Holte's corner

Doing Right on National Security

Anyone who observes the state of secrecy and national security in the USA will observe that our country is a woeful mess on this subject. Most of that mess results from the current policy of a corrupt and paranoid administration. However, that presents an opportunity. Because a lot of these issues have been left completely to the executive for far too long.

From the subject of how we classify and keep secrets, to the subject of how we deal with national security in relationship to modern problems, our system is not protecting our national security. Indeed, the more we spend on the kind of security we are spending on the less secure we are. We are seeing US citizens being tortured, innocent people locked up without due process, and secrecy used to cover up criminal behavior. It is time for an overhaul.

The "National Security" folks developed a security dogma in the late 1890's and early 1900's and have pretty much continued to sell methods and ideas that date to that time of scientific racism, white-supremacy and a world where a few Europeans dreamed of ruling the entire World with the help of a caste/class system and state security. The system that has evolved from that day has evolved in tension with democratic process, largely because its earliest avatars (Van Deman and military officers in his circle) held these autocratic white supremacy beliefs. They enlisted honorable American Groups like the American Legion to spy on Americans (see http://www.army.mil/CMH-PG/books/Lineage/mi/ch2.htm, and have operated covertly and sometimes illegally within America when not supported by the formal Government.

Our classification system is based on premises that were developed in that environment and while they were superior to the two European Concepts are still premised on Statism, Authoritarianism, and anti-democratic values. The principles on which secrecy are based are ones that have to be weighed against other principles such as freedom and the individual right to privacy on which our system is based.

There is much in the story that needs revision. The official story of the classification system tells us that it was invented by Scientists who were protecting Nuclear Secrets ("RD") classification in 1939. The law related to Atomic Energy secrets was formalized in 1946 and then revised in 1954 (source: http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/doe/history.htm), but that story next says that the system was established by Executive Order long before that. The present laws date to the 1930's and were last revised in 1995. There are currently three levels: Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret. The rules for making these classification come from executive orders.

Revisions are necessary periodically because of "classification creep." Bill Clinton issued an executive order designed to mitigate this tendancy, but under the Bush Administration this tendancy has been restored:

http://www.army.mil/CMH-PG/books/Lineage/mi/ch2.htm

"EO 12958 was signed by President Clinton on April 16, 1995. It effectively replaced EO 12356 on October 16, 1995. This EO adopted a more liberal policy toward classification and declassification. The EO prescribes a uniform system for classifying, safeguarding, and declassifying national security information. It restores the Carter requirement that the original classifier be able to identify or describe what damage could occur if the information in question were to be released. It retains the three classification levels of Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret and reduces the number of potential classification categories from ten to seven. These areas are
(a) military plans, weapons systems, or operations;
(b) foreign government information;
(c) intelligence activities (including special activities), intelligence sources or methods, or cryptology;
(d) foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States, including confidential sources;
(e) scientific, technological, or economic matters relating to the national security;
(f) United States Government programs for safeguarding nuclear materials or facilities; or
(g) vulnerabilities or capabilities of systems, installations, projects or plans relating to the national security."

The principle behind National Security has to be to protect the advantages, personnel, and efforts of US personnel at home and abroad.

There is a tendancy to judge the importance of a bureaucrat's (or Contractor)'s by the level of the secrets they have access to -- and so there is a tendancy to over-classify documents. The Democrats tend to try to fight this by requiring classifiers to justify their classification of documents. Republicans tend to feel that no such justification is needed. This leads to two results. One is that This has been taken to rediculous extremes recently as the Bush Administration has combed libraries and archives to re-classify documents. The other is that the classification system is used to try to cover crimes committed by US officials and to prevent the release of information that might uncover such crimes.

The clearance system in the US is also an issue. One reason why DoD professionals can command the salaries they can right now is that the clearance system in the US is cumbersome, bloated and nearly impossibly slow. It can take years to complete a simple background check. Right now each agency has its own rules and its own process.

This system needs to be streamlined and standardized. There should be three stages of background checks and the rules for passing those checks should be codified in terms of policy and guidelines so as to make those rendering clearance judgements accountable for decisions made on clear and common sense grounds. The first stage is simple, a person should sign a document allowing a background check and then immediately his credit, work history and family history checked to see if it matches his disclosure. A simple background investigation should give access to "company confidential" or non-sensitive information. Further checks should be required of naturalized citizens, problematic backgrounds, or people with access to secret or top secret information. In any case the background checks should be standard and required updates should be limited to proving the accuracy of previous checks and then checking what has occured since then. And information should be automatically declassified after the reasons for its original classification have vanished.

Next, the rules for classification should include rules and punishments for handling illegal behavior. The classification of law breaking by government officials or agents should be considered a security breach unless that information is disclosed to law-enforcement personnel and prosecuted, and discosed to both the House and Senate oversight committees.

Finally the Military Commissions act needs to be repealed. It is a travesty of injustice and an opening for future tyranny.
On the Military Commissions act: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0212-24.htm
Chris

Posted by cholte at February 25, 2007 07:47 PM