelation to an eager-to-know public might well produce a new flurry of calls to crack down on whistleblowers. But a president nominally dedicated to public openness cannot, in good conscience, maintain the truth of their role in Santa&#8217;s operations a secret any longer. Simple decency demands a full public airing of the facts of the upcoming Santagate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NORAD officials are adamant that their annual Santa-tracking exercise does not interfere with their ordinary operations, and officials have made on-again, off-again claims that the operation costs either nothing or very, very little (which in Pentagon terms could be anywhere from $20 to $20 billion). But what do we really know about the intricacies of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[283],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-8883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-xmas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8883"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8885,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8883\/revisions\/8885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8883"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}