[Intelforum] Secrecy News -- 12/08/05 (IF)

[Aftergood, Steven]

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2005, Issue No. 111
December 8, 2005


**	OPEN SOURCE INTELLIGENCE DIRECTOR NAMED
**	NATSIOS AND THE COST OF IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION
**	CQ RESEARCHER ON GOVERNMENT SECRECY
**	ALTERNATIVE COVER SHEETS FOR CLASSIFIED INFO


OPEN SOURCE INTELLIGENCE DIRECTOR NAMED

Eliot A. Jardines has been named Assistant Deputy Director of
National Intelligence for Open Source.  In that post, he will
provide policy guidance to the recently established Open Source
Center, which is responsible for deriving intelligence from
unclassified, open source information that can be legally acquired
without resorting to espionage.

"We must establish OSINT [open source intelligence] as an equal
partner with human intelligence (HUMINT), signals intelligence
(SIGINT), imagery intelligence (IMINT) and measurement and
signatures intelligence (MASINT)," Mr. Jardines said at a June 21
congressional hearing.

"For too long, open source exploitation has been delegated as merely
an additional duty for intelligence analysts. This is simply a
ridiculous notion."

"No one would seriously propose that intelligence analysts be
required to collect their own signals or imagery intelligence.
However, that is precisely what we do with open source
intelligence," he said.

See his June 21, 2005 testimony on "Using Open-Source Information
Effectively" before a House Homeland Security Subcommittee here:

     http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2005_hr/062105jardines.pdf

Mr. Jardines, a fairly junior figure, was previously the president of
Open Source Publishing, a commercial enterprise that provided open
source intelligence support to government and industry.

A December 7 news release from the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence, announcing the appointment of Mr. Jardines, as well as
a Civil Liberties Protection Officer and a Procurement Executive,
may be found here:

     http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2005/12/odni120705.html

The rise of open source intelligence does not necessarily imply
increased public access to analytical products of U.S. intelligence.
To the contrary, the use of copyrighted source materials may pose a
new obstacle to public disclosure.


NATSIOS AND THE COST OF IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION

Andrew Natsios, who announced his resignation as administrator of the
Agency for International Development (AID) on December 2, played a
memorable role in misinforming the American public about the costs
of post-war reconstruction in Iraq.

The cost to the American taxpayer of rebuilding Iraq will be $1.7
billion, Mr. Natsios confidently told ABC Nightline on April 23,
2003.  The actual number, which continues to grow, is at least an
order of magnitude higher.

"You're not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is gonna be done
for $1.7 billion?" asked ABC's Ted Koppel incredulously.

"Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do, this is
it for the US," Mr. Natsios said.

The transcript of that interview, originally posted on the AID web
site, was quietly removed later in the year, as reported in the
Washington Post on December 18, 2003 ("White House Web Scrubbing;
Offending Comments on Iraq Disappear From Site" by Dana Milbank).

A copy of the deleted AID transcript of the Natsios Nightline interview
is here:

     http://www.fas.org/sgp/temp/natsios042303.html

Iraq war-related expenditures, including costs of reconstruction
programs, are notoriously difficult to track.

But a reasonably lucid account was provided by the Congressional
Research Service in "The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan and Enhanced Base
Security Since 9/11," October 7, 2005:

     http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf


CQ RESEARCHER ON GOVERNMENT SECRECY

An unusually comprehensive account of current issues in government
secrecy policy has been published by Congressional Quarterly's CQ
Researcher.

The growth in classification, the state of the Freedom of Information
Act, the declining culture of openness, and the problem of leaks are
among the topics explored by CQ writer Kenneth Jost.

A copy of the 24 page publication is available here through January
2006, courtesy of CQ Press (1.1 MB PDF file) (For permission to
distribute or to purchase hardcopies, contact Julie Miller at
JMiller at CQPress.com.):

     http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2005/12/cqr1205.pdf


ALTERNATIVE COVER SHEETS FOR CLASSIFIED INFO

While underlying questions of secrecy and disclosure carry a potent
primeval charge, the actual implementation of government secrecy
policy is about as boring as it could be.

In a rare attempt to leaven the subject with humor, some unidentified
person has produced spoofs of the colored cover sheets that are
often used on classified documents (Standard Forms 703, 704, and 705
for Top Secret, Secret and Confidential, respectively).

Three previously published bogus cover sheets (for Futile, Stupid and
B*ll**** Information) have been augmented by three new ones.

The collection was circulated this week at the Pentagon.

See the set here:

     http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/coversheets.pdf


_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
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_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web:    www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email:  saftergood at fas.org
voice:  (202) 454-4691