Steven Aftergood
LEAKS AND LEAKS AND LEAKS
Wed Jan 28 20:11:51 2004
64.140.158.29

LEAKS AND LEAKS AND LEAKS

Congressional Democratic leaders this week asked the General
Accounting Office to investigate White House procedures for
protecting classified intelligence information in connection
with the unauthorized disclosure of the identity of
undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame. See:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2004_cr/h012604.pdf

=============================================================

Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg urged more officials to
leak documents that would "expose government lies" and
"drastically alter the public discourse on whether we should
continue sending our children to die in Iraq":

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1131997,00.html

Ellsberg hailed the actions of Katherine Gun, a UK government
employee who is charged under Britain's Official Secrets Act
for leaking classified information. See:

http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/issues/katharine-gun.shtml

Not only leakers of classified information, but journalists
who publish leaked information should be held accountable for
their actions, argued CIA official James Bruce in a stern
2002 presentation to the American Bar Association, featured
by the Counterintelligence Centre:

http://www.cicentre.com/Documents/DOC_Classified_Leaks.htm


HOUSE DEMOCRATS INVOKE SEVEN MEMBER RULE

Democratic members of the House Committee on Government Reform
are invoking a little-known statutory provision known as the
"seven member rule" to try to extract information from
reluctant government agencies.

According to the rule, which originated in 1928, the executive
branch is obliged to ("shall") provide "any information
requested of it relating to any matter within the
jurisdiction" of the Committee when so requested by at least
seven members.

In January 15 letters, the Committee members, led by Rep.
Henry Waxman, thus requested certain information from the
Department of Energy:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2004/doe7-011504.pdf

and from the Department of Health and Human Services:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2004/hhs7-011504.pdf

See also "Waxman testing 7-member rule for access to lobbying
files" by Klaus Marre, The Hill, January 27:

http://www.thehill.com/news/012704/waxman.aspx


PROLIFERATION: LEARNING FROM THE DECLASSIFIED RECORD

"The declassification of several Cold War-era Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Defense Intelligence Agency
(DIA) estimates of nuclear proliferation trends offers
interesting insights into what previous U.S. governments
believed--and ultimately did--about the international spread
of nuclear weapons."

See "Predicting Nuclear Proliferation: A Declassified
Documentary Record" by Peter R. Lavoy, published in Strategic
Insights, Center for Contemporary Conflict, Naval
Postgraduate School, Vol. III, Issue 1, January 2004:

http://www.fas.org/man/eprint/lavoy.pdf


ARMY STUDY ON MIDCOURSE DISCRIMINATION (1989)

One of the enduring challenges of ballistic missile defense is
the problem of "midcourse discrimination" -- i.e.,
distinguishing between actual missiles in flight and decoys.

The issue was explored in a 1989 report of the Army Science
Board, which noted that "discrimination is not a problem that
can be 'solved'. Rather it will be a continuing race between
the offense and defense to institute, respectively, more
effective pen-aids and more capable means to counter those
pen-aids to a degree that is adequate to maintain the
defense's desired level of effectiveness. It will be a chess
game that requires looking ahead several moves, and its
effectiveness will probably always be a matter of judgment
rather than a demonstrable fact."

"The technical issues identified and discussed in this Panel
Report are as relevant today as they were in 1989," said MIT
professor Ted Postol, a critic of missile defense programs.

See "Midcourse Discrimination for the Phase One Strategic
Defense System," Army Science Board, February 1989:

http://www.fas.org/spp/military/asbmidcourse.pdf


DIA ON SOVIET MILITARY SPACE DOCTRINE (1984)

In 1984, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) conducted an
analysis of Soviet military space programs. Based on
published statements and other sources, the DIA was able to
infer "a Soviet military space doctrine that elucidates the
ultimate Soviet objectives in outer space."

The resulting pamphlet, entitled "Soviet Military Space
Doctrine," dated 1 August 1984 and marked "for official use
within the US Government," is now available here (24 pages,
3.3 MB PDF file):

http://www.fas.org/irp/dia//sovmilspace-4mb.pdf

or in a smaller (2 MB), slightly fuzzier version:

http://www.fas.org/irp/dia//sovmilspace.pdf


MARS: NO UFO COVERUP

"A spokesbeing for the Mars Air Force denounced as false the
rumors that an alien spacecraft crashed in the desert outside
of Ares Vallis," according to a mock news release circulating
at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, home of the Mars rovers Spirit
and Opportunity.

See "Martian Air Force Denies Stories of UFO Crash":

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2004/01/marsaf.pdf


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Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
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email: saftergood@fas.org
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