All unknowns are knowns, just not quite yet.Soon, the unknowns will join the knowns; in fact, in a way, they already are knowns.Maybe.
It all depends on ones' perspective.

Is it still a secret once nobody knows it?

I bet it's about the war. You're not supposed to mention it.

Stuff?

Yes, Peter, stuff.

Nazi stuff??

YES Peter Nazi stuff.

alienated: All unknowns are knowns, just not quite yet.Soon, the unknowns will join the knowns; in fact, in a way, they already are knowns.Maybe.
It all depends on ones' perspective.

Gee, remember the good ol' days, when the press fawned over Don Rumsfeld and thought he was so funny and witty?

The German government is as worthless as a truckload of dead rats in a tampon factory.

Archie Goodwin: The German government is as worthless as a truckload of dead rats in a tampon factory.

I give Merkel credit...she's smart and tries to do the right thing. She's also built a decent coalition. I'd take her over that corrupt prick Schröder any day. And especially over that douchebag Stoiber. I'm glad he's not around anymore.

Sir Cumference the Flatulent: Archie Goodwin: The German government is as worthless as a truckload of dead rats in a tampon factory.

I give Merkel credit...she's smart and tries to do the right thing. She's also built a decent coalition. I'd take her over that corrupt prick Schröder any day. And especially over that douchebag Stoiber. I'm glad he's not around anymore.

They have an understandable fear of inflation because of their history, but perhaps now isn't the time to worry about that so much.

coco ebert: They have an understandable fear of inflation because of their history, but perhaps now isn't the time to worry about that so much.

That's true..they're scared shiatless of it. So is the entire EU to varying degrees.

Sir Cumference the Flatulent: I give Merkel credit...she's smart and tries to do the right thing. She's also built a decent coalition. I'd take her over that corrupt prick Schröder any day. And especially over that douchebag Stoiber. I'm glad he's not around anymore.

I don't doubt that at all, but I wasn't alluding to the economic credentials of the government, just to the fact their security is a little lax. Oh, and that line is from the movie Top Secret.

Archie Goodwin: I don't doubt that at all, but I wasn't alluding to the economic credentials of the government, just to the fact their security is a little lax. Oh, and that line is from the movie Top Secret.

Ah...understood. I saw that movie a long time ago but didn't remember that line =)

There definitely are security issues, and they're unfortunately not limited to Germany. It's more a shortcoming of human nature, sad to say. For example, you can have otherwise strong security policies, but when someone puts their password on a post-it note and sticks it under the keyboard, those policies don't help all that much.

I blame Natasha and Boris.

put them on double secret probation

Back in the sixties, I saw a film called "The President's Analyst", with James Coburn. It gave me the same uncomfortable feeling then that "Idiocracy" gave me recently - that I was not watching a comedy, but a future documentary.

/If they find out you've seen this, your life will be worth less than a truckload of dead rats in a tampon factory.

300 files over a decade in an entire country? That isn't bad at all.

You know, of all the stupid, inane bullshiat and outright lies Rumsfeld said during his tenure in government, the known/unknown thing was the only time I actually understood and agreed with him. To this day I still don't understand why he gets so much flak for that one comment and not the crazy other shiat. It makes sense--
we know that we know something, a "known known." We know that we don't know something, a "known unknown," and we don't know that we don't know something, an "unknown unknown." I'm following the logic to the end, which for me is one of the most bewildering, truly rare moments in the Bush administration.

I bet they're about...Hitler

They're not "lost" they're just so well hidden that even the people who hid them can remember where they are...

Those Germans are so crafty.

Wanted for questioning.

Nothing! I know NOTHING!

/linked hotter than Crane's sex life

You said: we know that we know something, a "known known." We know that we don't know something, a "known unknown," and we don't know that we don't know something, an "unknown unknown." I'm following the logic to the end, which for me is one of the most bewildering, truly rare moments in the Bush administration.

I think the thing is that "unknown unknown" implies that there are "unknown knowns," things that we don't know that we know.

Why not just call it the unknown like a normal person?

Archie Goodwin: The German government is as worthless as a truckload of dead rats in a tampon factory.

Oh, yes, I forget. They are conservative and kinda like Bush, right?

Rethorn: You said: we know that we know something, a "known known." We know that we don't know something, a "known unknown," and we don't know that we don't know something, an "unknown unknown." I'm following the logic to the end, which for me is one of the most bewildering, truly rare moments in the Bush administration.

I think the thing is that "unknown unknown" implies that there are "unknown knowns," things that we don't know that we know.

Why not just call it the unknown like a normal person?

I think the argument goes something like this:

well, say, for example i have food in my refrigerator. I don't know exactly what I have, but I know it's there. I don't know, however, if you have food in your refrigerator (or if you even have a refrigerator.) So both are known unknowns.

But say you have a butler or something, who takes care of all your food needs. Now, the above example of you having food or not in your fridge was from my speculation. It never occured to me that there was another possibility beyond the scope of my speculation (i.e., you have a butler and no use for a silly refrigerator). That would be an unknown unknown. So i didn't have a conception of whether I thought you had a butler or not--it just never occurred to me.

From your post, I don't think I necessarily had to explain to you what Rumsfeld meant, but perhaps other farkers were confused. maybe not. In any case, the point of your post was valid. I'm racking my brain trying to come up with an example of an unknown known, which is doing weird things to my psyche. I'm backing up rumsfeld? ugh.

Here's the closest I'm getting: say we know 8/10ths of a particular batch of candy is poisonous. The candy, however, is unmarked, and there's no way to ascertain which is safe and which is not other than eating and dying or eating and living. So we don't know which candy is poisonous, but we do know that some are.

Yeah, that's a shiatty example, and maybe you're right. It's late though, and that's the best i can come up with. Stupid example.

There's a guy in prison for stealing/attempting to steal top secret files about... UFOs!

(The secret probably is there aren't any.)

TheGreyPiper: Archie Goodwin: The German government is as worthless as a truckload of dead rats in a tampon factory.

Oh, yes, I forget. They are conservative and kinda like Bush, right?

Lighten up, Francis. As I said before, it is a line from a movie.

Unknown unknown Rumsfeld knows unknown.

"Nobody can get the truth out of me because even I don't know what it is. I keep myself in a constant state of utter confusion."

Gin Rummy: I always say the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.
Riley: What?
Gin Rummy: Simply because you don't have evidence that something does exist does not mean you have evidence of something that doesn't exist.
Riley: What?
Gin Rummy: What country are you from?
Riley: What?
Gin Rummy: 'What' ain't no country I ever heard of! They speak English in 'What'?
Riley: What?
Gin Rummy: English, motherfarker! Do you speak it?
Riley: Yeah.
Gin Rummy: So you understand the words I'm saying to you!
Riley: Yeah.
Gin Rummy: Well, what I'm saying is that there are known knowns and that there are known unknowns. But there are also unknown unknowns; things we don't know that we don't know.
Riley: What?
Gin Rummy: Say what again! Say what again! I dare you! I double dare you, motherfarker! Say what one more time!

/first thing that popped in my head

/obligatory
//link hotter than fish grease

Der Schwamm ist nicht nass!

Who knew there were 300 variations on "invade Poland first, then France"?

Whos the service that makes the other service nervous farkin A man CIA

CrispFlows: "Nobody can get the truth out of me because even I don't know what it is. I keep myself in a constant state of utter confusion."

You magnificent b*stard, I came to say this.

Meh. Sounds more like typical government CYA. If an agency is top heavy with personnel and want to keep expanding the budget, keep labeling stuff as confidential. Then when called on the carpet by either the press or the budgetary process, the leader of the pack starts claiming to have had bunches of work 'stolen,'lost,' etc.

/never worked in government, just a citizens' oversight panel trying to reduce a budget crisis.
//start assuming no files ever existed and gut the departments. lost stuff will start showing up real fast.

Type40

Agent Flagg is one of my favorite amusements in M*a*s*h*. I own the entire series and Flagg seems the most terrifyingly realistic of the government.

/ I call him agent cause he changes gov depts so many times, even paperwork can't keep up with him
// it's his devious plan to throw off the counter-agents tracking agents for countersurgency insurgency intelligence.

but do they have Unknown Pleasures?

You know who else shredded documents?

I detest Rumsfeld but his "known unknowns" speech was perfectly comprehensible to anyone with two functioning neurons and it was very astute. He was saying there are things we know we are ignorant about so we must tread very carefully and keep an open mind and there are things which will just come out of leftfield and smack us upside the head.

Or so the Germans would have us believe....

"We haff no secrets. We haff lost them all."

Say it.

It's fun.

I've seen many secret and top secret documents over the years as they passed through my hands from point A to point B.

The Government knows that it over-classifies a large percentage of documents and occasionally reminds bureaucrats that this costs money.

Classified documents cost money to retain, secure and declassify. There is a multi-year--even multi-decadal schedule for this, so classification is a gift that keeps on giving.

It would actually be safer to underclassify. If anything that really needs to be kept a secret is underclassified, it'll end up in the enormous disorganized piles of paper on the author's desk and nobody will be able to find it until they retire. Some of these people do clean their desk when they change offices but most of them take everything with them.

Of all the top secret (Cabinet level) and secret documents I have seen, about 80% are overclassified because somebody hasn't approved them yet. They contain no secrets whatsoever.

Of the remaining 20%, about half are classified because they contain something that might be embarassing to bureaucrats or the government if they fell into the wrong hands, namely the hands of a journalist.

These contain no secrets but the fact that they put in writing things that everybody already knows but that the government or bureaucracy don't really want everbybody to know means they are classified.

The other 10% contain things which could cause harm if they fell into the wrong hands. They are mostly contracts. A lot of this information is supposed to be reported and published any way. Your competitors will see it. It is a question of when.

And that's the nub of secrecy and cryptography: most secrets will out. It's all a question of timing.

For example, nobody is going to know what role George H.W. Bush played in the Iran-Contra fiasco until the last Bush librarian is dead.

Nobody knows why he was parachuted into the Director's chair at the CIA.

Nobody knows whether he was the George Bush questioned by the FBI after the Kennedy assassination.

Nobody knows whether he was the George Bush who supplied ships to the idiotic Bay of Pigs Invasion although like him he was a Texas oilman based in Houston. Two of the ships were named "Houston" and "Barbara" but it could be just a coinky-dink.

Nobody knows whether he was involved in Operation Northwoods.

Nobody knows whether the Nixon administration alumni dusted off the 1973 Nixon plan to invade a Petrostate and ensure America's oil supply when the Nixon administration came to office under George, Jr.

Nobody know whether the future Director of the CIA was recruited by Dullas to the CIA straight out of the airforce and whether he had plenty of CIA experience long, long before being parachuted into the head honcho's office.

Nobody knows how much role this trading with the Nazi business played in George's decision to join up.

Nobody knows about Operation Paperclip except a few million conspiracy theorists and their sisters and their cousins and their aunts.

Nobody knows Richard Nixon and George Bush were recruited into politics by Dullas and Co.

Nobody knows that RMN was involved in Operation Northwoods and the Bay of Pigs BS.

Since the Democrats were in no position to do a repeat of Watergate, nobody knows how many Bush officials should have been impeached, jailed, indited, etc.

My guess would put it around 400-500, which is roughly twice Reagan's casualty toll. A lot of them were patted on the back, given a medal, told they did a superb job and booted ceremoniously out into the revolving doors of the military-industrial-media-congressional complex that Eisenhower warned you about.

Like Ollie North: Ratfink. Trader-with-the-Enemy (i.e, Traitor, technically speaking, unless you've got friends in high places). Patriot. Stonewaller. Conservative Media darling. Politician. And round back to Ratfink.

Notoriety is just another name for fame. The public troughs are closed to you for a few years only, when you cock up badly or commit high crimes and misdemeanors, and they'd have been closed to you any way because of conflict of interest legislation, so you just cool your heels and then put on the full-body bib of the walking dead and chow down on publishing deals (bought up by rich friends), punditry contracts and eventually public office.

brantgoose: "We haff no secrets. We haff lost them all."

Say it.

It's fun.

No, no, it's "Ve haf no se[flem]rets. Ve haf losht dem all.

"Unknown unknowns" made perfect sense to me, and it was one of the smarter things I heard coming from the Bush admin.

There are things we know. There are things we don't know, and we know we don't know them. In other words, the facts are out there, and we're trying to ascertain them, but we can't. The length of the current recession is one of these.

Then there are things that we don't know we don't know. As in, we don't even know these facts exist. They just show up on a sunny Tuesday morning, glinting in the sunlight. Or on a computer screen somewhere in a trader's office, and the entire real estate market falls over.

Back on topic: The German secrets are going to be so extraordinary no one would believe them (there really are aliens in Area 51, zomg!) or so banal no one would care, aside from a few select groups of people.

In any case, if they can't find the files, they probably weren't that important, or they'd have a very good idea of what was in them.

TheGreyPiper: Oh, yes, I forget. They are conservative and kinda like Bush, right?

Not even close...the entire spectrum is more to the left in most of the rest of the world. The current government is pretty much centrist (coalition between the two main parties). Merkel's party (CDU) is on the right side of the German spectrum (but not far-right), but they would be denounced by the American right as flaming liberals.

First thing I thought of