SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2015, Issue No. 30
April 27, 2015

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

CIA REVIEWS "OPERATIONAL FILES" EXEMPTIONS FROM FOIA

The CIA Information Act of 1984 authorizes the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency to designate certain Agency records as "operational files." Doing so makes them exempt not only from disclosure, but even from search and review under the Freedom of Information Act.

The 1984 Act also requires the Agency to perform a "decennial review" at least every ten years in order to determine whether any of the designated operational files exemptions can be rescinded, so that the affected files would become subject to a regular FOIA search and review.

The third such decennial review is now underway.

The CIA is soliciting public comments to help identify categories of Agency records that are of particular historical or public interest value and that have been exempted from normal processing under the FOIA as "operational files." Comments are due on May 1, the CIA said in an April 20 Federal Register notice.

The first decennial review of the operational files exemption, completed in 1995, led to the opening of four file categories to FOIA search and review. The second decennial review, completed in 2005, yielded no newly opened file series but did lead to the designation and exemption of 23 new operational file categories. This was an outcome not contemplated in the statute (50 USC 3141(g)), which says nothing about using the decennial review to create new exempted categories. (Secrecy News, April 19, 2006).

In comments submitted to the CIA today, the Federation of American Scientists offered several suggestions for consideration in the current decennial review, including these:

* The operational files exemption should not be applied to any records that are 25 years old or older.

* Clandestine service history records and records of imagery analysis should be removed from the operational files category.

* Files pertaining to civilian casualties of CIA operations (including covert actions) should not be exempted from regular FOIA processing, nor should records of CIA interrogation and detention practices be considered exempted operational records.

SECURITY-CLEARED POPULATION DECLINED BY 12% LAST YEAR

The number of persons holding security clearances for access to classified information decreased by more than 635,000 (or 12.3 percent) last year, according to a new report to Congress from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

It was the first reported drop in the total security-cleared population since the government began systematically collecting statistics on security clearances in 2010.

The majority of the reductions involved persons who had been cleared for access to classified information but did not in fact have such access. Still, at the end of FY 2014, there were 164,000 fewer individuals with access to classified information than at the beginning of the year, the ODNI report said. Most of the reductions occurred within the Department of Defense, which reported a 15% decrease in clearances (Secrecy News, March 26).

Altogether, there were 4.5 million cleared persons as of October 1, 2014, down from 5.1 million cleared persons a year earlier. Top Secret clearance holders, including government employees and contractors, numbered 1.4 million persons, down from 1.5 million the year before.

What makes the new reductions particularly interesting is that they were not simply a statistical blip or an artifact of changes in the budget. Rather, they were purposefully achieved through a "concerted effort" by agencies seeking to reduce the number of security clearances.

"These decreases were the result of efforts across the USG to review and validate whether an employee or contractor still requires access to classified information," the ODNI report said.

The implication is that the national security bureaucracy, including the national security classification system, is susceptible to deliberate regulation and is not, as sometimes appears, an autonomous entity driven obscurely by its own internal dynamic. It follows that additional changes in the size and structure of the national security system may be achievable.

The new ODNI report also noted:

* There was a 14.4% reduction in new and renewed security clearances.

* The National Security Agency had the highest reported rate of security clearance denials (9.2%), while the FBI had the lowest reported rate (0.1%). The CIA reported a denial rate of 6.5% and a revocation rate of 0.6%.

The ODNI report cautioned, however, that different agency denial rates may not be comparable due to differences in reporting practices.

The unclassified annual report on security clearances was required by Congress in the FY 2010 Intelligence Authorization Act.

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

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