[net-gold] Secrecy News -- 07/12/12
- From: "David P. Dillard" <jwne@xxxxxxxxxx>
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- Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2012 05:57:26 -0400 (EDT)
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Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2012 10:29:49 -0400
From: Steven Aftergood <saftergood@xxxxxxx>
To: saftergood@xxxxxxx
Subject: Secrecy News -- 07/12/12 (alt
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SECRECY NEWS
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from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy Volume 2012, Issue No. 67 July
12, 2012
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Secrecy News Blog:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
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** FORMER ISOO DIRECTOR AGAIN ASKS COURT TO RELEASE NSA DOCUMENTS
** POLYGRAPHS AND LEAKS: A LOOK BACK AT NSDD 84
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FORMER ISOO DIRECTOR AGAIN ASKS COURT TO RELEASE NSA DOCUMENTS
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Last May, J. William Leonard, the former director of the Information
Security Oversight Office, asked a federal court for permission to disclose
and discuss declassified National Security Agency documents that had been
cited in the prosecution of former NSA official Thomas Drake. The documents
represented a particularly "egregious" and "willful" case of
overclassification, Mr. Leonard said, that needed to be publicly addressed.
Last month, government attorneys said there was no basis for action by the
Court, and they suggested that Mr. Leonard could submit a Freedom of
Information Act request to NSA for the documents instead.
Yesterday, Mr. Drake's attorneys fired back in support of Mr. Leonard, who
served as an expert for the Drake defense. They said Mr. Leonard is properly
seeking relief from the Court because it was the Court that issued the
Protective Order that limits his ability to discuss the issue.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/drake/071112-reply.pdf
"The Protective Order remains in effect today. It was not voided or mooted
when judgment was entered last year. It has not expired," wrote public
defenders James Wyda and Deborah L. Boardman, Mr. Drake's attorneys.
"Although the United States may not take the terms of its own Protective
Order seriously, Mr. Leonard does."
The government's suggestion that Mr. Drake file a FOIA request is
unsatisfactory in two ways, Mr. Wyda and Ms. Boardman wrote. First, NSA has
failed to release these documents in response to previous FOIA requests,
including one filed by me last year.
"Given NSA's track record and its failure to respond to prior requests
[...], Mr. Leonard had no reason to believe his FOIA request for the same
document would have been successful."
But even if NSA did release the documents under FOIA, that would not solve
Mr. Leonard's problem, the defense attorneys explained.
"Even if Mr. Leonard had received the documents pursuant to a FOIA request,
he would still be bound by the terms of the Protective Order that prohibit
him from disclosing and discussing the documents. It would do Mr. Leonard
no good to merely receive the documents pursuant to a FOIA request if he
cannot discuss the documents because he is bound by a Court Order that
prohibits such discussion."
The good news, they said, is that NSA has already prepared lightly redacted
versions of the documents that are suitable for public release. "These
redacted versions are acceptable to Mr. Leonard," Mr. Wyda and Ms. Boardman
wrote.
Now it will be up to the Court to rule.
The deeper question raised by Mr. Leonard's action -- how to respond to
"egregiously" mistaken classification actions -- remains open.
POLYGRAPHS AND LEAKS: A LOOK BACK AT NSDD 84
"I've had it up to my keister with these leaks," President Reagan complained
in 1983 after a series of unauthorized disclosures. "Keister is slang for
buttocks," the Associated Press helpfully explained at that time.
One of President Reagan's responses to the flood of leaks was to direct the
use of polygraph examinations in leak investigations. (The Director of
National Intelligence reflexively responded in a similar way last month.)
National Security Decision Directive 84 of March 11, 1983 directed that "All
departments and agencies with employees having access to classified
information are directed to revise existing regulations and policies, as
necessary, so that employees may be required to submit to polygraph
examinations, when appropriate, in the course of investigations of
unauthorized disclosures of classified information."
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-84.pdf
Amazingly, this policy was denounced by then-Secretary of State George
Shultz, who threatened to resign rather than submit to a polygraph
examination. He was excused from the test.
"Management through fear and intimidation is not the way to promote honesty
and protect security," Secretary Shultz said in a January 9, 1989
valedictory speech, explaining his opposition to the polygraph.
But management through fear and intimidation seems to be a recurring theme
in security policy. And polygraph testing is part of that, judging from a
remarkable story published this week by McClatchy Newspapers.
"One of the nation's most secretive intelligence agencies is pressuring its
polygraphers to obtain intimate details of the private lives of thousands of
job applicants and employees, pushing the ethical and legal boundaries of a
program that's designed instead to catch spies and terrorists," wrote
McClatchy reporter Marisa Taylor.
"The National Reconnaissance Office is so intent on extracting confessions
of personal or illicit behavior that officials have admonished polygraphers
who refused to go after them and rewarded those who did, sometimes with cash
bonuses, a McClatchy investigation found."
See "National Reconnaissance Office accused of illegally collecting personal
data," July 10:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/polygraph/
"The US is, so far as I know, the only nation which places such extensive
reliance on the polygraph," wrote convicted spy Aldrich Ames in a November
2000 letter from prison. "It has gotten us into a lot of trouble."
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/polygraph/ames.html
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_______________________________________________
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Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation
of American Scientists.
The Secrecy News Blog is at:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, go to:
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Support the FAS Project on Government Secrecy with a donation:
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_______________________
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Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood@xxxxxxx
voice: (202) 454-4691
twitter: @saftergood
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