SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2009, Issue No. 8
January 26, 2009

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BLAIR: INTEL CLASSIFICATION POLICY NEEDS "FUNDAMENTAL WORK"

"There is a great deal of over-classification," admitted Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the nominee to be the next Director of National Intelligence, at his confirmation hearing last week.

"Some of it, I think, is done for the wrong reasons, to try to hide things from the light of day. Some of it is because in our system, there is no incentive not to do that, and there are penalties to do the reverse, in case you get something wrong and don't classify it."

"So I think we need to do fundamental work on the system," he said in response to a question from Sen. Ron Wyden at the January 22 hearing.

"I'll be working to see if we can come up with a different approach that incentivizes it at the right level and that informs not only those of you who have security clearances on this committee but the wider interested public whose support we need," Adm. Blair said.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse pursued the same question. "My experience," the Senator said, "is that, over and over and over again, we have seen official secrecy used not for national security purposes, but to mislead the public and to frame -- or more particularly, mis-frame -- an outside, political debate. Will you pledge to us that you will take this trust of secrecy that you are given as Director of National Intelligence and use it only to protect national security and not to manipulate public opinion or frame or mis-frame political debates?"

"Absolutely, Senator," Adm. Blair replied.

The DNI-nominee also told Sen. Kit Bond and Sen. Whitehouse that he favored prosecution of leakers of classified information. "If I could ever catch one of those it would be very good to prosecute them."

He suggested that there might be new technical steps that could be taken to identify leakers.

"If confirmed," he added, "I would like to come to talk to you about some ideas where we can build in some technical, some procedural safeguards into agencies so that it's not a case of going back afterwards and trying to get records and question people but we have some tools that will let everybody who works for the government know that if you are going to pass classified information to a reporter or to someone, there will be a trace of it which will make it relatively quick to identify you as the one who did it," Adm. Blair told Sen. Whitehouse.

Presumably this refers to improved tracking of classified intelligence "records," not of "information."

In answers to pre-hearing questions, Adm. Blair said that he favored continued publication of the annual intelligence budget total. "It has not, to my knowledge, caused harm to the national security, and provides important information to the American public," Blair said.

He also endorsed declassification review of 25 year old classified intelligence records.

"While much intelligence information remains sensitive even at 25 years, that which can be released to the public should be. Intelligence -- especially the intelligence that informed key policy decisions -- can and should ultimately become part of the country's historical record." [at p. 55]

The profound confusion that prevails in intelligence classification policy was recognized last year in an internal report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (Secrecy News, April 10, 2008). Even the most basic concepts of classification policy, it said, are open to question and interpretation.

"The definitions of 'national security' and what constitutes 'intelligence' -- and thus what must be classified -- are unclear," the ODNI report stated.

A new directive signed by outgoing DNI Mike McConnell on January 21 is intended to "foster an enduring culture of responsible sharing and collaboration within an integrated [intelligence community]" and to breakdown traditional "stove pipes" that inhibit communication within the government. See "Discovery and Dissemination or Retrieval of Information Within the Intelligence Community," Intelligence Community Directive 501, January 21, 2009.

The continuing classification of obsolete Cold War intelligence satellite imagery, to the disappointment of space historians and others, was examined in "A ray of sunshine into a dark world: the future declassification of satellite reconnaissance information" by Dwayne Day in The Space Review, January 26.

CORRECTION: AN ANOMALOUS RISE IN PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE

Secrecy News last week (Jan. 21) misquoted a line in President Obama's inaugural speech. He did not say: "And those of us who manage the public's knowledge will be held to account...." What he said was "And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account...."

The erroneous reference to "public knowledge" was also published by the Washington Post, United Press International, and other news outlets. It may have originated with a mistake by the FDCH transcription service.

The text of the inaugural address on the White House web site says "public dollars," not "public knowledge," and it is clear from the tape of the speech that that is correct. Thanks to reader LD for questioning the discrepancy.

There must be lots of historic events that were mistakenly transcribed and reported.

"You can't make an anomalous rise twice," said J. Robert Oppenheimer, according to the official record of his momentous hearing before the Atomic Energy Commission in 1954.

But what Oppenheimer actually said was "You can't make an omelet rise twice" (as noted by Philip M. Stern). Oh well.

The Oppenheimer case is to be reviewed once again in the latest episode of PBS's American Experience tonight.

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

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