[NYTr] FAS Secrecy News - 10/01/2007

Mon Oct 1 19:26:41 EDT 2007

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2007, Issue No. 96
October 1, 2007

Secrecy News Blog:  http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

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**	DECLASSIFICATION LESSONS FROM NAZI WAR CRIME RECORDS
**	JASON ON THE RELIABLE REPLACEMENT WARHEAD
**	MILITARY GUIDE TO TERRORISM 2007
**	SELECTED CRS REPORTS

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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_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
1725 DeSales St NW, 6th floor
Washington, DC  20036

web:    www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email:  saftergood at fas.org