A comprehensive new account of U.S. aid to Pakistan was prepared by the Congressional Research Service this week.  See “Pakistan: U.S. Foreign Assistance,” June 7, 2011.

Also newish from CRS is “Imports from North Korea: Existing Rules, Implications of the KORUS FTA, and the Kaesong Industrial Complex,” May 24, 2011.

The National Security Agency announced yesterday that it has declassified a report that is over two hundred years old.

The newly declassified report, entitled “Cryptology: Instruction Book on the Art of Secret Writing,” dates from 1809.  It is part of a collection of 50,000 pages of historic records that have just been declassified by NSA and transferred to the National Archives.

The NSA said the new release demonstrated its “commitment to meeting the requirements” of President Obama’s January 2009 Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government.

The bulk of the newly released documents are from World War II and the early post-War era. (NSA itself was established in 1952.)  A list of titles released to the National Archives is here (pdf).

Last April, the Central Intelligence Agency declassified several documents on the use of “invisible ink” that dated from the World War I era.  But those were not even a century old.

Meanwhile, in more recent developments, the case of former NSA official Thomas A. Drake, who is charged with unlawful retention of classified information, is said to be “changing hour by hour.”

On Sunday, the government told the court (pdf) it had decided to withdraw several of its proposed exhibits rather than declassify them for trial, Politico reported (“Feds pare back NSA leak case to shield technology” by Josh Gerstein, June 6).

As a consequence, prosecutors are now seeking a plea bargain, the Washington Post reported, but Drake has twice refused to accept their offer (“Ex-NSA manager has reportedly twice rejected plea bargains in Espionage Act case” by Ellen Nakashima, June 9).

The trial of Thomas Drake is currently still scheduled to begin in Baltimore on Monday, June 13.

The National Security Agency announced yesterday that it has declassified a report that is over two hundred years old.

The newly declassified report, entitled “Cryptology: Instruction Book on the Art of Secret Writing,” dates from 1809.  It is part of a collection of 50,000 pages of historic records that have just been declassified by NSA and transferred to the National Archives.

The NSA said the new release demonstrated its “commitment to meeting the requirements” of President Obama’s January 2009 Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government.

The bulk of the newly released documents are from World War II and the early post-War era. (NSA itself was established in 1952.)  A list of titles released to the National Archives is here (pdf).

Last April, the Central Intelligence Agency declassified several documents on the use of “invisible ink” that dated from the World War I era.  But those were not even a century old.

Meanwhile, in more recent developments, the case of former NSA official Thomas A. Drake, who is charged with unlawful retention of classified information, is said to be “changing hour by hour.”

On Sunday, the government told the court (pdf) it had decided to withdraw several of its proposed exhibits rather than declassify them for trial, Politico reported (“Feds pare back NSA leak case to shield technology” by Josh Gerstein, June 6).

As a consequence, prosecutors are now seeking a plea bargain, the Washington Post reported, but Drake has twice refused to accept their offer (“Ex-NSA manager has reportedly twice rejected plea bargains in Espionage Act case” by Ellen Nakashima, June 9).

The trial of Thomas Drake is currently still scheduled to begin in Baltimore on Monday, June 13.

New reports from the Congressional Research Service include the following (all pdf).

“Text and Multimedia Messaging: Emerging Issues for Congress,” May 18, 2011.

“The Motor Vehicle Supply Chain: Effects of the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami,” May 23, 2011.

“Executive Branch Reorganization Initiatives During the 112th Congress: A Brief Overview,” May 26, 2011.

“Status of Mexican Trucks in the United States: Frequently Asked Questions,” May 16, 2011.

“Promoting Global Internet Freedom: Policy and Technology,” May 26, 2011.

The prosecution of former National Security Agency official Thomas A. Drake under the Espionage Act “smacks of overkill,” said the Washington Post in an editorial today (“A case that could be overkill against a whistleblower,” June 6).

The Post editorial tends to ratify a growing consensus that the prosecution of Drake on charges of unauthorized retention of classified information is a mistake, and that the Obama Administration has mishandled the case.  That view was crystallized by a widely-read New Yorker article written by Jane Mayer (“The Secret Sharer,” May 23), and reinforced by a 60 Minutes profile (May 22), as well as a Ridenhour whistleblower award.

There is no evidence that Mr. Drake intended to cause harm to the United States or that he actually did so, even inadvertently.  The prosecutors themselves do not claim that any classified information that might have been in Mr. Drake’s possession appeared in the press as a result of his actions.  Yet he faces the possibility of multiple decades in prison.

“The question here is whether the indictment and proposed punishment are proportionate to the alleged infraction,” the Post editorial said.  Clearly, they are not.

When former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger was found to have unlawfully removed classified records (pdf) from the National Archives — in circumstances that were far more egregious and much less susceptible to an innocent interpretation than anything Mr. Drake did — Mr. Berger was not charged under the Espionage Act.  He pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of “unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material” under 18 USC 1924, and was sentenced to two years of probation.  He also had to pay a fine, to perform 100 hours of community service, and to forego access to classified material for three years.

There is no possibility at this late date that the Obama Administration will acknowledge its error and change course before Mr. Drake’s trial begins on June 13.  But one may still hope that a sensible jury will discern the injustice in the Administration’s pursuit of Mr. Drake and draw the only appropriate conclusion.

The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the U.S. intelligence agency that builds and operates intelligence satellites, has just released unclassified portions (pdf) of its Congressional Budget Justification Book for Fiscal Year 2011.  The large bulk of the document remains classified and unreleased, but the newly disclosed portions reveal a few scraps of new information.

“The NRO brings unique capabilities to bear in support of national security objectives by… acquiring and operating the most capable set of satellite intelligence collection platforms ever built,” the NRO told Congress.

“In times of heightened tension, crisis, or even humanitarian or natural disasters, the value of NRO systems is even greater,” the budget document said.  “NRO systems are not only the first responders of choice for the DoD, IC [intelligence community], or policy decision makers, but also they are often the only source of information.”

However, the NRO complained that its “financial flexibility has been lost due to a steady proliferation of budget control lines, more restrictive reprogramming limits, and greater external involvement in resource decisions” (p.2).  The NRO has a massive annual budget that is probably on the order of $10 billion.

The 2011 NRO budget document introduced some new unclassified code names and programs such as “Ardent Gunslinger” (a “three tiered replacement next generation CORE backbone replacing existing ATM [asynchronous transfer mode] network”) (p. 451) and “Puppet Master” (a “replacement to the Future Architecture for Command and Telemetry Services”) (p. 455), among other curious bits and pieces.

“The NRO acquires and operates satellites that provide constant global access to critical information otherwise unavailable to the President, his cabinet, other national leaders and numerous customers in the Defense and Intelligence communities.  These satellites provide services in three broad categories:  GEOINT [geospatial intelligence], SIGINT [signals intelligence], and Communications (COMM).”

The FY 2011 NRO budget book was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Federation of American Scientists.  As recently as 2006, the NRO had argued that its budget documents constituted “operational files” that are exempt from search and review under the FOIA.  We challenged that claim in a FOIA lawsuit and, remarkably enough, the court ruled (pdf) in our favor and against the agency.  Since that 2006 ruling by Judge Reggie B. Walton, the NRO has agreed to provide redacted versions of its budget book.  So have all other U.S. intelligence agencies except the National Security Agency, which uses a broad statutory exemption to withhold even unclassified agency information from public disclosure.

In a small but momentous shift in national security secrecy policy, President Obama personally ordered the declassification last month of a short paragraph regarding the Soviet space program that appeared in the President’s Daily Brief dated November 26, 1968.  The move came in response to a researcher’s request that had been blocked by the Central Intelligence Agency for more than a decade.

The President’s Daily Brief (PDB) is a compilation of intelligence that is presented to the President each day. It has long been considered sacrosanct by intelligence officials and has been effectively beyond the reach of Freedom of Information Act requesters and other researchers.

“The PDB is a unique intelligence product prepared specifically for the President of the United States to provide him with the most important current intelligence on critical issues relating to the national security of the United States,” a CIA official wrote (pdf) in 2006.

“In the PDB, the intelligence community assembles the most sensitive intelligence information and the best analytic judgments in a complete, accurate, and timely package intended to inform the President and his most senior advisors as they make and implement the nation’s defense and foreign policies…. The PDB is the most sensitive intelligence report produced by [the U.S. intelligence community].”

Based on that assessment, intelligence officials have successfully resisted and rebuffed FOIA requests, lawsuits and other public attempts to gain access to PDBs.

In the late 1990s, researcher Peter Pesavento identified several PDBs located at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library concerning the Soviet space program that were of interest to him and he filed a mandatory declassification review (MDR) request for their release.  When his requests were denied by the CIA, he appealed the matter to the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP), an executive branch body that considers appeals of MDR requests that have been denied.  Remarkably, in 2003 the ISCAP granted Mr. Pesavento’s appeal with respect to the one paragraph of the five-page PDB that discussed Soviet space (and even so one of the three sentences in the paragraph was partially redacted).

But then-Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet vetoed the ISCAP disclosure decision, making use of the new veto authority that had been granted to the DCI in President Bush’s 2003 executive order on classification to block release of the PDB.  Two members of the ISCAP appealed to the President to overturn the Tenet veto in 2003, but no action was taken on the appeal, until now.

“Please be advised that the President has directed the declassification and release of portions of the President’s Daily Brief of November 26, 1968, that had been declassified by the Panel in its decision of September 2, 2003,” wrote William A. Cira, executive secretary of the ISCAP in a May 26, 2011 letter (pdf) to Mr. Pesavento.

The declassified PDB paragraph, which will be released by Mr. Pesavento in a forthcoming article, is not very interesting to a non-specialist.  It predicts that “the Soviets will not attempt a flight around the moon in December [1968]” but will probably wait until early 1969.

What makes the new disclosure significant is that it represents a decisive break from the intense and unyielding secrecy that with few exceptions has surrounded this class of documents.

In 2004, under pressure from the 9/11 Commission, President Bush released the famous PDB passage entitled “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US” (pdf).  But even in that case, DCI Tenet declared in his written declassification decision that the 2004 release to the 9/11 Commission “shall not be deemed to constitute any precedent concerning any future declassification or release of any other PDB.”

By contrast, President Obama’s declassification decision in this case does create a precedent that is all but certain to initiate a cascade of further releases of historical PDBs, beginning with several others on Soviet space that were also requested by Mr. Pesavento.

“In the coming months the Panel [ISCAP] will be adjudicating several similar President’s Daily Brief appeals from you that the Panel has held in abeyance pending a decision on this issue,” wrote Mr. Cira of ISCAP last month.

The declassification decision also gives new substance to two provisions in the Obama executive order on national security classification that were in danger of becoming mere rhetorical flourishes.

“[N]o information may be excluded from declassification… based solely on the type of document or record in which it is found,” the President directed in executive order 13526, section 3.1g.  That provision was presumed to apply to PDBs, and now we finally know that it does.

Also, the order stated in section 1.5d, “No information may remain classified indefinitely.”  Though this principle may seem like common sense, it has all too rarely been applied in practice.

A handful of other PDB texts have become public informally or inadvertently and have been published by the National Security Archive.

A status report on the Navy’s development of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) as of late last year is given in a Selected Acquisition Report (pdf) that was sent to Congress in April.

The word “littoral” means near the shore.  The LCS is intended to counter small boat threats, mine laying vessels and coastal submarine threats.

Additional background on the LCS is available in a Congressional Research Service report entitled “Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program: Background, Issues and Options for Congress” (pdf).

Policy issues surrounding the use of geospatial information are examined in two new reports from the Congressional Research Service.

“Geospatial information is data referenced to a place–a set of geographic coordinates–which can often be gathered, manipulated, and displayed in real time. A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a computer data system capable of capturing, storing, analyzing, and displaying geographically referenced information.”

“The federal government and policy makers increasingly use geospatial information and tools like GIS for producing floodplain maps, conducting the census, mapping foreclosures, congressional redistricting, and responding to natural hazards such as wildfires, earthquakes, and tsunamis. For policy makers, this type of analysis can greatly assist in clarifying complex problems that may involve local, state, and federal government, and affect businesses, residential areas, and federal installations.”

See “Geospatial Information and Geographic Information Systems (GIS): An Overview for Congress” (pdf), May 18, 2011,  and “Issues and Challenges for Federal Geospatial Information” (pdf), May 18, 2011.

The precise number of persons who hold security clearances for access to classified information was supposed to be reported to Congress by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for the first time in February 2011.  But that total number, which is believed to be around 2.5 million, remains elusive and it still has not been provided.

At a December 1, 2010 hearing of a House Intelligence Subcommittee, John Fitzpatrick, director of the ODNI Special Security Center, told Rep. Anna Eshoo that the precise number of clearances would be revealed early this year.

“We have a special data collection to provide a definitive answer on that in the February 2011 IRTPA report,” he said, referring to a report required under the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act.  (“How Many People Have Security Clearances?”, Secrecy News, December 14, 2010).

But when the February 2011 IRTPA report (pdf) was publicly released this month, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the promised number was not included.

It seems that compiling an accurate and complete figure for all security clearances is more challenging and time-consuming than had been anticipated.  An ODNI spokesman said that the number will still be provided, but it will be transmitted in a different report pursuant to the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2010 (section 367), which specifically required disclosure of the total number of clearances.

“The Intelligence Authorization Act of 2010, which was signed into law in October, includes new Executive Branch accounting requirements for the collection and reporting on the aggregate number of security clearances held, and we continue to keep Congress informed on the status of these reports,” the ODNI spokesman told Secrecy News.

A copy of the report on the number of security clearances is said to be in draft form.

The new IRTPA report, meanwhile, states that “the government has continued to show a significant improvement in security clearance processing times.”  The average processing time for an initial clearance was 79 days in FY 2010, down from 86 days in FY 2009.  For the fastest 90% of initial security clearances, processing time was down to an average of 53 days, the report said.

The Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court has named two new federal district court judges to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to replace two others whose term had expired.  The FIS Court is responsible for reviewing government applications for electronic surveillance and physical search under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The new appointments are Judge Jennifer B. Coffman of the Eastern District of Kentucky, and Judge F. Dennis Saylor of the District of Massachusetts.

Both judges were appointed for a seven year term effective May 19, 2011, said Sheldon L. Snook, Esq., the Administrative Assistant to the Chief Judge of the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

They replace outgoing FIS Court members Judge Dee Benson and Judge Frederick J. Scullin, Jr. whose term on the Court ended May 18.

“At least one of these [FIS Court] judges is available at all times–24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year–for the purpose of reviewing government applications to use FISA authorities and, if those applications are sufficient, approving them by issuing an order,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein this week.

“During calendar year 2010, the Government made 1,579 applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for authority to conduct electronic surveillance and/or physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes,” according to the latest Justice Department report to Congress on implementation of the FISA.

The jurisdiction of the FIS Court has also been modified by statute in recent years.  “The FISA Amendments Act, adopted in July 2008, made it so that FISA orders for surveillance in the U.S. of targets reasonably believed to be abroad no longer have to be obtained,” observed Greg Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology.  “As a result, a significant amount of surveillance that used to be reflected in the FISA court order numbers isn’t reflected in them any more.”

Update (6/23/11): On June 13, the Pentagon Papers were published in their entirety. The last eleven words that remained classified were declassified prior to publication.

The Pentagon Papers that were leaked by Daniel Ellsberg four decades ago have been formally declassified and will be released in their entirety next month — except for eleven words that remain classified.

David S. Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States, announced the surprising exception to the upcoming release of the Papers at a meeting of the Public Interest Declassification Board on May 26.

The nature of the censored words was not described, but the National Declassification Center said on its blog that all eleven of them appeared on a single page. (Update: The discussion of the eleven words has been deleted from the NDC blog post.) The Center also said that the release next month “will present the American public with the first real look at this historic document,” because it will be more complete and accurate than any prior edition of the Papers.

From a security policy point of view, the decision to maintain the classification of eleven words is questionable because it invites attention and speculation, not to mention ridicule, focused precisely on that which is withheld.

In any case, all of the Pentagon Papers except for the mysterious eleven words will be officially released in hard copy and online in digital format on June 13.

The decision to censor the eleven words was peculiar, Archivist Ferriero acknowledged.  He suggested that the redactions would lend themselves to an entertaining game of “Mad Libs,” in which players suggest humorous possibilities for filling in the blanks in a sentence.

The Archivist also reported that the National Declassification Center has now achieved the capacity to process 14 million pages of classified records per month for declassification, and that it is in fact declassifying 91% of the material that it is processing.

The Public Interest Declassification Board convened a public meeting Thursday at the National Archives on options for “transforming classification.”  The Board will continue to receive public comments on the subject on its blog until mid-June.