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
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/reviews/vargasllosa405.htm
The above book explains why Latin America is a mess, and can give us
some ideas of why (and how) similar ideology can destroy our own economy. He
writes:
"Vargas Llosa diagnoses the region's woes as the outcome of
five "principles of oppression": corporatism, state mercantilism,
privilege, wealth transfer, and political law."
Corporativism is the interference of corporations and wealthy
individuals in Government. Often corporativism masks itself
as "conservativism or libertarianism" -- but he rightly identifies
corporativism and the related evil of "state mercantilism" as a
causative for economic misfortune. It is rule by the Lobbyist and
Campaign contribution or bribe. Mercantilism is the turning from the principle of competition to the principle of monopoly/oligopoly.
Privilage is the failure to apply the principle of equal application
of the law. It includes such phenomena as corruption, legal favoritism, and even explains why there is such disparity between punishments for the well placed and wealthy.
Wealth Transfer in Latin America can better be described as
Kleptocracy or "class warfare" -- the wealthy and connected against
everyone else. It is the tendancy for the political classes to agree about only one thing -- the utility of stealing from productive or ordinary people. Applies equally to Castro or Pinochet.
Chris
Political law is the state where Judges are not independent. It is the end goal of the "Federalist Society" -- though you'd never find them admitting it.
I find this interesting because these five things are also
threatening our own country.
Chris
In the article "Why Hawks Win", the Psychologists Daniel Kahneman,
and Jonathan Renshon write about the reasons why Governments make bad
policy decisions:
http://www.greenwood.com/psi/book_detail.aspx?sku=C9085or Amazon:
http://tinyurl.com/25gksy
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3660
The Magazing Foreign Policy says about this article:
"Why are hawks so influential? The answer may lie deep in the human
mind. People have dozens of decision-making biases, and almost all
favor conflict rather than concession. A look at why the tough guys
win more than they should."
The authors talk about a number of psychological issues which produce
bad outcomes in decision making. They draw this material from studies
on behavior at the Corporate and local decision making level.
However, the material is so applicable to politics that they were
surprised they were the first ones to talk about this.
"Vision Problems" (Fundamental Attribution Error)
"CARELESSLY OPTIMISTIC " ("They'll greet us with flowers")
"DOUBLE OR NOTHING" (Rather Gamble on a terrible loss over a sure loss)
"Vision Problems" (Fundamental Attribution Error)
The authors talk about "Fundamental Atribution Error" in terms of how
it creates "Vision problems" for those involved in decision making.
"Imagine, for example, that you have been placed in a room and asked
to watch a series of student speeches on the policies of Venezuelan
leader Hugo Chávez. You've been told in advance that the students
were assigned the task of either attacking or supporting Chávez and
had no choice in the matter. Now, suppose that you are then asked to
assess the political leanings of these students. Shrewd observers, of
course, would factor in the context and adjust their assessments
accordingly. A student who gave an enthusiastic pro-Chávez speech was
merely doing what she was told, not revealing anything about her true
attitudes. In fact, many experiments suggest that people would
overwhelmingly rate the pro-Chávez speakers as more leftist. Even
when alerted to context that should affect their judgment, people
tend to ignore it. Instead, they attribute the behavior they see to
the person's nature, character, or persistent motives. This bias is
so robust and common that social psychologists have given it a lofty
title: They call it the fundamental attribution error."
We who were involved in "reforming" the Gakkai, or debating with NST
members, experienced this first hand. People making policy decisions
are subject to this "vision" problem even more than we were.
"CARELESSLY OPTIMISTIC "
"Excessive optimism is one of the most significant biases that
psychologists have identified. Psychological research has shown that
a large majority of people believe themselves to be smarter, more
attractive, and more talented than average, and they commonly
overestimate their future success. People are also prone to
an "illusion of control": They consistently exaggerate the amount of
control they have over outcomes that are important to them—even when
the outcomes are in fact random or determined by other forces. It is
not difficult to see that this error may have led American
policymakers astray as they laid the groundwork for the ongoing war
in Iraq."
And of course, this doesn't mean that there aren't other concerns
involved in such decision making. But it does show that really bad
decisions can be made even without factoring in such things as
corruption, dishonesty, and bad intentions.
The next one should sound familiar:
"DOUBLE OR NOTHING"
"It is apparent that hawks often have the upper hand as decision
makers wrestle with questions of war and peace. And those advantages
do not disappear as soon as the first bullets have flown. As the
strategic calculus shifts to territory won or lost and casualties
suffered, a new idiosyncrasy in human decision making appears: our
deep-seated aversion to cutting our losses. Imagine, for example, the
choice between:
"Option A: A sure loss of $890"
"Option B: A 90 percent chance to lose $1,000 and a 10 percent chance
to lose nothing."
"In this situation, a large majority of decision makers will prefer
the gamble in Option B, even though the other choice is statistically
superior. People prefer to avoid a certain loss in favor of a
potential loss, even if they risk losing significantly more. When
things are going badly in a conflict, the aversion to cutting one's
losses, often compounded by wishful thinking, is likely to dominate
the calculus of the losing side. This brew of psychological factors
tends to cause conflicts to endure long beyond the point where a
reasonable observer would see the outcome as a near certainty."
This can be called "playing poker with people's future."
And there are more reasons, but this is all the article covers.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3660
Chris
I'm sure that you are all tired of hearing about this. I'm tired of sharing the information. It's such a messy and nuanced subject I can't even do it justice. So Please just follow the links I've put in and do your own investigating and thinking. The evidence shows that this administration has been at a level of corruption that makes Nixon look Pedestrian, Agnew look honest, and the Teapot dome scandal look like something out of Norman Rockwell and the Saturday Evening Post. Just incredible and if I wasn't watching it close up (trench view) I'd have trouble believing this much corruption were possible.
We need to put pressure on Congress and others to continue investigating the Iraq invasion. People have died. This article details a murder investigation related to the disapearance of 9 billion dollars in cash (pallet-loads of cash) in Iraq during the early days of the occupation. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/08/news/holland.php. When asked about it Bremer talks about "Ghost Employees" and claims he wasn't responsible for what he was responsible for. That is the current state of investigations. But if Fitzgerald did what other prosecutors had done, Cheney would have been labeled a "unindicted co-conspirator" when Libby was indicted. Libby says of his boss:
"Was that unusual for you to have the national security advisor, the director of Central Intelligence, the White House chief of staff among others in the dark as to something that you had done regarding declassification?' Fitzgerald asked."
Washington Post article
"It is not unusual for the vice president to tell me something which I am not allowed to share with others,' Libby replied."
No accounting, secrecy, and threats -- and yes death.
2 murders and missing cash in Iraq
By James Glanz The New York Times
MONDAY, MAY 8, 2006
The killing of Fern Holland, a young human rights worker from Oklahoma, remains as unsolved and mysterious as it was when her body was found riddled with bullets on a desolate stretch of road near one of Iraq's southern holy cities in March 2004.
"Now, federal investigators in the United States are grappling with a second mystery: what happened to hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash issued by U.S. government authorities to Holland and Robert Zangas, a press officer who died in the same incident, in the days before their deaths?'
Try billions of dollars of funds. The Guardian reports (US Newspapers don't seem willing to touch this.) Even Waxman seems afraid to dig. They ask, and let Bremer get away with saying this:
"But to an official audit that in January 2005 revealed the "disappearance" of some nine billion dollars under his responsibility in Iraq, Bremer testified: "I know of no person who spent some meaningful time in Iraq who thought it was possible, under the conditions we worked," to impose modern accounting practices on money the authority spent."
And then go on to blame the Iraqis. Was he "Viceroy" or not? If so who is he Viceroy to? Bush or to King Faud? On the other hand, he could have been telling the truth. The Saudis back the Sunnis. We and the Iranians have been backing the Shias.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/08/news/holland.php
And of course those who are involved either don't get prosecuted or somehow "disapear":
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/18/AR2006121800301.html
I doubt that we'll impeach George Bush. Not because he doesn't deserve it, but because the list of things that need to be investigated is so long that I doubt we'll have time to go from investigation to impeachment before the next election. What grounds would we impeach the guy on anyway?
Abu Gharaib? Torture? Illegal wire-taps? Fraudulent reasons for launching a war? Incompetance in waging war? Fraudulently claiming he listens to the Generals? Regular and shameless dishonesty? Thinking that people dying is funny? Trying to run over reporters?
Giving favors to oil industry, arms industry, and confidence industry insiders? Halliburton? The K Street Project? Tom DeLay? Jack Abramoff? Valerie Plame? Is it treason for the President and Vice President to be behind leaking the name of a CIA employee? Is it treason to wage war so incompetantly that "slam dunk" means sure failure? Is it treason to have no idea of what success is? Is it treason to have no idea what the difference is between Shia and Sunni, Arab and Kurd, or that the operating theory for counter insurgency is to "clear, hold, and build," or to deny that there ever was such a theory and blame the Generals for throwing out the rule-books?
Or is it the policy things. His father didn't understand the "vision thing" but then neither does his son. "We don't do nation building" is a perfectly true statement when it comes from the corporativist Republicans in Bush's crowd. They don't know how to do anything except break nations and stir up warfare. They do that well.
Can't blame the President for all this. It took a Team to make this much mess. And not all the above are "illegal", or even prove-able. So what can I say?