SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2008, Issue No. 44
May 8, 2008

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PROGRAM TRACKS NUCLEAR MATERIALS WORLDWIDE

An interagency program established in 2006 by a classified Presidential directive is working to gather information on the status and security of nuclear materials around the world and to characterize them for forensic purposes. Remarkably, such a thing had never been done before in a rigorous way.

"On August 28, 2006, the national-level Nuclear Materials Information Program (NMIP) was established via National and Homeland Security Presidential Directive (NSPD-48/HSPD-17)," said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, director of the Department of Energy Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence at an April 2, 2008 hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

"While the specifics of NMIP are classified, the goal of NMIP is to consolidate information from all sources pertaining to worldwide nuclear materials holdings and their security status into an integrated and continuously updated information management system," he said.

"We have prioritized this program to focus on countries and facilities that we regard in the intelligence community to be of the highest risk," said Mr. Mowatt-Larssen at another hearing last October 10. "So we have in fact identified the high-risk sites. We have identified what type of material is there. We have an assessment, an ongoing assessment, it's being updated every day, on the status at the highest priority level. It's a work in progress. It's going to take a number of years to complete."

"I'm very enthusiastic about what they're doing," said Matt Bunn, a nonproliferation expert at Harvard who has long advocated this kind of database development. "My hat's off to them," he said, adding that the Bush Administration deserved credit for surpassing previous efforts in this direction.

The subject matter of the classified Presidential directives NSPD-48 and HSPD-17 had not been publicly identified before Mr. Mowatt-Larssen's testimony last month. Thanks to Jeffrey Richelson of the National Security Archive who noticed the disclosure. A list of known Bush Administration National Security Presidential Directives is available here:

PRESSURE BUILDS TO IMPROVE OVERSIGHT OF INTEL CONTRACTORS

A bill introduced in the House of Representatives would require U.S. intelligence agencies to report to Congress on the total number and cost of contractors that they employ and to provide detailed information on the services that contractors perform. Some controversial intelligence contractor activities would be prohibited outright, including arrest, interrogation and detention.

"Contracting in the intelligence community has more than doubled in scope in the last decade, and it's clear that effective management and oversight is lacking," said Rep. David Price (D-NC), who co-sponsored the new legislation (H.R. 5973) with Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-CA).

"We've got to get a handle on it," Rep. Price said. "That means demanding more complete information, establishing more effective management practices and, in some cases, drawing a red line to prevent the privatization of especially sensitive activities."

The two Members of Congress hope to include the provisions of their bill in the 2009 intelligence authorization act, which is being marked up in the House Intelligence Committee today. See the text of the "Transparency and Accountability in Intelligence Contracting Act of 2008" here:

The fact cited by Rep. Price that intelligence contracting "has more than doubled in scope in the last decade" was first reported by journalist Tim Shorrock writing in Salon and elsewhere.

Mr. Shorrock has recently authored a book on intelligence contracting which describes as much about the sensitive subject as intrepid reporting can uncover.

See "Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing" by Tim Shorrock, Simon & Schuster, 2008:

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

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