In anticipation of future nuclear arms control agreements that would require the dismantlement of nuclear warheads, the Department of Energy undertook a technical study during the Clinton Administration to determine how such dismantlement could be verifiably accomplished.  The resulting report, experts say, is still the best available treatment of the subject.

A copy of the unclassified report, marked “official use only,” was obtained by Secrecy News and posted online today.

The DOE authors identified ten types of activities that could be used in a warhead dismantlement regime, involving various forms of monitoring at successive stages of the process.  One or more of the ten could be employed, depending on the degree of confidence desired.

In principle, it should be fairly straightforward to dismantle a given nuclear warhead with confidence.  However, “determining that an item to be dismantled is actually a nuclear warhead is very difficult” without compromising classified information, the report states.  The use of x-rays or radiographs to confirm that an object is in fact a warhead “would be highly intrusive and would reveal highly classified nuclear warhead design information” to foreign inspectors, potentially exposing design vulnerabilities and other sensitive information.  Such concerns might be addressed by other forms of monitoring, the report says.

The study concluded that “transparency measures for monitoring warhead dismantlement can be applied… with up to a moderate level of confidence that dismantlement has taken place if implemented at the Unclassified to [Confidential] level.”  Verification that an actual weapon has been dismantled — which is a more demanding standard than mere “transparency” — can be achieved with an appropriate exchange of classified nuclear weapons design information.

The report provides a detailed description of the dismantlement process, a summary of previous dismantlement studies (including one by the Federation of American Scientists and another by the JASONs, but not the 1960s-era Project Cloud Gap study), and other valuable information that could serve to inform and accelerate current analyses of nuclear warhead dismantlement.

See “Transparency and Verification Options: An Initial Analysis of Approaches for Monitoring Warhead Dismantlement,” prepared by the Department of Energy Office of Arms Control and Nonproliferation, May 19, 1997.

The U.S. Army’s future ability to combat weapons of mass destruction (CWMD) in the 2015-2024 timeframe is the subject of a new Army doctrinal publication (pdf).

“The thrust of current Army CWMD capabilities … is to protect against and recover from WMD attacks,” the document explains.  However, “The Army is deficient in the capabilities required to proactively detect, identify, track, and engage threat WMD networks before they can launch an attack.”  See “The U.S. Army Concept Capability Plan for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction for the Future Modular Force 2015-2024,” TRADOC Pamphlet 525-7-19, March 25, 2009.

The Army publishes a little-known annual journal called “Combating WMD,” the third issue of which has recently appeared.  Each issue includes some noteworthy historical or doctrinal material.

The Central Intelligence Agency maintains a regularly updated electronic archive of declassified historical records that have been publicly disclosed, but it has effectively squandered the utility of digitizing these records by refusing to make them available online.

The CIA to its credit has done more than any other agency to scan declassified records into digital format and to make them word-searchable.  Millions of pages of records have been archived in the CIA Records Search Tool (CREST).  But those electronic records are maintained in a single geographical location as if they were old-fashioned paper files.

“To use CREST, a researcher must physically be present at the National Archives, College Park, Maryland,” the CIA insists, thereby negating much of the value of the electronic archive.

“Recognizing this presents an obstacle to many researchers, we have been investigating ways to improve researcher knowledge of and access to CREST documents,” the CIA said.

Thus, the CIA web site this week announced a newly updated “finding aid” that permits online word-searches of CREST documents that have been entered into the system through 2008.

But one way to improve researcher access that CIA will not “investigate” is to put the entire CREST database online so that anyone, anywhere could download these declassified, often heavily censored records.  Nor will CIA release an electronic copy of the CREST database so that others may post it.

Why not?

CIA claims that withholding the database from unrestricted release is necessary to protect (what else?) intelligence sources and methods.  The Agency evidently believes that there are latent secrets concealed in the declassified record that could somehow be extracted by a clever analyst who reviewed them in electronic form.  Further, CIA holds that protecting such ethereal secrets is more important than providing improved public access to the historical record.

It doesn’t matter if this is undemonstrated or untrue.  All that matters is that the CIA believes it, or says that it does.  But others question the logic of this policy.

“All that the new tool will do,” a classification official in another agency told Secrecy News, “is to drive their FOIA numbers up.”

In other words, researchers who find a document of interest on the CREST search engine but who cannot get to College Park, MD to physically access the CREST archive will tend to request the declassified record under FOIA instead, thereby increasing demand on the already backlogged CIA FOIA process.

So, for example, a search of the CIA CREST finding aid under “Federation of American Scientists” turns up citations to two documents, both from 1972 and both originally of “unknown” classification level:  one is a two-page newsletter that was released in full, and the other is an eight-page document that was released in part.  The exact nature of either record cannot be ascertained without a trip to the National Archives, or a FOIA request to CIA.

But “this is progress nevertheless,” according to the classification official.

In fact, the CIA CREST database suggests one of the most dramatic and effective enhancements that could be made to the declassification system:  Digitize government records as they are declassified and then make them publicly available online.

In 1995, President Clinton ordered agencies that classify information to “establish a Governmentwide database of information that has been declassified” (Executive Order 12958, section 3.8).  That never happened, and in 2003 President Bush deleted the requirement (Executive Order 13292, section 3.7).  Restoring such a requirement, and fulfilling it, would be an appealing feature of a new executive order on classification.

A skeptical person might presume that the new Freedom of Information Act policy announced by Attorney General Eric Holder on March 19 declaring that agencies should “adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure” is a rhetorical posture without much practical significance.

After all, requesters who used FOIA during the Clinton era know that agencies frequently withheld information even when it would have caused no “foreseeable harm,” despite the policy of Attorney General Reno that such information should be released.  (Nor, for that matter, did agencies during the Bush Administration always withhold information every time they were legally entitled to do so, as the Ashcroft policy advised.)

But remarkably, federal courts are already considering the new Holder policy in response to plaintiff requests and are modifying the course of pending FOIA litigation as a result.

In one case, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked a court to stay a proceeding and to order the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice to reconsider their denial of requested records by employing the new Holder guidelines.  Those agencies opposed the idea.  But in a March 23 opinion (pdf), Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Northern District of California granted the EFF motion.

Likewise, in another EFF FOIA lawsuit this week, Judge John D. Bates ordered (pdf) the Department of Justice “to evaluate whether the new FOIA guidelines affect the scope of its disclosures and claimed withholdings in this case.”

“We now have four cases in which there are similar court orders,” said David Sobel, EFF senior counsel, which are “the result of our motions to stay proceedings pending issuance of the new guidelines.”

“I think it shows that a bit of aggressiveness on the part of FOIA litigants will likely force the government to reconsider prior withholding decisions,” he said.

The final sentence of the new Holder policy (pdf) states that “This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or equity by any party against the United States, its departments, [or] agencies.”

Whatever that sentence means, it is not stopping courts from invoking the new memorandum against the government and against the Department of Justice itself.

A survey of the “most wanted” government documents that should be publicly available but are not was recently conducted by OpenTheGovernment.org and the Center for Democracy and Technology.  They reported their findings in “Show Us the Data: Most Wanted Federal Documents” (pdf), March 2009.

“Where once we [the United States] were seen as the world’s leader in intellectual discourse and debate, we are now viewed as withdrawn and unconcerned with any views other than our own,” wrote Senator Richard Lugar in the introduction to a new Senate Foreign Relations Committee report that advocates renewed engagement in public diplomacy and outreach to foreign audiences.  See “U.S. Public Diplomacy — Time to Get Back in the Game” (pdf), February 13, 2009.

Unlike some other resources, scientific information in digital form “is not diminished upon use. On the contrary, digital access has a catalytic effect, multiplying the value of information through repeated use by a wide variety of users in a diversity of settings and applications.”  See “Harnessing the Power of Digital Data for Science and Society” (pdf), report to the National Science and Technology Council, January 2009.

In a new letter to President Obama, the Public Interest Declassification Board warned that reliable public access to government information, the very foundation of representative democracy, may be in jeopardy.

Although “our Board was heartened by your early statements and actions on openness in Government,” wrote Board acting chairman Martin Faga to the President on March 6, “we have to sound a note of alarm about how well the Government is doing in this area.”

“In fact, we have concluded that this fundamental principle of self-government” — that is, citizen access to information about Government — “is at risk and, without decisive action, the situation is likely to worsen.”

The Public Interest Declassification Board was established by Congress in 2000 to advise the president on declassification policy and practice.  Board members are appointed by the White House and Congress.

Mr. Faga, a former director of the National Reconnaissance Office, identified several structural and procedural factors that he said impede declassification, including inadequate resources, coordination and leadership, as well as poor management of digital records.  “Future historians may find that the paper records of early American history provide a more reliable historical account than the inchoate mass of digital communications of the current era.”

Although the Board’s mission focuses on declassification of historical records, the Board has also taken an interest in classification policy and has called for a revision to the executive order on classification.

“Serious attention to the classification process itself is needed to ensure that it supports declassification and to address the particularly challenging and long-standing issue of over-classification,” the Board’s letter said.

A presidential directive initiating a revision of the executive order on classification policy is believed to be imminent.

The National Archives and Records Administration is soliciting public input on new ways to reduce the costs of Presidential libraries while improving public access to the records they hold.

“NARA seeks the comments and suggestions of interested organizations and individuals for cost effective ways of modifying the present system for archiving and providing public access to Presidential records,” Acting Archivist Adrienne C. Thomas wrote in a March 24 notice.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee is seeking an update on the status of White House email, including the installation of improved information technology systems to ensure the preservation and retention of Presidential email.

“What policies and procedures are in place to ensure that official e-mails subject to the Presidential Records Act are captured and preserved by government information technology systems?” asked Rep. Edolphus Towns in a February 27, 2009 letter (pdf) to White House Counsel Gregory Craig.

The British foreign intelligence service MI-6 and the British domestic security service MI-5 will both mark their 100-year anniversary this year.  Their exploits are the subject of the new book “Secret Wars: One Hundred Years of British Intelligence Inside MI5 and MI6” by Gordon Thomas, published this month by St. Martin’s Press.

In a test of the new, more forthcoming Freedom of Information Act guidelines that were announced by Attorney General Eric Holder on March 19, the Federation of American Scientists has asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to reconsider its refusal to disclose the budget total for the National Intelligence Program for fiscal year 2006.

The new FOIA policy is intended to reverse entrenched secrecy practices and to encourage appropriate release of information.

“By restoring the presumption of disclosure that is at the heart of the Freedom of Information Act, we are making a critical change that will restore the public’s ability to access information in a timely manner,” said Attorney General Holder last week.  The new guidelines (pdf) “strongly encourage agencies to make discretionary disclosures of information” and indicate that the Justice Department will not defend FOIA denials in court unless disclosure would damage a protected government interest.

That all sounds promising, but it remains to be demonstrated in practice.

Adding to several other pending FOIA cases that will test the practical meaning of the newly declared policy, we have asked the ODNI to reverse its recent denial of the 2006 budget total.  Although the 2007 and 2008 budget figures have been formally declassified, the 2006 figure remains classified.

This ODNI practice of classifying obsolete budget information while releasing current budget information is “stupid,” said Steven Garfinkel, the former director of the Information Security Oversight Office, at a March 16 conference sponsored by the Collaboration on Government Secrecy at the Washington College of Law.

It also appears to be at odds with the views of the DNI himself.  In response to a pre-hearing question (pdf; question 35C) at his confirmation to be DNI, Adm. Dennis C. Blair told the Senate Intelligence Committee:  “I believe the annual disclosure of the aggregate intelligence appropriation, as required by law, should continue. It has not, to my knowledge, caused harm to the national security, and provides important information to the American public.”

Given these developments, we suggested in a FOIA request (pdf) to ODNI today, “it seems questionable either that the Justice Department would defend the continued denial under FOIA of the 2006 intelligence budget total, or that the DNI would supply a sworn declaration to a federal court to try to justify the withholding of this information.”

The United States Air Force has published a detailed organizational chart of its headquarters (pdf) including the names and telephone numbers of key personnel.

What makes this of more than passing interest is that it represents a departure from the post-9/11 Pentagon practice of withholding the names and phone numbers of Pentagon officials from publication in the Department of Defense telephone directory.  Prior to 9/11, Pentagon phone directories were made available for sale to anyone who wanted them.  I used to get a copy once or twice a year at the Government Printing Office (GPO) Bookstore on North Capitol Street for the use of the Federation of American Scientists.

Then, in a move that heralded a massive withdrawal of government information from the public domain, the document suddenly ceased to be available.  “The DOD Telephone Directory since September 11, 2001 is marked ‘For Official Use Only’ and is no longer sold by GPO,” according to a notice formerly posted on the GPO web site.

A bowdlerized version of the Pentagon phone book was later published for public use, with the names of Pentagon officials deleted.  Thus, “The listing for secretary of defense includes only ‘Hon. …’ for the Honorable Robert M. Gates,” reported Bill Gertz of the Washington Times on September 7, 2007.

The Air Force has abandoned such a policy, and its new org chart provides the names and the phone numbers of its headquarters staff without restriction.  Access to the complete, unexpurgated Pentagon telephone directory, however, remains limited to those with a .mil address and a “Common Access Card” that is issued to DoD employees and contractors.

Why does DoD withhold its telephone directory when other agencies with national security responsibilities such as the Department of State and the Department of Energy openly publish their telephone directories on their websites?

One answer is “OPSEC,” or “operations security,” meaning the concealment of unclassified indicators to frustrate foreign intelligence collectors.  But that rationale could apply equally to Energy and State, which do not embrace it.  Besides, the Pentagon itself survived the Cold War without such an extreme secrecy policy.

Another answer is that unlike other agencies, “We were attacked,” as one Pentagon employee told Secrecy News, citing the September 11 terrorist strike on the Pentagon.  That is a conversation stopper but not much of an explanation, since there is no known reason to believe that the Pentagon telephone directory was used by the 9/11 terrorists.

Last year the Senate Armed Services Committee held two hearings on the detention and interrogation of suspected enemy combatants held by U.S. forces, probing into the origins of military interrogation policy and documenting some of the key decisions that were made.

“Today’s hearing,” said Committee Chair Sen. Carl Levin, “will explore how it came about that the techniques called survival, evasion, resistance, and escape (SERE) training, which are used to teach American soldiers to resist abusive interrogations by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions, were turned on their head and sanctioned by Department of Defense (DOD) officials for use offensively against detainees. Those techniques included use of stress positions, … use of dogs, and hooding during interrogation.”

The record of those hearings has recently been published, supplemented by detailed questions and answers for the record and documents obtained by the Committee (in the PDF version).

See “The Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody,” hearings before the Senated Armed Services Committee, June 17 and September 25, 2008.

The organization and management of nuclear weapons research in nine countries — the United States, China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, and the United Kingdom — are examined in a new report from the Congressional Research Service obtained by Secrecy News.  See “Nuclear Weapons R&D Organizations in Nine Nations” (pdf), March 16, 2009.

Other noteworthy new CRS reports that have not been made readily available to the public include the following (all pdf).

“Cuba: Issues for the 111th Congress,” updated March 18, 2009.

“The Constitutionality of Federal Contracting Programs for Minority-Owned and Other Small Businesses,” March 16, 2009.

“Ongoing Government Assistance for American International Group (AIG),” March 16, 2009.