SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2002, Issue No. 113
November 13, 2002

NEW PENTAGON INTELLIGENCE POST ESTABLISHED

Congress has enacted legislation to create a new Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, a senior U.S. intelligence community position whose occupant must be confirmed by the Senate.

"The establishment of this new position does not supercede or modify the authorities of the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence as established by the National Security Act of 1947," according to a congressional report on the measure.

Nevertheless, the move represents a shift in the center of gravity of U.S. intelligence away from the Central Intelligence Agency and towards the Pentagon, which already controls the vast majority of the intelligence budget.

The provision establishing the new position, which was included in the Fiscal Year 2003 Defense Authorization Act, is posted here:

DOD COVERT OPS ON THE RISE

"The secret side of the U.S. military's war on terrorism is quietly growing," writes Robert Burns of the Associated Press, following up on reports by William Arkin and others over the past month.

With new money, new personnel and a "front" that extends around the globe, clandestine military operations are poised to expand further.

See "Pentagon Takes Quiet Aim at Terror" by Robert Burns, Associated Press, here:

Relatedly, see "Hellzapoppin' at the Pentagon" by Bill Berkowitz, WorkingForChange.com, here:

Both items refer to the Defense Science Board DSB "Summer Study on Joint Forces and Operations in Support of Countering Terrorism." (Secrecy News erroneously attributed this work to Ashton Carter in the October 28 issue).

The full 78 page DSB PowerPoint briefing on the Summer Study, minus a few classified slides, is now posted here (1.7 MB PPT file):

SECRECY IN THE NEWS

Some U.S. agencies are refusing to declassify information that would highlight the serious nature of terrorist threats, outgoing Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Sen. Bob Graham told the Miami Herald. "There's a considerable amount of material that can and should be declassified," said Graham.

See "Graham: FBI lacks focus in terror fight" by Frank Davies, Miami Herald, November 13:

The U.S. Government's attempts to block the publication of former Los Alamos official Danny Stillman's manuscript on China's nuclear weapons program persisted this week with the Government arguing that Stillman should not even be allowed to show the manuscript to his own attorney, Mark S. Zaid.

See "Author of Chinese nuclear arms book fights U.S. censors" by Deborah Charles, Reuters, November 12:

GlobalSecurity.org's robust collection of satellite imagery and other resources on Iraq and the buildup of U.S. forces in the region is extolled by Robert Windrem of MSNBC in "Nice Digs, Mr. Hussein" (flagged by Cryptome.org):

The controversy regarding the still-undefined information control category "sensitive but unclassified" is now percolating well beyond Washington, as individual university campuses and others try to sort out its implications.

See "New federal policy may restrict research access" by Jonathan York, Daily Texan, November 11:

******************************

Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists.

To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, send an email message to secrecy_news-request@lists.fas.org with "subscribe" (without quotes) in the body of the message.

To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a blank email message to secrecy_news-remove@lists.fas.org.

OR email your request to saftergood@fas.org

Secrecy News is archived at:
      http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html