see url: https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2018/02/cia-selective-disclosure/
courtesy via Cryptome
If the argument below is true...then why bother classifying stuff in the first
place. Classification is supposed to be about protecting perceived weaknesses
of national state security by making it a secret document with various
restrictions placed upon its access, distribution and publication. In a
democracy, the more open the government is, the greater is the democracy. An
aspect of open democracy means that citizens get equal treatment and
protections. This present policy allows selective treatment of citizens by
government officials...particularly reporters and intelligence officials, which
affects provisions of freedom of speech and the citizens right to information.
They are used as bargaining chips, barterised information which can be
monetised by the reporters, in exchange for not publishing the truth, but an
interpretation of the truth based on selected facts. The reporter who complies
with this cannot be trusted to publish an independent or unbiased piece of
information, it reflects his own agreements or that of the government or both
of them. What do Americans pay taxes for, if government officials can create
inequalities of freedom of information? Why bother to read newspapers for
news? By making it more difficult and more expensive to classify secret
documents and more difficult and expensive to declassify them, then it would
help prevent the bureaucracy from classifying them in the first place, as it
would be too much bother and expense to do both, and the system would get
clogged up. Mind you, it is already getting too clogged up, with too many
people knowing too many secrets and too much time and resources spent on trying
to keep track of whether documents and people and systems are secure,
classified or unclassified, declassified or already published. And too much
information is classified, not on national security grounds but to hide the
ineptness and incompetency or secret corrupt and janus type duplicity by
government officials, the bureaucracy and governments themselves.
See below...
ATB
Dougie.
quote<<<
CIA Defends Selective Disclosure to Reporters
Posted on Feb.15, 2018 in CIA<https://fas.org/category/cia/>,
FOIA<https://fas.org/category/foia/>,
Intelligence<https://fas.org/category/intelligence/> by Steven
Aftergood<https://fas.org/author/steven-aftergood/>
The Central Intelligence Agency said
yesterday<https://fas.org/sgp/jud/johnson-cia-021418.pdf> that it has the right
to disclose classified information to selected journalists and then to withhold
the same information from others under the Freedom of Information Act.
FOIA requester Adam Johnson had obtained CIA emails sent to various members of
the press including some that were redacted as classified. How, he wondered,
could the CIA give information to uncleared reporters — in this case Siobhan
Gorman (then) of the Wall Street Journal, David Ignatius of the Washington
Post, and Scott Shane of the New York Times — and yet refuse to give it to him?
In an effort to discover the secret messages, he filed a FOIA lawsuit.
His question is a good one, said Chief Judge Colleen MacMahon of the Southern
District of New York in a court order last
month<https://fas.org/sgp/jud/johnson-order-013018.pdf>. “The issue is whether
the CIA waived its right to rely on otherwise applicable exemptions to FOIA
disclosure by admittedly disclosing information selectively to one particular
reporter [or three].”
“In this case, CIA voluntarily disclosed to outsiders information that it had a
perfect right to keep private,” she
wrote<https://fas.org/sgp/jud/johnson-order-013018.pdf>. “There is absolutely
no statutory provision that authorizes limited disclosure of otherwise
classified information to anyone, including ‘trusted reporters,’ for any
purpose, including the protection of CIA sources and methods that might
otherwise be outed. The fact that the reporters might not have printed what was
disclosed to them has no logical or legal impact on the waiver analysis,
because the only fact relevant to waiver analysis is: Did the CIA do something
that worked a waiver of a right it otherwise had?”
Judge MacMahon therefore ordered CIA to prepare a more rigorous justification
of its legal position. It was filed by the
government<https://fas.org/sgp/jud/johnson-cia-021418.pdf> yesterday.
CIA argued that the court is wrong to think that limited, selective disclosures
of classified information are prohibited or unauthorized by law. The National
Security Act only requires protection of intelligence sources and methods from
“unauthorized” disclosure, not from authorized disclosure. And because the
disclosures at issue were actually intended to protect intelligence sources and
methods, they were fully authorized, CIA said. “The CIA properly exercised its
broad discretion to provide certain limited information to the three reporters.”
“The Court’s supposition that a limited disclosure of information to three
journalists necessarily equates to a disclosure to the public at large is
legally and factually mistaken,” the CIA response
stated<https://fas.org/sgp/jud/johnson-cia-021418.pdf>. “The record
demonstrates beyond dispute that the classified and statutorily protected
information withheld from the emails has not entered the public domain. For
these reasons, the limited disclosures here did not effect any waiver of FOIA’s
exemptions.”
A reply from plaintiff Adam Johnson is due March 1. (Prior coverage: Tech
Dirt<https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180202/19344139143/judge-tells-cia-it-cant-hand-classified-info-to-journalists-pretend-info-hasnt-been-made-public.shtml>,
Intel
Today<https://gosint.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/chief-judge-colleen-mcmahon-cia-disclosures-to-one-are-disclosures-to-all/>).
Selective disclosure of classified information to uncleared reporters is a more
or less established practice that is recognized by Congress, which has required
periodic reporting to Congress of such disclosures. See Disclosing Classified
Info to the Press — With
Permission<https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2017/01/authorized-disclosure/>,
Secrecy News, January 4, 2017.
The nature of FOIA litigation is such that a lawsuit that was intended to
challenge the practice of selective disclosure could, if unsuccessful, end up
ratifying and reinforcing it.
End of quote
