[Intelforum] Secrecy News -- 04/06/09

Mon Apr 6 11:22:09 EDT 2009

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SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2009, Issue No. 33
April 6, 2009

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

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**	ROSLYN MAZER TO BE ODNI INSPECTOR GENERAL
**	TACTICS IN COUNTERINSURGENCY AGAIN ONLINE
**	CIA'S CREST LEAVES CAVITY IN PUBLIC DOMAIN

ROSLYN MAZER TO BE ODNI INSPECTOR GENERAL

The Director of National Intelligence last week named Roslyn A. Mazer of
the Department of Justice to be the next Inspector General of the Office
of the Director of National Intelligence.

	http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2009/04/odni040309.html

What makes this an intriguing appointment is that from 1996 to 2000 Ms.
Mazer was the first chair of the Interagency Security Classification
Appeals Panel (ISCAP), which is among the most successful classification
reform initiatives of the last half century.  At a time when agency
Inspectors General may be asked to assume greater oversight over
classification policy, she brings an exceptional depth of knowledge and
experience to the subject.

One of the ISCAP's functions is to consider appeals from public requesters
for release of information that executive agencies have withheld as
classified.  Under Ms. Mazer's leadership from 1996 to 2000, the ISCAP
declassified information in an astounding 80% of the documents that were
presented for its review.

In fact, Ms. Mazer's ISCAP was so successful in overturning spurious
classification claims that the Central Intelligence Agency begged for
relief from ISCAP jurisdiction.  The CIA plea was rejected in a 1999
Office of Legal Counsel decision.  But in his 2003 executive order on
classification, President Bush granted the CIA a veto over ISCAP
declassification rulings.

In a 1998 speech to a conference of intelligence agency classification
officials, Ms. Mazer criticized what she termed "the Lewis Carroll element
of classification policy" which leads to "keeping classified categories of
information that everyone already knows."

"We celebrate our openness," she told the gathered intelligence officials.
"In fact, it is unnecessary secrecy that is timid and cowardly. Openness is
courageous. Be courageous. Be as open as you responsibly can."

	http://www.fas.org/sgp/advisory/iscap/mazer98.html

Ms. Mazer will succeed Edward Maguire, the outgoing ODNI Inspector General
who presented his own critique of the ODNI in testimony before a hearing of
Rep. Anna Eshoo's House Intelligence subcommittee last week ("IG Report
Blasts the Director of National Intelligence," Secrecy News, April 2,
2009).

TACTICS IN COUNTERINSURGENCY AGAIN ONLINE

"Tactics in Counterinsurgency," a new Army Field Manual that was published
on the website of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center and then removed from
public access, is now available on the FAS website.

The new manual, a substantial addition to the literature of
counterinsurgency, was reported last week in the Washington Post and
Inside the Army.  "After The Post raised questions about its contents last
week," wrote Walter Pincus of the Post on March 31, "it was taken down"
from the Army website, even though the document is marked for unrestricted
release.

An email inquiry to the Army inquiring why it had been removed was not
answered.

See "Tactics in Counterinsurgency," U.S. Army Field Manual Interim 3-24.2,
March 2009 (6.2 MB PDF, 307 pages):

	http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fmi3-24-2.pdf

"Setbacks are normal in counterinsurgency, as in every other form of war,"
the new manual advises (p. C-5).  "You will make mistakes, lose people, or
occasionally kill or detain the wrong person....  If this happens, don’t
lose heart, simply drop back to the previous phase of your game plan and
recover your balance."

CIA'S CREST LEAVES CAVITY IN PUBLIC DOMAIN

The curious refusal of the Central Intelligence Agency to provide online
access to its "CREST" database of declassified documents was examined last
week in Mother Jones magazine.

"In a quiet, fluorescently lit room in the National Archives' auxiliary
campus in suburban College Park, Maryland, 10 miles outside of Washington,
are four computer terminals, each providing instant access to the more than
10 million pages of documents the CIA has declassified since 1995. There's
only one problem: these are the only publicly available computers in the
world that do so."

See "Inside the CIA's (Sort of) Secret Document Stash" by Bruce Falconer,
Mother Jones, April 3:

    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/04/cias-open-secrets

A mostly favorable review of the CREST database was provided by historians
David M. Barrett and Raymond Wasko in "Sampling CIA's New Document
Retrieval System: McCone's Telephone Conversations during the Six Crises
Tempest," Intelligence and National Security vol. 20, no. 2, June 2005,
pp. 332-340 (not online).

By denying online public access to the CREST database, the Central
Intelligence Agency appears to be at odds with the President's executive
order on classification.  That order states (EO 13292, section 3.7):  "The
Director of the Information Security Oversight Office, in conjunction with
those agencies that originate classified information, shall coordinate the
linkage and effective utilization of existing agency databases of records
that have been declassified and publicly released."

But by refusing to place the CREST database online (or to release it to
others who will do so), the CIA is undermining the "effective utilization"
of this existing agency database.

_______________________________________________
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
web:    www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email:  saftergood at fas.org
voice:  (202) 454-4691