[net-gold] Secrecy News -- 09/20/10
- From: "David P. Dillard" <jwne@xxxxxxxxxx>
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- Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:51:52 -0400 (EDT)
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Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 14:43:10 -0400
From: Steven Aftergood <saftergood@xxxxxxx>
To: saftergood@xxxxxxx
Subject: Secrecy News -- 09/20/10 (alt list)
SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2010, Issue No. 74
September 20, 2010
Secrecy News Blog:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
** NEW FRUS VOLUME SHOWS DECLASS STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES
** FORMER LOS ALAMOS PHYSICIST CHARGED WITH SELLING NUKE INFO
** HOME FORECLOSURES AND SECURITY CLEARANCES
NEW FRUS VOLUME SHOWS DECLASS STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES
A new volume of the State Department's official Foreign Relations of the
United States (FRUS) series on the war in Vietnam, published this month,
embodies both the strengths and the weaknesses of the government document
declassification program.
The new FRUS volume presents an exceptionally vivid and interesting account
of the Nixon Administration's conduct of the war, beginning with the
aftermath of the invasion of Cambodia. It also "documents President Nixon's
penchant for secret operations and covert warfare." Several such secret
operations "are documented in some detail to demonstrate the role of covert
actions in support of overt political and military operations."
See "Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume VII, Vietnam,
July 1970-January 1972," published September 8, 2010:
http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v07
While the 1100 page volume provides rich testimony to the value of the
declassification process, it also highlights its surprising limitations.
For one thing, the process is painfully slow. Declassification review of
this volume took four years, the Preface states, from 2006 to 2010. At that
glacial rate, the State Department will never fulfill its statutory
obligation to publish the record of U.S. foreign policy no later than 30
years after the fact.
What's worse is that U.S. government agencies continue to use an obsolete
template for making declassification decisions. So while various covert
actions are "documented in some detail," the amount of money spent on those
same covert actions is scrupulously redacted at more than a dozen points
with the parenthetical notation "dollar amount not declassified" -- as if
the publication of these budget figures could possibly have any bearing on
national security today.
Adding to the evident confusion, the dollar figures for covert action were
nevertheless published in one of the documents (document 202 at page 617),
which notes that "Funds in the amount of $235,000 for FY 1971 and $228,000
for FY 1972 were approved [for certain covert actions]."
Was this a declassification "error"? A publishing oversight? It's not
clear.
Susan Weetman, the General Editor of the FRUS series, said that the
publication decisions on covert actions were determined by the so-called
"High Level Panel" (HLP) which is comprised of senior representatives of the
State Department, CIA and National Security Council.
"While the release of some dollar amounts and the excision of others may
appear inconsistent, it has been the policy of the HLP to approve the
declassification of the overall budget figure for a covert action
(occasionally broken out by fiscal year), but not release the specifics of
how the money was spent," Ms. Weetman told Secrecy News.
In the present case, however, there is an unusual amount of detail about
"how the money was spent." It's just the dollar figures that (in most
cases) have been withheld.
The release of this FRUS volume, along with another volume on Vietnam
published September 16, was timed to coincide with an upcoming State
Department Office of the Historian conference on "The American Experience in
Southeast Asia, 1946-1975":
http://history.state.gov/conferences/2010-southeast-asia
One of the recurring themes in the Vietnam covert action volume is the
prevalence of leaks of classified information, and the need to take drastic
action to combat them.
"You will see leaks all over town in the next few weeks on this issue,"
Henry Kissinger told a group of Congressmen at a March 23, 1971 meeting
"because the intelligence community is like a hysterical group of Talmudic
scholars doing an exegesis of abstruse passages. If any of you are on an
intelligence subcommittee, you might find this a good reason to cut the
budget for the intelligence agencies," Kissinger suggested (at page 466).
FORMER LOS ALAMOS PHYSICIST CHARGED WITH SELLING NUKE INFO
A former Los Alamos nuclear weapons scientist, Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni,
and his wife, Marjorie Mascheroni, were charged with conspiracy to
communicate classified nuclear weapons information with the intent to injure
the United States and conspiracy to develop an illict atomic bomb after they
allegedly offered to provide assistance to a supposed Venezuelan nuclear
weapons program.
"The conduct alleged in this indictment is serious and should serve as a
warning to anyone who would consider compromising our nation's nuclear
secrets for profit," said Assistant Attorney General Kris in a September 17
news release.
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2010/09/doj091710.html
The underlying story is so twisted and psychologically fraught that it may
never be completely clarified. Mascheroni has been a fervent advocate of
his own concept of inertial confinement fusion, while relentlessly
criticizing the existing ICF program as misconceived and destined to fail.
He has tangled repeatedly with security officials over clearance and
disclosure issues, but he has also found some influential supporters,
including former Director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey, who
provided him with legal representation on a pro bono basis.
According to the indictment, Mascheroni only thought of selling nuclear
secrets (to an FBI agent he thought was a Venezuelan official) because he
became increasingly frustrated with the United States government's
unresponsiveness to his claims and concerns. The alleged turning point, the
indictment says, came in 2007, when he attempted unsuccessfully to instigate
a congressional hearing on "DOE-UC mismanagement of the nuclear stockpile,
weapons programs, and national security." A copy of his 50-page proposal to
Congress, of characteristic length and turgidity, is here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2010/09/masch-092607.pdf
"If those guys, the American government, doesn't give me this," he
supposedly said, referring to the desired congressional hearing, "you know,
I, I, the American government is going to be my enemy really."
"The public is reminded that an indictment contains allegations only and
that every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty,"
the Justice Department properly noted in its news release on the case.
A 1995 Los Alamos report "edited by Marjorie Mascheroni" on environmental
contamination at Los Alamos involving high-energy explosives is available
here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/lib-www/la-pubs/00287159.pdf
HOME FORECLOSURES AND SECURITY CLEARANCES
The crisis affecting the U.S. economy has made a discernable mark on
security clearance disputes, according to a new study of clearance
revocation cases.
"Since the collapse of the housing market in 2008, debt resulting from job
losses and home foreclosures has had a devastating effect on people holding
national security clearances. That, more than any other factor today, is
causing the revocation or denial of security clearances, resulting in the
loss of good paying jobs, and putting skilled workers further and further
behind in their effort to dig out of debt."
The new study, by attorney Sheldon I. Cohen, examined cases before the
Department of Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals (DOHA), which is the
only one of the eleven clearance adjudicating bodies to publish its
decisions. The author found a growing trend, though the actual number of
cases involved remains fairly small.
"From 2000 to 2002, there was one reported case at DOHA dealing with
foreclosure. Between 2003 and 2006, there averaged three cases per year. In
2007 and 2008, the number of cases dealing with foreclosures jumped to nine
each year. In 2009, there were twenty-four such cases, and in the first five
months of 2010, which looks like a record year, there have been nine
foreclosure cases thus far. While DOHA is the only adjudicative body for
clearances that publishes its decisions, there is no reason to believe that
any of the other ten federal Adjudication Authorities come to different
results."
See "Debt and Home Foreclosures: Their Effect on National Security
Clearances" by Sheldon I. Cohen, September 2010:
http://www.sheldoncohen.com/publications/Article%20on%20Guideline%20F.pdf
_______________________________________________
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/
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Support the FAS Project on Government Secrecy with a donation:
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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
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