The Secret Plot Against Santa Claus

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The Central Intelligence Agency classified and withheld from public release a 25-year-old joke item in a weekly terrorism report about the terrorist threat to Santa Claus, notes a new report on government secrecy. "The CIA's secret Santa" leads what the report calls a "lengthy compilation of declassified documents that illustrate the arbitrary and capricious decision making that all too often characterizes the U.S. government's national security secrecy system." The government has also classified classified information to maintain a number of other, more serious "dubious secrets", such as intelligence budgets dating back to 1947 and death squad activities in El Salvador that would have undermined Congressional approval for military aid.