Steven Aftergood
NATIONAL CRIMINAL INTELLIGENCE SHARING PLAN UNVEILED
Tue May 18, 2004 18:10
64.140.158.144

NATIONAL CRIMINAL INTELLIGENCE SHARING PLAN UNVEILED

The Justice Department last week announced the establishment of
the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan, an effort to
promote the sharing of intelligence information among federal,
state, and local law enforcement agencies.

"The plan is the outcome of an unprecedented effort by law
enforcement agencies, with the strong support of the Department
of Justice, to strengthen the nation's security through better
intelligence analysis and sharing," said Attorney General John
Ashcroft.

See a Justice Department Fact Sheet on the new initiative here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2004/05/doj051404.html

Although the scope of the Plan is more ambitious than previous
efforts, it is not exactly unprecedented.

The Joint Intelligence Community Law Enforcement (JICLE) working
group, led in part by the much-maligned Jamie Gorelick, ploughed
much of the same ground in the 1990s.

See the Report to the Attorney General and the Director of Central
Intelligence from the Joint Task Force on Intelligence and Law
Enforcement, May 1995 (50 pages, 3.1 MB PDF file) here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/joint.pdf


TSA EXPANDS SCOPE OF SENSITIVE SECURITY INFORMATION

The Transportation Security Agency indicated today that it will
expand its use of the control category "sensitive security
information" (SSI) to further restrict public access to maritime
and port security information.

See the TSA Notice in the Federal Register today:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2004/05/fr051804.html

By statute, TSA has unilateral authority to restrict information
that it deems "detrimental" to security.

Concerns that TSA's use of SSI is having an adverse impact on
government accountability were discussed in "Sensitive Security
Information (SSI) and Transportation Security: Background and
Controversies," Congressional Research Service, February 5, 2004:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/RS21727.pdf


NAZI WAR CRIMES RECORDS DECLASSIFIED

In the last of the large, focused declassification initiatives of
the 1990s, an Interagency Working Group last week announced the
release of hundreds of thousands of pages of documents
declassified under provisions of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure
Act of 1996. See:

http://www.archives.gov/media_desk/press_releases/nr04-55.html

http://www.archives.gov/iwg/press_releases/fbi_cia_gehlen_release.html

In a stroke of legislative brilliance, the authors of the 1996 Act
overcame the CIA's habitual secrecy regarding historical matters
by modifying the DCI's authority to withhold such information.

Thus, records related to Nazi war crimes could not be
automatically withheld just because they pertained to
"intelligence sources and methods." Rather, source information
could be withheld only if it "would clearly and demonstrably
damage the national security interests of the United States," a
much tougher and more sensible standard.

As a result, "We had unprecedented success at actually opening CIA
files that ordinarily are never opened," said Steven Garfinkel,
director of the Interagency Working Group.

Nearly 800 CIA "name files" have now been opened, Mr. Garfinkel
noted, whereas in the past only one, on Lee Harvey Oswald, had
ever been made available.


STATE SECRETS AND THE SIBEL EDMONDS CASE

Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the "state secrets
privilege" again last week to prevent former FBI translator Sibel
Edmonds from providing a deposition in a pending lawsuit related
to the September 11 attacks.

See this May 14 filing by the Attorney General formally invoking
the privilege:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/edmonds051404.pdf

Ms. Edmonds has previously said that she saw intelligence reports
prior to September 11 indicating that al Qaida planned to fly
hijacked aircraft into U.S. skyscrapers. The Justice Department
has repeatedly intervened to prevent her from elaborating on her
statements in court.

"Edmonds's story has been almost uniformly ignored in the U.S.
daily press," wrote Jefferson Morley in the Washington Post, at
the same time that it has been widely reported in foreign news
media.

See "Sept. 11 Allegations Lost in Translation" by Jefferson
Morley, Washington Post, April 8:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60651-2004Apr8.html




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_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood@fas.org
voice: (202) 454-4691

SPECIAL ACCESS PROGRAMS AMEND REGULATIONS

Questionable military regulations governing highly classified
"special access programs" (SAPs) are being hastily rewritten as
allegations surface that some SAPs may violate law or national
policy.

According to one U.S. Army Regulation from 1998, special access
controls may be applied to "An extremely sensitive activity
requiring special protection from disclosure to prevent
significant damage to national security or the reputation or
interests of the United States."

See Army Regulation 380-381, 12 October 1998, section 1-4(6):

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/ar380-381-old.pdf

But concealing official government activities in order to prevent
damage to "the reputation of the United States" is not a
legitimate use of special access procedures. (By executive
order, such procedures may be applied only to exceptionally
vulnerable national security information.)

Last month, that Army Regulation was reissued without reference to
potential damage to the "reputation of the United States" (and
with numerous other modifications to strengthen oversight and for
other purposes).

See the newly updated Army Regulation 380-381, 21 April 2004 (also
available in html format at cryptome.org):

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/ar380-381.pdf

Writing in The New Yorker magazine this week, Seymour Hersh
reported that acts of torture committed against Iraqi prisoners
originated in one Defense Department SAP that was established for
the purpose of interrogating "high value" targets in the war on
terrorism. The Pentagon and the CIA emphatically denied the
story.

Special access programs entail secrecy and security measures that
go beyond those of ordinary classified programs. These may
include augmented background investigations, polygraph tests,
program-specific non-disclosure agreements, etc.

The security procedures governing Pentagon special access programs
are described in "Department of Defense Overprint to the National
Industrial Security Program Operating Manual Supplement" (For
Official Use Only), a copy of which was obtained by Secrecy News:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/nispom_dod_overprint.pdf