SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2005, Issue No. 111
December 8, 2005

OPEN SOURCE INTELLIGENCE DIRECTOR NAMED

Eliot A. Jardines has been named Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Open Source. In that post, he will provide policy guidance to the recently established Open Source Center, which is responsible for deriving intelligence from unclassified, open source information that can be legally acquired without resorting to espionage.

"We must establish OSINT [open source intelligence] as an equal partner with human intelligence (HUMINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT), imagery intelligence (IMINT) and measurement and signatures intelligence (MASINT)," Mr. Jardines said at a June 21 congressional hearing.

"For too long, open source exploitation has been delegated as merely an additional duty for intelligence analysts. This is simply a ridiculous notion."

"No one would seriously propose that intelligence analysts be required to collect their own signals or imagery intelligence. However, that is precisely what we do with open source intelligence," he said.

See his June 21, 2005 testimony on "Using Open-Source Information Effectively" before a House Homeland Security Subcommittee here:

Mr. Jardines, a fairly junior figure, was previously the president of Open Source Publishing, a commercial enterprise that provided open source intelligence support to government and industry.

A December 7 news release from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, announcing the appointment of Mr. Jardines, as well as a Civil Liberties Protection Officer and a Procurement Executive, may be found here:

The rise of open source intelligence does not necessarily imply increased public access to analytical products of U.S. intelligence. To the contrary, the use of copyrighted source materials may pose a new obstacle to public disclosure.

NATSIOS AND THE COST OF IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION

Andrew Natsios, who announced his resignation as administrator of the Agency for International Development (AID) on December 2, played a memorable role in misinforming the American public about the costs of post-war reconstruction in Iraq.

The cost to the American taxpayer of rebuilding Iraq will be $1.7 billion, Mr. Natsios confidently told ABC Nightline on April 23, 2003. The actual number, which continues to grow, is at least an order of magnitude higher.

"You're not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is gonna be done for $1.7 billion?" asked ABC's Ted Koppel incredulously.

"Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do, this is it for the US," Mr. Natsios said.

The transcript of that interview, originally posted on the AID web site, was quietly removed later in the year, as reported in the Washington Post on December 18, 2003 ("White House Web Scrubbing; Offending Comments on Iraq Disappear From Site" by Dana Milbank).

A copy of the deleted AID transcript of the Natsios Nightline interview is here:

Iraq war-related expenditures, including costs of reconstruction programs, are notoriously difficult to track.

But a reasonably lucid account was provided by the Congressional Research Service in "The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan and Enhanced Base Security Since 9/11," October 7, 2005:

CQ RESEARCHER ON GOVERNMENT SECRECY

An unusually comprehensive account of current issues in government secrecy policy has been published by Congressional Quarterly's CQ Researcher.

The growth in classification, the state of the Freedom of Information Act, the declining culture of openness, and the problem of leaks are among the topics explored by CQ writer Kenneth Jost.

A copy of the 24 page publication is available here through January 2006, courtesy of CQ Press (1.1 MB PDF file) (For permission to distribute or to purchase hardcopies, contact Julie Miller at JMiller@CQPress.com.):

ALTERNATIVE COVER SHEETS FOR CLASSIFIED INFO

While underlying questions of secrecy and disclosure carry a potent primeval charge, the actual implementation of government secrecy policy is about as boring as it could be.

In a rare attempt to leaven the subject with humor, some unidentified person has produced spoofs of the colored cover sheets that are often used on classified documents (Standard Forms 703, 704, and 705 for Top Secret, Secret and Confidential, respectively).

Three previously published bogus cover sheets (for Futile, Stupid and B*ll**** Information) have been augmented by three new ones.

The collection was circulated this week at the Pentagon.

See the set here:

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

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