In another move by the Bush administration to make it easier for them to shove information down the memory hole, the official White House web site has been modified to disallow indexing of much of the site's content.
Most search engines utilize "spiders" to crawl the web, following each link and indexing the content so that search engine users may easily locate resources and information on the web. Some engines, such as Google, also cache the page so that if it is taken down or changed the page is still available as it originally appeared.
This has posed a problem for the spooks, occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. They have been posting items on whitehouse.gov — the official site for the White House — only to change their minds about having the information available. They can remove, or modify the information, but the search engines still have the original copy.
Certain astute individuals have noticed some of the changes, went to Google and called up the original page and made the comparrison.
Most recently, the administration had published that combat operations in Iraq had ended. Then, after more fighting and American soldiers' deaths, they modified the page to read "major" combat operations have ended.
To solve the problem of being held to their word, administration officials have modified the site's "robots.txt" file. This is the file that nearly all "spiders" request first, when they arrive at a site to index it. The file contains information for the "spider" regarding what files the site administrator wishes to have indexed, and which files they do not.
As you can see from the robots.txt file at whitehouse.gov, there are not many files that the Bush administration wants the search engines to spider. Especially information pertaining to Iraq.
The question becomes, What is the reason for this modification? Why do they not want to be held to the information that they place in cyberspace?
Obviously, national security isn't the issue. Everything that is posted on that site would have to be given security clearance before ever appearing there.
Someone has joked that politicians never lie. They just tell the truth in 3 or 4 different ways.
By changing the "robots.txt" file, government officials at the White House are reserving the right to tell "the truth" in as many different ways as they need, to accomplish whatever deception and psy op that happens to be on the agenda. And they reserve the right to change their official positions on any issue. And it will be difficult — if not impossible — in the future, to prove what was modified.
But it shouldn't matter, if you trust your government.
