SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2015, Issue No. 25
April 8, 2015

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

INTELLIGENCE OVERSIGHT IN THE 113TH CONGRESS

During the last two years, the U.S. intelligence community has faced momentous challenges and experienced extraordinary upheaval, including the Snowden disclosures beginning in June 2013 and the release of a redacted summary of the Senate report on CIA interrogation practices last year.

Those episodes and others are reflected in a new report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence describing its oversight activities in the 113th Congress from January 2013 to January 2015.

Highlights of the new report include these:

** Efforts to make U.S. intelligence agencies financially auditable are progressing slowly. "The CIA, NGA, NRO, and NSA conducted audits of their fiscal year 2014 financial statements," but only the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) completed the process successfully. The CIA, NGA, and NSA "received disclaimers of opinion," meaning that their financial statements could not be validated by the auditors. "While the DIA and ODNI did not conduct an audit, both plan to do so in 2015," the report said.

** Over-control of classified information continues to hamper information sharing even within the intelligence community, the report said. "The Committee has been concerned about the IC's misapplication and overuse of the originator control marking (ORCON), which can impede the complete and timely dissemination of intelligence, as the agency that originates the information retains control over its dissemination.... Committee staff concluded that the use of the ORCON marking by certain IC elements had increased substantially, and that in some cases classification and control marking policies had been violated."

** Efforts to enlist the resources of the Government Accountability Office to strengthen intelligence oversight -- a move long advocated by outside observers -- are continuing, as the Committee encourages "open lines of communication and collaboration" between ODNI and GAO. The new report reveals that the classified annex of the FY 2014 authorization bill "directed the development of a specific GAO review to bolster intelligence oversight and reduce unnecessary fragmentation, overlap, and duplication."

** The report provides some new details of the three-volume structure of the still-classified CIA "torture report". The first volume addressed the history of CIA's interrogation program in 1,539 pages. The second volume devoted 1,858 pages to intelligence acquired through the program and CIA's representations of its effectiveness. And the third volume, in 2,855 pages, focused on the detention and interrogation of 119 CIA detainees.

** The Committee report said that "Financial intelligence has emerged as a significant are of IC activity, aiming to 'follow the money' of adversaries. It has proven to be a powerful tool confronting a range of challenging threats including terrorism, weapons proliferation, and narcotics trafficking."

** "The Committee also devoted significant time and attention to lethal operations against counterterrorism targets.... The Committee has worked with the Executive Branch to understand the legal basis for these operations." Likewise, "The Committee seeks to ensure that covert action programs are consistent with United States foreign policy goals, and are conducted in accordance with all applicable U.S. laws."

** With seeming condescension, the report noted that "The Committee annually receives hundreds of phone calls, facsimiles, mail, and email communications from self-identified whistleblowers on matters they believe to be of urgent concern. Committee staff reviewed and investigated these communications." If these investigations yielded any actionable findings, they are not mentioned in the report.

** The report pointedly observed that "Since 1994, the Committee has held annual open hearings to review the Intelligence Community's assessment of the current and projected national security threats to the United States." That twenty-year tradition came to an end this year when the new Chairman, Sen. Richard Burr, decided to hold the Committee's annual threat briefing in closed session.

The new Senate Intelligence Committee report does not contain any note of critical self-examination or any suggestion that congressional oversight itself might have been complicit in the errors and excesses of intelligence agencies. Accordingly, the report does not address any potential changes that might be made to improve the intelligence oversight process.

FRUS ON INVESTIGATING INTELLIGENCE IN THE 1970S

"There is too much disclosure," complained George H. W. Bush, then-Director of Central Intelligence, in a 1976 memo to President Gerald Ford.

"We are continually pressed by Congress, by the courts, by the Freedom of Information Act, to give up sensitive material," DCI Bush added. "We are trying to hold the line but there is a continuous erosion which gives away classified information at home and complicates our liaison relationships abroad. I am frustrated by our inability to deal with the leaking of classified information."

His memo to President Ford was presented (as document 78) in a fascinating new collection of executive branch documents on the investigations of U.S. intelligence agencies during the 1970s. The collection was assembled for the State Department's Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series (1969-1976, volume XXXVIII, part 2), which has just been published in hardcopy. It was posted in full last December on the website of the State Department historian.

In the aftermath of the Senate Church Committee investigation, "I find no degradation in the quality of intelligence analysis," said Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at a Top Secret meeting of the National Security Council in January 1977 (document 83 in the FRUS collection).

"The opposite is true, however, in the covert action area," Kissinger told the NSC. "We are unable to do it anymore."

"Many things are not even proposed these days because we are afraid to even discuss them much less implement them," Kissinger said then.

Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr., who was the chief counsel of the Church Committee, has written a new book of his own on secrecy in the broad sweep of American history up to the present day. Democracy in the Dark: The Seduction of Government Secrecy (The New Press, 2015) was published this week.

The book was welcomed by Katrina vanden Heuvel writing in the Washington Post on April 7.

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

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