SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2015, Issue No. 6
January 26, 2015

Secrecy News Blog: http://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/

CLASSIFICATION MAY IMPEDE TREATMENT FOR VETS

National security secrecy can be an impediment to veterans who are seeking treatment for traumas suffered during military service yet who are technically prohibited from disclosing classified information related to their experience to uncleared physicians or therapists.

The problem was epitomized by the case of U.S. Army Sgt. Daniel Somers, who participated in classified Special Operations missions in Iraq. He returned with significant physical, mental and psychological damage. He killed himself in June 2013.

Secrecy, among other factors, appears to have exacerbated his condition, according to Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ).

"One of the struggles Daniel faced was as an individual who had served in classified service," Rep. Sinema said at a hearing last July. "He was unable to participate in group therapy because he was not able to share [what] he experienced while in service."

To address this problem, Rep. Sinema last week re-introduced the Classified Veterans Access to Care Act, HR 421.

"The Classified Veterans Access to Care Act ensures that veterans with classified experiences have appropriate access to mental health services from the Department of Veterans Affairs," she said in a release.

The bill itself would require the Secretary of Veterans Affairs "to ensure that each covered veteran may access mental health care provided by the Secretary in a manner that fully accommodates the obligation of the veteran to not improperly disclose classified information."

The Classified Veterans Access to Care Act was originally introduced in October 2013 (as HR 3387). But although it had, and has, bipartisan support, it was not acted on in the 113th Congress. Nor are its prospects for passage in the new Congress clear. Still, there is nothing to prevent the Department of Veterans Affairs from addressing the underlying issue, and fixing the problem, without awaiting the formal enactment of Rep. Sinema's legislation.

"The V.A. welcomes criticism but also needs constructive ideas to succeed," wrote Drs. Marsden McGuire and Paula Schnurr in a letter to the New York Times last week. "The V.A. is actively engaging community partners, academia, advocates, the private sector and, most important, veterans and their families, to improve services."

The parents of Sgt. Daniel Somers described his experience, and theirs, in "On Losing a Veteran Son to a Broken System," New York Times, November 11, 2013:

According to the latest Department of Defense annual report on suicide, "The suicide rate per 100,000 [military personnel] in 2013 was 18.7 for active component service members, 23.4 for reserve component and 28.9 for National Guard."

That is a decline from the annual suicide rate year before. But the figures from the first quarters of 2014 indicate a further increase in suicide among active duty service members.

DRONES IN FACT AND IN FICTION

The emergence of unmanned aerial systems, or drones, as an instrument of war is often referred to as a "revolutionary" development in military technology. Thus, a new history of the subject is entitled "Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution" by Richard Whittle (Henry Holt, 2014).

But if it is a revolution, it is more like a turning of a wheel that will continue to revolve rather than the permanent transformation of all that has come before it. Armed drones represent an innovative response to a particular threat, but they are themselves bound to inspire other innovations and reactions from adversaries.

The development of drones as an ongoing process of adaption and response is the animating idea behind "Sting of the Drone," a thriller by former National Security Council official Richard A. Clarke (who was a leading advocate for arming drones in the Clinton and Bush Administrations).

"This is not a static environment," says a character in the novel named Dugout. "It's more like classic two-player game theory. We each learn about the other's behavior and adjust."

In the novel, the terrorist targets of U.S. drone attacks adjust by deciding to attack the individual drone operators, who believe -- mistakenly, as it turns out -- that they are far removed from the battlefield.

One of the least believable features of Clarke's novel, which is perfectly readable by the standards of airport fiction, is the character of Dugout, a super-skilled hacker and what-not who can accomplish technological feats that are beyond the imagination of his hidebound, boringly conventional colleagues.

So it comes as a surprise to read in Richard Whittle's history that there was in fact at least one such real-life character associated with the weaponization of U.S. drones, who is identified only as "Werner" ("not because he is a covert operative, for he never was, but because he prefers to remain anonymous"). Werner, an imagery scientist and all-purpose technologist, was able to swiftly conceive and implement solutions to problems that left others completely stumped.

The Whittle history is an impressive tale of aeronautical innovation, led in its early years by Israeli expatriate Abraham Karem, that would encounter technological obstacles, bureaucratic resistance, and policy barriers. The ensuing struggles are rendered more lively and interesting by the author than might have been expected. Is an armed drone equivalent to a ground-launched cruise missile barred by the INF Treaty? Is targeted killing precluded by the ban on assassination? Under what conditions can or should a drone's weapons be fired by the CIA?

Eventually, as Whittle recounts, all of these obstacles were overcome, at least for the moment. (In an echo of the last issue, a bill was introduced in the House just last week by Rep. Michael C. Burgess [R-TX] "to prohibit the Central Intelligence Agency from using an unmanned aerial vehicle to carry out a weapons strike or other deliberately lethal action.")

One thing that "the drone revolution" did not do was to establish a pause in the continuing process of technological adaptation and the development of countermeasures.

To the contrary, the U.S. Army recently developed a mobile High Energy Laser that it can use against an adversary's Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), and told Congress it will demonstrate a Counter-UAS capability in 2017.

At a March 2014 hearing, the U.S. Navy noted that it is developing its own Laser Weapon System to defeat drones.

"We feel energy weapons, specifically directed energy weapons, offer the Navy and the Marine Corps game-changing capabilities in speed-of-light engagement, deep magazines, multi-mission functionality, and affordable solutions."

"They are capable in defeating adversarial threats, including fast boats, UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] and other low-cost, widely available weapons."

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

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