SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2019, Issue No. 41
November 18, 2019

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

TRANSPARENCY VS. GOOD GOVERNMENT

It is usually taken for granted that transparency is a prerequisite to good government. The idea seems obvious.

"Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing," said President Obama in 2009. "Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government."

But in practice, that is not always true. Demands for transparency can sometimes be used to undermine the values of an open society, and current events compel a more nuanced understanding of the concept.

When President Trump and his political allies press for public disclosure of the lawfully protected identity of the CIA Ukraine whistleblower, their efforts are not calculated to promote accountability but to counter or delegitimize independent criticism, and perhaps to deter other would-be whistleblowers.

The Environmental Protection Agency is citing transparency in a pending proposal to block the use of scientific research in formulating regulations on hazardous materials unless the underlying data is made fully and publicly available. That means that research involving confidential medical records, for example, would not be permitted to serve as a basis for public policy under the EPA proposal, the New York Times reported, since those records are not (and generally should not be) available to the general public.

Some purported transparency shades easily into deception and disinformation. When President Trump "revealed" last month that Islamic State leader al-Baghdadi died "whimpering," that was almost certainly untrue. No military official has been willing or able to confirm the claim, which seems improbable considering that Baghdadi killed himself by detonating a suicide vest.

Other forms of transparency are mostly harmless but also not very helpful. One thinks with chagrin of the many millions of pages of painstakingly declassified government records in official archives that go unread by the public and untouched even by specialists.

The point is not that transparency is bad or good, but rather that it cannot be an end in itself. It is a tool that is often indispensable for democratic decision making, but it is a tool that can also be used as a weapon.

Complicating matters further, the transparency that one person considers indispensable is often deemed to be unnecessary, inappropriate or even threatening by someone else. (Current congressional demands for testimony and documents amount to "constant harassment," said Attorney General William Barr in a speech last week arguing for the primacy of the executive branch.)

New forums and procedures may be needed to adjudicate such disputes. Unauthorized disclosures can sometimes provide an expeditious shortcut, though the same dichotomy of constructive and destructive transparency applies with equal force to leaks.

In short, "Transparency is not, in itself, a coherent normative ideal," as David E. Pozen of Columbia Law School recently wrote. It will yield positive outcomes in some circumstances and negative outcomes in others. Therefore, "less romanticism and more realism" about the topic is needed. See Pozen's article "Seeing Transparency More Clearly," Public Administration Review (forthcoming).

MANAGING THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE: AN OVERVIEW

More than 2.8 million U.S. military and civilian defense personnel were deployed in more than 150 countries around the world last year.

No one person can fully comprehend the workings of the Department of Defense. It is a massively complicated bureaucratic construct composed not only of the military services (Air Force, Army, Navy, Marine Corps), but also of numerous defense agencies, "DoD field activities," and unified combatant commands, among other components.

An internal Pentagon publication entitled "Organization and Management of the Department of Defense," presented an overview of this mammoth enterprise as of March 2019.

The 168 page document provides detailed information on the Department's structure and governance, along with various other significant data that can be hard to locate.

So one finds, for example, that there were a total of 1,310,731 active U.S. military personnel at the end of 2018, including no fewer than 229,611 officers.

There were 2,882,061 U.S. military and civilian defense personnel deployed in 158 countries, which are broken down in the document by the number of personnel and their location abroad -- except for Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, where deployment figures are currently restricted.

The Pentagon document has already been overtaken by events in some respects. Instead of the 19 defense agencies it lists, there are now 20 -- including the new Space Development Agency. And instead of 10 unified combatant commands, there are now 11 -- including the new U.S. Space Command.

Additional material about DoD organization and management can be found in the new DoD financial audit for FY 2019, published last week.

"NATIONAL TECHNICAL MEANS" LEAVES THE LEXICON

The venerable term "national technical means" -- which has long been used to refer to U.S. intelligence satellites and related capabilities -- is quietly dropping out of official usage.

The official DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms still included "NTM" (for "national or multinational technical means of verification") on the list of acronyms in its May 2019 edition, as it has in the past. But by the June revision, it was gone.

A newly updated US Army Field Manual on Army Space Operations proposed a new term that it said replaces national technical means:

"National Reconnaissance Office overhead systems (known as NOS) - formerly referred to as national technical means - are spaced-based sensors designed to collect data in order to support intelligence analysis."

Except for that new Army manual, though, there is no other indication that these assets are in fact "known as NOS." See Army Space Operations, Field Manual (FM) 3-14, October 30, 2019.

It is not clear why the traditional term has fallen out of favor.

The use of "national technical means of verification" dates from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. It was deliberately left undefined, then-Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms said in 1971, both to protect intelligence methods and to avoid offending Soviet sensibilities.

"The Soviets themselves are very anxious that it not be discussed," said DCI Helms at that time. "They have made it clear that they are unwilling to agree explicitly to anything which would appear to some as an infringement of territorial sovereignty, a matter on which they are extremely sensitive. So we draw no more attention than is necessary to this activity."

"There will be no misunderstanding between Washington and Moscow about what is meant [by "national technical means"]. But we'll avoid a lot of problems by saying it that way," Helms said.

"National technical means of verification" are still referenced in the New START Treaty, which will expire in February 2021 if not renewed.

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

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