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Secrecy and Security News

Newer News: May 2000

April 2000

• Sam Donaldson Webcast on "Echelon", ABCNews.com, April 26. "Is the U.S. government eavesdropping on your email, faxes and phone conversations? Sam talks with guests Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists and Duncan Campbell, author of a report on 'Echelon' -- an alleged global, high-tech listening system."
• Lee Disputes Classification of Weapons Data by Walter Pincus, Washington Post, April 20. "Lawyers for Wen Ho Lee are mounting serious legal attacks on the government's charges against the former Los Alamos nuclear scientist, claiming that key evidence against him was illegally seized and that the weapons data he copied from lab computers was not classified secret."
• CIA Tackles Records Nightmare by Dan Verton, CNN.com, April 20. "The task of information management is essential to intelligence production. If the agency can't get this right, it is wasting its time and our money."
• Public Interest Groups Urge Rejection of Proposed New FOIA Exemption, letter to Senator John Warner, April 18. "The executive branch's proclivity for new FOIA exemptions threatens the FOIA with the death of a thousand cuts."
• CIA Sends Agents to Schools--to Teach by Valerie Strauss and Vernon Loeb, Washington Post, April 18. "Intelligence is flourishing as a new academic discipline at hundreds of colleges across the country."
• Pentagon News Briefing on Area 51 Imagery presented by ASD(PA) Kenneth Bacon, April 18. "I think I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that we have no classified program that relies on aliens from outer space."
• Democracia americana (in Spanish), by Steven Aftergood, Clarin (Buenos Aires), April 16. "A pesar de sus limitaciones, la FOIA puede ser una parte importante de la cultura política."
• Files In Question In Los Alamos Case Were Reclassified by William J. Broad, New York Times, April 15. "The computer files at the heart of the case against the former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee were given higher security classifications last year only after he was fired in the midst of an espionage investigation."
• Freedom of Information Under Attack by George Smith, PrivacyPlace.com, April 14. "Congressmen and Pentagon Strangeloves are pursuing legislation to chip away at the Freedom of Information Act in efforts to protect the nation from the cyber-Evil that cannot be named."
• DoD Plans to Revise Its Information Security Regulation, Federal Register, April 13. The 1997 Regulation 5200.1-R will be revised, "...including the policy pertaining to sensitive information."
• FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY -- Explained, excerpt from an Air Force solicitation describing the purpose and proper application of the FOUO marking.
• Evidence suggests material downloaded by Lee was not classified, Associated Press, April 10. "Weapons designs and simulations downloaded by a fired Los Alamos scientist were not classified as 'restricted data' at the time he is accused of illegally copying them to unclassified computers and computer tapes."
• Lee Data Constraints Unclear by Ian Hoffman, Albuquerque Journal, April 10. "Most — if not all — of the U.S. nuclear-weapons data former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee is accused of illegally copying had not been reviewed and formally classified as secret."
• The Vietnam War Declassification Project, Gerald R. Ford Library, April 10. "To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh and Saigon, the staff of the Ford Library reviewed for possible declassification nearly 40,000 pages of National Security Adviser files."
• Energy Secretary Richardson Distances Himself from O'Leary on Declassification, Fox News Network, April 6. "We have different philosophies of security, Hazel and I."
• Pentagon Proposes FOIA Exemption for Unclassified Foreign Government Information, proposed bill language and narrative justification, from the draft Defense Authorization Act for FY 2001.
• DoD Seeks to Exempt Foreign Information from Public Disclosure Law by Keith Costa, Inside the Pentagon, April 6. "If adopted, the bill language would amount to an additional exemption to public disclosure requirements under the FOIA."
• CIA Records Management Faulted by National Archives by Dan Dupont, Inside the Pentagon, April 6. "The CIA's records management program suffers from 'serious shortcomings' that put at risk the agency's ability to preserve historically significant information, according to the National Archives."
• Report Criticizes CIA Recordkeeping by Dan Verton, Federal Computer Week, April 5. "The task of information management is essential to intelligence production. If the agency can't get this right, it is wasting its time -- and our money."
• Release of Foreign Relations Volume on Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1964-1967, April 3. "The difficulties President Lyndon Johnson and other U.S. policymakers encountered in dealing with the long-standing Arab-Israeli conflict from 1964 to the eve of the Six-Day War in May 1967 are recounted in a documentary collection which the Department of State released today."

Older News: March 2000

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