[Intelforum] Secrecy News -- 09/07/10

Tue Sep 7 11:10:50 EDT 2010

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SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2010, Issue No. 71
September 7, 2010

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

**      PENTAGON SEEKS "COORDINATION" OF MEDIA ACTIVITIES
**      A REPORT CARD ON SECRECY

PENTAGON SEEKS "COORDINATION" OF MEDIA ACTIVITIES

The Department of Defense last week increased its efforts to require that
Department contacts with the media be monitored and approved by DoD public
affairs officials.

"I am asking the heads of the Military Services, the Joint Staff and the
Combatant Commands to reinforce to all of their employees to work closely
and effectively with their public affairs offices to ensure full
situational awareness," wrote Douglas B. Wilson, the Assistant Secretary
of Defense for Public Affairs in a September 2 memorandum.

     http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dod/media2.pdf

The latest Pentagon move follows up on a July 2 memo from Secretary of
Defense Robert M. Gates, who stated that the DoD Office of Public Affairs
"is the sole release authority for official DoD information to news media
in Washington, and ... all media activities must be coordinated through
appropriate public affairs channels.  This policy is all too often
ignored," he complained.

"We have far too many people talking to the media outside of channels,
sometimes providing information which is simply incorrect, out of proper
context, unauthorized, or uninformed...," Secretary Gates wrote.

     http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dod/media.pdf

Both memoranda assert prohibitions on unauthorized disclosures of
classified information as well as on unclassified but sensitive or
predecisional information.

As a practical matter, the degree of control over DoD contacts with the
media sought by the Pentagon may be impossible to achieve.  The Department
is too large (with millions of employees), too decentralized (with
thousands of locations) and, perhaps, too open (with hundreds of reporters
holding building permits at the Pentagon alone) to allow rigorous
monitoring or "coordination" of more than a fraction of all external
contacts and communications.

And though it may not be convenient for Pentagon officials to say so,
almost everyone understands that freedom of the press means something
more, and something different, than reproducing authorized government
releases.  Unauthorized disclosures -- even incomplete or partially
inaccurate ones -- often serve a valuable public policy function, at least
when they do not trespass on legitimate secrets, because they enable
reporters and others to develop an independent account of events and to
generate a more complete public record.  When the short-term institutional
interests of the Pentagon or other U.S. government agencies lead them to
overclassify or otherwise impede public access to information,
unauthorized and "uncoordinated" disclosures help to fill the void.

A REPORT CARD ON SECRECY

Last year, the number of "original classification decisions" -- or new
national security secrets -- actually declined by almost ten percent from
the year before.

This and other empirical measures of government secrecy were compiled in a
new Secrecy Report Card that was issued today by Openthegovernment.org, a
coalition of public interest advocacy organizations.  The Report Card
presented data on classification and declassification activity,
classification costs, Freedom of Information Act requests, Presidential
signing statements, assertions of the state secrets privilege, and other
aspects of official secrecy.

     http://www.openthegovernment.org/otg/SecrecyRC_2010.pdf 

While new classification activity slowed last year, the Report Card noted,
so too did declassification, with 8% fewer pages declassified in 2009 than
in 2008.  A National Declassification Center that was established in
December 2009 is supposed to sharply increase the number of pages
declassified in the coming months and years.

_______________________________________________
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