SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2012, Issue No. 109
October 23, 2012

Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

KIRIAKOU PLEADS GUILTY IN LEAK CASE

This morning former CIA officer John Kiriakou pleaded guilty to one count of disclosure of information identifying a covert agent, a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

"When KIRIAKOU disclosed the identity of Officer A to Journalist A, KIRIAKOU acted willfully in that defendant knew the disclosure was illegal," according to a Statement of Facts approved and signed by Mr. Kiriakou today.

Under the terms of a plea agreement, the parties agreed that a prison term of 30 months would be "the appropriate sentence in this case." Other charges against him, including several counts under the Espionage Act, would be dismissed.

By foregoing a trial, Mr. Kiriakou loses an opportunity to try and persuade a jury that his motives were benign, and that the harm to national security resulting from his disclosure was negligible and insignificant. But he gains an early resolution of the case, which could otherwise drag on for months and years, as well as a sentence that would likely be much shorter than if he were to be found guilty at trial.

"NEGATIVE RECIPROCITY" EMERGES IN THE SECURITY CLEARANCE SYSTEM

In the world of security clearances for access to classified information, the term "reciprocity" is used to indicate that one executive branch agency should ordinarily recognize and accept a security clearance that has been granted by another executive branch agency.

This is not just a nice, cost-efficient thing to do, it is actually a requirement of law. Under the 2004 intelligence reform law, "all security clearance background investigations and determinations... shall be accepted by all agencies."

This requirement for mutual recognition and acceptance applies equally to the higher order clearances of the intelligence community, where reciprocity is intended to promote employee "mobility" throughout the intelligence system, according to the 2009 Intelligence Community Directive 709.

So possessing a clearance from one agency should simplify the process of access approval at another agency. But the opposite is not supposed to be true. If an agency refuses for some reason to recognize the clearance granted by another agency, that refusal is not supposed to incur loss of clearance in the original agency.

Officially, such "negative reciprocity" is not an authorized, legitimate security clearance practice. And yet there are signs that it is being adopted within the Department of Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals (DOHA), which rules on contested security clearance cases.

A new paper by attorney Sheldon I. Cohen describes a series of DOHA rulings in which a perverse form of negative reciprocity has been used to justify the denial or revocation of a security clearance, to the obvious detriment of due process.

"While the burden of proof has always been placed on the employee by the DOHA Appeal Board to show why he or she should be granted a security clearance, until now there was a modicum of a right to confrontation, and a right to challenge the evidence presented by the government," Mr. Cohen wrote.

But in a ruling he describes, "anonymous redacted reports and other agency's decision are enough to deny or revoke a DoD clearance regardless of contrary evidence."

In a series of recent decisions, the DOHA Appeal Board "has accepted unsigned, unsworn, summary statements from unidentified persons in government agencies [that are] in direct conflict with live testimony at a hearing to deprive or revoke security clearances of government contractor employees."

To avoid or limit the fallout of negative reciprocity, Mr. Cohen advises DoD employees and contractors to immediately appeal any adverse clearance decision, "at least to get [their] side of the issues on the record." Left unchallenged, it appears that adverse decisions by other agencies will be presumed reliable by DOHA and that any later attempt to rebut them "will most probably be rejected."

See "Has the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals Become a Star Chamber Court?" by Sheldon I. Cohen, October 19, 2012.

The Department of Defense last week published a three-volume "DoD Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) Administrative Security Manual," DoD Manual 5105.21, October 19, 2012. A copy is available here:

CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT, AND MORE FROM CRS

Newly updated reports from the Congressional Research Service which Congress has not made publicly available include the following.

Congressional Oversight, October 17, 2012:

Contemporary Developments in Presidential Elections, October 18, 2012:

U.S. International Trade: Trends and Forecasts, October 19, 2012:

President of the United States: Compensation, October 17, 2012:

Peru in Brief: Political and Economic Conditions and Relations with the United States, October 18, 2012:

Libya: Transition and U.S. Policy, October 18, 2012:

China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities -- Background and Issues for Congress, October 17, 2012:

Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress, October 18, 2012:

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

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

The Secrecy News blog is at:
      http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, go to:
     http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/subscribe.html

To UNSUBSCRIBE, go to:
      http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/unsubscribe.html

OR email your request to saftergood@fas.org

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

SUPPORT the FAS Project on Government Secrecy with a donation here:
      http://www.fas.org/member/donate_today.html