United Press International WASHINGTON -- When the Clinton Administration issued a major directive on protecting the nation's key infrastructures from physical and cyber attack two years ago, it denied public requests for copies of the document. Instead, it offered a helpful fact sheet and a lengthy white paper laying out the president's plans.
September 6, 2000
Restricted White House Document Identical to Unclassified Version
By Pamela HessHowever, a line-by-line comparison of the restricted Presidential Decision Directive-63 with the publicly released white paper show virtually no difference between the two documents, both of which were released May 22, 1998.
"This is secrecy for its own sake. There's no other purpose," declared Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy, with the Washington, D.C.-based Federation of American Scientists. Aftergood has a standing Freedom of Information Act request with the National Security Council for all presidential decision directives.
The NSC did not fulfill his request for the official version of PDD-63 on critical infrastructure protection.
However, a person Aftergood identifies only as "RT" downloaded the restricted version of the PDD from a Defense Department web site and provided a copy this week to Aftergood, who posted it on his own web site. The same document was provided to the web site "cryptome.org" which also deals with secrecy related issues.
A side-by-side comparison of the two 18-page documents by United Press International reveals the only difference to be a missing "s" and an extra "because" in the "FOUO" version.
"They need to a have a document not generally releasable just so they can say we have something that you can't have," Aftergood complained.
Aftergood asserts presidential decision directives should be available to the public in their entirety.
"These amount to secret laws because they really govern and define U.S. policy in a host of important areas from crime to environment to drug policy," Aftergood said, adding they are sometimes not even shared with Congress.
"It's an area of unilateral action by the executive branch and it's largely unaccountable," he said.
The White House did not return calls seeking comment.
"For official use only" is not a formal classification designation but restricts the document's circulation. A "snapshot" of the original document on the web site shows a number that will identify for the White House which Pentagon office's copy was compromised.
Copyright 2000 United Press International
