I thought I'd highlight the awesome publication entitled Secrecy News. Kept track of here are the latest developments in intelligence and defense activities, from the newest budget adjustments to papers issued by shadowy groups like the JASON Group. I consider it a vital tool for keeping up on the ball. Here are some great snips you might have missed, were it not for Steve Aftergood, from the past three months:
JOINT CHIEFS ISSUE DOCTRINE ON "HOMELAND DEFENSE"
A new publication of the Joint Chiefs of Staff presents U.S. military doctrine on "homeland defense."
"It provides information on command and control, interagency and multinational coordination, and operations required to defeat external threats to, and aggression against, the homeland."
See "Homeland Defense," Joint Publication 3-27, July 12, 2007:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/jp3_27.pdf
NEW NAVY POLICY ON BIOLOGICAL SELECT AGENTS
The U.S. Navy has issued its first security policy for protection of "biological select agents and toxins" (BSAT) at Navy facilities, a move that may signify heightened Navy interest in research involving these lethal materials.
Select agents, which are designated by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture, are substances that "present a high bioterrorism risk to national security and have the greatest potential for adverse public health impact with mass casualties of humans and/or animals or that pose a severe threat to plant health or to plant products." A few dozen particular biological agents and toxins have been so designated, including ebola and smallpox viruses, botulinum, etc.
There are currently two Navy facilities in the United States that have possession of select agents and toxins, according to the new policy: Naval Surface War Center (NSWC) Dahlgren and the Navy Medical Research Center.
"The Navy may increase the number of facilities in the future, and other Navy facilities may gain access or possession of BSAT due to non-routine events," the document states.
The Navy policy implements a 2004 Department of Defense Directive on protecting biological select agents, and a 2006 instruction from the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.
See "Minimum Security Standards for Safeguarding Biological Select Agents and Toxins (BSAT)," Chief of Naval Operations OPNAV Instruction 5530.16, July 20, 2007:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/navy/opnavinst/5530_16.pdf
REPORTERS COULD BE PROSECUTED UNDER ESPIONAGE LAW, DOJ SAYS
The espionage statutes concerning classified information could be employed against journalists who publish such information without authorization, a Justice Department official told Congress recently, elaborating on remarks made last year by Attorney General Gonzales.
Those statutes, "on their face, do not provide an exemption for any particular profession or class of persons, including journalists," wrote Matthew W. Friedrich, DoJ Criminal Division Chief of Staff, in a March 2007 response to questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee that has been newly published.
He stressed that "the Justice Department's primary focus has been and will continue to be investigating and prosecuting leakers, not members of the press."
But he added that "it would be inappropriate to comment on whether the Department is now considering the prosecution of journalists for publishing classified information."
The congressional correspondence touched on several issues that are new or rarely addressed.
"What about conduct that is incidental to a journalist publishing a story," asked Senator Pat Leahy, "such as retaining classified documents that may be used later in a story, or communicating such information to a publisher or other reporters in the course of writing a story?"
The legality of these activities would "depend on the particular facts and circumstances," Mr. Friedrich replied. "It would be inappropriate to offer an advisory opinion about the legality of such conduct."
Could improper or unnecessary classification be used as a defense against prosecution? "We are aware of no case that affirmatively holds that such a defense is available to defendants in Espionage Act cases," Mr. Friedrich wrote. And he cited one Ninth Circuit decision that said that "under section 798 [one of the espionage statutes], the propriety of the classification is irrelevant."
He disclosed that "over the past five years, the Department has approved search warrants for materials related to the news gathering process... in four cases." These were not specified.
Mr. Friedrich's answers to questions for the record from Senators Specter and Leahy, transmitted March 1, 2007, are posted here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_hr/journalists-qfr.pdf
HOUSE MOVES TO BLOCK INTEL BUDGET DISCLOSURE
One day after President Bush signed into law a bill that requires public disclosure of the national intelligence budget, the House of Representatives adopted an amendment to prevent that requirement from taking effect.
The budget disclosure provision appeared in legislation enacting the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, which was passed by Congress last month and signed by President Bush on August 3.
If implemented, it would mark the first time that Congress successfully asserted its authority to compel disclosure of currently classified information over the objections of the executive branch. Since 1998, the intelligence bureaucracy has consistently refused to divulge the intelligence budget total. The White House stated on February 28 that budget disclosure "could cause damage to the national security interests of the United States."
The opposing view, adopted by the 9/11 Commission and endorsed by Congress last month, is that budget disclosure is an indispensable precondition to broader accountability and that it is essential to restoring the credibility of a defective classification system.
But despite the fact that the requirement to disclose the intelligence budget has finally passed into law, it may not happen after all.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) offered an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Act on August 4 that would prohibit budget disclosure. Without any debate, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) announced that the amendment was accepted.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/issa.html
The Issa amendment will have to be addressed in a House-Senate conference before it effectively repeals the new disclosure requirement.
NEW MILITARY REGS ON INFORMATION ASSURANCE, COMSEC
A newly updated U.S. Army regulation on information assurance defines standards and procedures for protecting classified and unclassified information in automated information systems. See "Information Assurance," AR 25-2, August 3, 2007:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/ar25-2.pdf
Meanwhile, a new U.S. Navy Instruction establishes policy on monitoring of Navy communications for internal security purposes. See "Communications Security (COMSEC) Monitoring of Navy Telecommunications and Automated Information Systems (AIS)," OPNAV Instruction 2201.3A, August 2, 2007:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/navy/opnavinst/2201_3a.pdf
AIR FORCE VIEWS IRREGULAR WARFARE
In what might be seen as a response to last year's popular Army Field Manual 3-24 on Counterinsurgency, the U.S. Air Force has issued a new publication on "Irregular Warfare."
"Irregular warfare (IW) is defined as a violent struggle among state and nonstate actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations. IW favors indirect approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capabilities to seek asymmetric approaches in order to erode an adversary's power, influence, and will."
Though less rigorous and less original than the Army manual, the new document still contains points of interest.
It notes, for example, that counterinsurgency is not the sum total of U.S. military objectives. To the contrary, sometimes the U.S. will side with insurgents: "Various US government organizations are postured to recruit, organize, train, and advise indigenous guerrilla or partisan forces," the document observes.
"In some UW [unconventional warfare] operations, the use of US military aircraft may be inappropriate, tactically or politically. In those cases, training, advising, and assisting the aviation forces of insurgent groups, resistance organizations, or third-country nationals may be the only viable option."
See "Irregular Warfare," Air Force Doctrine Document 2-3, 1 August 2007:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/usaf/afdd2-3.pdf
DETAILS SOUGHT ON DOMESTIC USE OF SPY SATELLITES
Although Congress is out of session, the news that classified intelligence satellites may increasingly be used for domestic surveillance applications did not go unnoticed by congressional overseers.
Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), chair of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee, last week sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff seeking answers to a series of detailed questions about the new initiative, which was first reported in the Wall Street Journal. Among Rep. Markey's questions were these:
Will the public have an opportunity to comment on the development of appropriate guidelines for domestic use of spy satellites?
What assessments of the legality of the new surveillance program have been performed? (Please provide copies.)
How does the Department plan to ensure that Americans' privacy and civil rights are protected once this new surveillance program becomes operational?
A copy of Mr. Markey's August 16 letter is here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/markey081607.pdf
The new surveillance program "has drawn sharp criticism from civil liberties advocates who say the government is overstepping the use of military technology for domestic surveillance," wrote Eric Schmitt in the New York Times. See "Liberties Advocates Fear Abuse of Satellite Images," August 17:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/17/us/17spy.html
THE FBI AS AN INTELLIGENCE ORGANIZATION
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has increasingly supplemented its traditional law enforcement role with new intelligence and counterterrorism functions, now says its paramount objective is to "prevent, disrupt, and defeat terrorist operations before they occur."
New domestic intelligence collection activities that have been adopted in pursuit of this goal are described in unusual detail in the Bureau's 2008 budget request.
http://fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fbi/2008just.pdf
Special attention is given to cultivating human intelligence sources.
"The FBI recruits new CHSs [confidential human sources] every day," the budget request notes. But without increased budget support, the FBI says it will not be possible to validate these sources and to determine the credibility of the information they provide.
"With current resources, the FBI is unable to reach a point where all CHSs are successfully subjected to the CHSV [confidential human source validation] process."
The budget request refers in passing to "more than 15,000" confidential human sources requiring validation (page 4-24).
The FBI also seeks new funds for intelligence collection training and operations.
"Without this training, the FBI would lack the full capacity to provide SAs [special agents] the comprehensive tradecraft, procedural, legal and policy direction needed to execute the significant and constitutionally sensitive domestic intelligence collection mission with confidence," the budget document states (page 4-27).
The FBI's budgetary focus on expanding its human intelligence capability was first reported by Justin Rood of ABC News. See "FBI Proposes Building Network of U.S. Informants," July 25:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/07/fbi-proposes-bu.html
The same FBI budget document provides significant new detail on other FBI intelligence and counterterrorism activities, the FBI open source program, the National Virtual Translation Center, and other initiatives.
The Washington Post reported that there were nearly 20,000 positive matches of individuals seeking to enter the United States who were flagged by the Terrorist Screening Center, according to the FBI budget request. Despite the surprisingly large figure, only a small number of arrests resulted.
See "Terror Suspect List Yields Few Arrests" by Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, August 25:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/24/AR2007082402256.html
DOMESTIC USE OF SPY SATELLITES QUESTIONED
The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee scolded Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff last week for failing to notify him of plans to expand the use of intelligence satellites for homeland security applications.
"Unfortunately, I have had to rely on media reports to gain information about this endeavor because neither I nor my staff was briefed on the decision to create this new office prior to the public disclosure of this effort," wrote Rep. Bennie Thompson in an August 22 letter to Secretary Chertoff (who has been mentioned as a possible nominee to replace Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General).
"I need you to provide me with an immediate assurance that upon its October 1st roll out, this program will be operating within the confines of the Constitution and all applicable laws and regulations," Chairman Thompson wrote.
"Additionally, because I have not been informed of the existence of this program for over a two year period, I am requesting that for the next six weeks, you provide me with bi-weekly briefings on the progress of the [National Applications Office] working groups."
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/thompson082207.pdf
The Thompson letter as well as the new homeland security initiative were first reported in the Wall Street Journal.
A Washington Post editorial said that any use of spy satellites for domestic monitoring "must be accompanied... by robust protections for privacy and civil liberties." The failure to properly advise Congress was "not a comforting start for a landmark change."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/24/AR2007082401838.html
DoJ: NEW SURVEILLANCE LAW COULD BE "MISCONSTRUED"
Critics of the new Protect America Act who wonder if it will be used to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans have misunderstood the legislation, according to a Department of Justice official, but he also admitted the law may be susceptible to such a misunderstanding.
"Contrary to some reports, the new legislation does nothing to change FISA's prohibition against targeting a person in the United States for surveillance without a court order," said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth L. Wainstein at a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee
last week.
At the same time, he indicated that ambiguities in the language of the law may lend themselves to just such an interpretation.
"To the extent that the statute could be construed to allow acquisitions of domestic communications, we would be willing to consider alternative language," Mr. Wainstein said in his prepared statement (at page 10).
A copy of Mr. Wainstein's September 6 statement is here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_hr/090607wainstein.pdf
The text of his oral remarks is here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_hr/090607wainstein-oral.pdf
The ambiguities in the Protect America Act are far more extensive than what has yet been officially acknowledged, according to Morton H. Halperin of the Open Society Institute. (The Open Society Institute helps fund Secrecy News.)
"Congress enacted legislation the meaning of which is simply not deducible from the words in the text," he told the House Judiciary Committee last week.
Will the new law "lead to the interception of phone calls and emails that the intelligence community should not be reading"?
"I have no idea if that is the case or not but neither does anyone else in the public and most of the Congress," said Mr. Halperin. "That very uncertainty is simply unacceptable and a threat to both our liberty and our security."
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_hr/090507halperin.pdf
PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS TEST MILITARY APTITUDE
Psychological operations (PSYOP) -- military programs that seek to influence the attitudes and shape the behavior of a target audience -- have the potential to increase the effectiveness of the armed forces they support while minimizing violent conflict. But the U.S. military is not notably good at conducting such programs.
To achieve their objective, PSYOP practitioners should ideally have a clear understanding of the values and thought processes of their audience (as well as their own), and they should have a credible and compelling message to deliver. These have often been lacking.
According to a 2004 Army evaluation of PSYOP activities during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, "it is clear that on the whole, PSYOP produced much less than expected and perhaps less than claimed."
Two newly disclosed Army publications provide insight into Army PSYOP planning and procedures.
"Psychological Operations Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures," U.S. Army Field Manual FM 3-05.301, December 2003 (a revision was issued in
August 2007) (439 pages, 6.2 MB):
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-301.pdf
"Tactical Psychological Operations: Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures," U.S. Army Field Manual 3-05.302, October 2005 (255 pages, 11.2 MB):
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-302.pdf
These documents have not been approved for public release, but copies were obtained by Secrecy News.
A related document that was previously disclosed by Secrecy News is "Psychological Operations," U.S. Army Field Manual 3-05.30, April 2005:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-30.pdf
In the worst cases, poorly executed PSYOP activities are not merely futile but may actually be counterproductive.
In 2003, a U.S. information operations officer produced posters picturing Saddam Hussein as Homer Simpson and other figures of ridicule. "The posters enraged Iraqis and led to conflict that resulted in casualties for U.S. forces," according to a 2005 study of PSYOP lessons learned.
See "Review of Psychological Operations: Lessons Learned from Recent Operational Experience" by Christopher J. Lamb, National Defense University Press, September 2005:
http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/lamb.pdf
DECLASSIFICATION LESSONS FROM NAZI WAR CRIME RECORDS
Last week the National Archives announced the release of the final report to Congress on implementation of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, which is said to be the largest single-subject declassification program ever performed by the U.S. government. Millions of pages of records from World War II and the early Cold War years relating to Nazi war crimes have been released as a result.
But the lessons learned from declassifying the "extraordinary collection" of documents may prove even more important than the documents themselves, wrote Steven Garfinkel, the chairman of the interagency working group (IWG) that led the program.
In particular, he said, the effort "has demonstrated that disaster does not befall America when intelligence agencies declassify old intelligence operations records."
"Before the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, intelligence agencies, supported by the President, the Congress, and the Federal courts, routinely and consistently exempted files containing intelligence sources and methods from declassification, regardless of the age or actual sensitivity of the information."
The Act deliberately rejected that policy of absolute denial and authorized the publication of intelligence sources and methods, albeit historical ones.
And so the newly disclosed records do "indeed reveal the vast interrelationship between British intelligence and the OSS [Office of Strategic Security, a U.S. predecessor to the CIA]."
Yet "it is preposterous to suggest that releasing OSS records under the [Act] is a threat to our current working relationship with the United Kingdom," Mr. Garfinkel wrote in the preface to the new report.
"The declassification lessons learned during the implementation of the Disclosure Acts can and should be applied to other intelligence records of similar age, and may even be applied to records of somewhat more recent vintage, no matter how sensitive the information within these records once was," said Mr. Garfinkel, who served as director of the Information Security Oversight Office from 1980 to 2002.
It is essential that such lessons be learned, he said, because in practice the declassification process is arbitrary, unpredictable and subject to the whims of individual declassifiers.
"Whether a request for declassification is answered with a yes or a no is essentially determined by whoever happens to make the disclosure or non-disclosure decisions," Mr. Garfinkel candidly stated.
"All of the laws and orders and regulations, all of the classification and declassification guides and guidance can be cited to support either answer this person cares to give."
"The individual in charge makes the call based on his or her experiences, biases, proclivities, knowledge, or ignorance, and for many years thereafter, all of us may be stuck with it," he wrote.
In light of this unsatisfactory situation, Mr. Garfinkel expressed the hope that classification officials throughout the government might learn that "government secrets, even intelligence secrets, are finite," and should be subject to ultimate declassification.
A copy of the full report to Congress of the Interagency Working Group on Nazi War Crimes Disclosure, including Mr. Garfinkel's preface, is available here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/iwg2007.pdf
JASON ON THE RELIABLE REPLACEMENT WARHEAD
There are significant uncertainties associated with the design of the Reliable Replacement Warhead, the proposed new nuclear weapon, according to the JASON defense science advisory panel.
A copy of the unclassified executive summary of the new JASON report, first reported by Walter Pincus in the Washington Post on September 30, is here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/rrw.pdf
Related background is available in "Nuclear Weapons: The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program," Congressional Research Service, updated September 18, 2007:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RL32929.pdf
MILITARY GUIDE TO TERRORISM 2007
U.S. Army intelligence has issued an updated version of its handbook on terrorism in the 21st century.
"The handbook is a high level terrorism primer that includes an overview of the history of terrorism, descriptions of terrorist behaviors and motivations, a review of terrorist group organizations, and the threat posed to our forces, both in the United States and overseas."
Two of the four supplements to the handbook, one on case studies in terrorism and one on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, have also been recently updated.
See "A Military Guide to Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century," U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, TRADOC Intelligence Support Activity -- Threats, Version 5.0, 15 August 2007:
http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/terrorism/index.html
SELECTED CRS REPORTS
Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service obtained by Secrecy News include the following.
"Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2007," updated September 12, 2007:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32170.pdf
"The Military Commissions Act of 2006: Analysis of Procedural Rules and Comparison with Previous DOD Rules and the Uniform Code of Military Justice," updated September 27, 2007:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33688.pdf
"Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1999-2006," September 26, 2007:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RL34187.pdf
"Afghanistan: Narcotics and U.S. Policy," updated September 14, 2007:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL32686.pdf
"Syria: U.S. Relations and Bilateral Issues," updated September 19, 2007:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33487.pdf
"Iraq: Regional Perspectives and U.S. Policy," updated September 12, 2007:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33793.pdf
"Presidential Signing Statements: Constitutional and Institutional Implications," updated September 17, 2007:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33667.pdf
_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.
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Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
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