Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI) and several Senate colleagues last week reintroduced the “Intelligence Community Audit Act” that would strengthen the authority of the Government Accountability Office to oversee intelligence agency programs and activities.

“GAO has well-established expertise that should be leveraged to improve the performance of the Intelligence Community,” Sen. Akaka said. “In particular, GAO could provide much needed guidance to the IC related to human capital, financial management, information sharing, strategic planning, information technology, and other areas of management and administration.”

“By employing GAO’s expertise to improve IC management and operations while carefully protecting sensitive information, this bill would reinforce the Intelligence Community’s ability to meet its mission,” he said.

Until recently, intelligence agencies have been unenthusiastic or openly hostile to GAO involvement in intelligence oversight.  Last year, when the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing on the Akaka bill, not a single representative of the intelligence community agreed to testify.

But last month, the Department of Defense cautiously acknowledged that GAO auditors may be granted access to classified foreign intelligence under some circumstances (“DoD Should Not ‘Categorically’ Deny GAO Access to Intelligence,” Secrecy News, February 4).

And at the January 22, 2009 confirmation hearing of Adm. Dennis C. Blair to be Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Blair also seemed to endorse a role for GAO in intelligence oversight.

Sen. Ron Wyden asked him: “If the GAO is conducting a study at the direction of one of the intelligence committees using properly cleared staff, will you give them the access they need to do their work?”

Adm. Blair replied: “Senator, I’m aware that the direction of GAO studies and the terms of them are generally subject to talk between the two branches of government for a variety of reasons, and subject to having those discussions, ultimately I believe the GAO has a job to do and I will help them do that job.”

The congressional intelligence committees themselves have been reluctant to take advantage of the GAO for intelligence oversight, and it is not a coincidence that Sen. Akaka, the leading Senate proponent of the idea, is not a member of the Senate intelligence committee.  But in another sign of shifting perspectives, Rep. Sylvestre Reyes and Rep. Anna G. Eshoo of the House Intelligence Committee last year asked the GAO to perform its first assessment of the intelligence community security clearance process.  It was the first request to the GAO on any topic from either of the congressional intelligence committees in six years.  (“A New Intelligence Oversight Task for GAO,” Secrecy News, April 1, 2008.)

In an almost forgotten episode from 1982, a former GAO auditor alleged that Soviet spies had infiltrated the GAO.  The Senate Intelligence Committee conducted an investigation and then-Committee chairman Sen. Barry Goldwater reported to the Senate that the allegation was not substantiated.  There is no known instance in which classified information was leaked or compromised by GAO employees.

Department of Defense intelligence agencies were told last week to consider granting requests from the congressional Government Accountability Office (GAO) for access to classified foreign intelligence information.

A new DoD directive (pdf) states explicitly for the first time that GAO requests for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information may be granted:

“Although the Comptroller General may be prevented from compelling access to this information, such information should not be denied categorically.  Such information may be furnished to GAO representatives having a legitimate need to know.  Therefore, denials of access to such information must be carefully considered and supported legitimately.”

See “Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Comptroller General Requests for Access to Records,” Department of Defense Instruction 7650.01, January 27, 2009 (at page 6).

As of last year, 1000 GAO analysts held top secrecy security clearances and 73 were cleared for intelligence information (Secrecy News, “GAO and Intelligence Oversight,” August 4, 2008).

GAO access to intelligence information has long been a subject of dispute and controversy. By law (31 U.S.C. 716d), the Comptroller General who directs the GAO cannot compel executive branch agencies to disclose intelligence information. The Central Intelligence Agency has generally refused to cooperate with GAO auditors, while defense intelligence agencies have historically been somewhat more forthcoming.

Using GAO analysts to audit intelligence agency operations potentially offers a way to augment and improve congressional oversight of intelligence, the Federation of American Scientists and others have argued (pdf).

A bill to affirm the role of GAO in intelligence oversight was introduced by Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI) in the last Congress.

“It is my strong belief that the Intelligence Community could benefit from the Government Accountability Office’s expertise in reviewing organizational transformations and management reforms,” Sen. Akaka said at a Senate hearing on the subject last year.

The House of Representatives yesterday passed the Reducing Overclassification Act, a bill that would require the Department of Homeland Security to prepare unclassified versions of intelligence reports that are likely to be of use to first responders and other non-federal officials.  The legislation, introduced by Rep. Jane Harman, would also mandate improved oversight and training in order to combat overclassification at DHS.

“Though hard to believe, sheriffs and police chiefs cannot readily access the information they need to prevent or disrupt a potential terrorist [incident] because those at the Federal level resist sharing information,” Rep. Harman said. “Over-classification and pseudo-classification, which is stamping with any number of sensitive-but-unclassified markings, remain rampant.”

A Central Intelligence Agency publication on the analysis of insurgencies that has often been cited but not widely circulated was recently released by CIA under the Freedom of Information Act.

“This pamphlet contains key definitions and analytic guides applicable to any insurgency…. Among other things, this guide is designed to assist in conducting a net assessment of the overall status or progress of a specific conflict,” the document (pdf) states.  The CIA “Guide to the Analysis of Insurgency” is undated, but may have been written in the 1980s.

Update: See also this 2012 revision of the “Guide to the Analysis of Insurgency.”

U.S. military intelligence agencies should follow the lead of Federal Express and other corporations and use “operations research” tools to guide their investment decisions and resource allocations, according to a new study by the Defense Science Board.  See “Operations Research Applications for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance” (pdf), January 2009.

The Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency (AF ISR Agency) is a little-known successor of the former Air Intelligence Agency, and its mission is described in this January 27, 2009 Air Force directive (pdf).

Harold C. Relyea, a scholar of American government at the Congressional Research Service, retired on January 30 after 37 years of government service.

When I first started exploring government secrecy policy quite a few years ago, the writings of Harold Relyea were some of the first and some of the most informative things that I found to read.  He showed how secrecy had deep roots in American history, and he explained that national security classification functioned as a bureaucratic “system” with well-defined rules and procedures as well as characteristic problems.  It followed that the system could be confronted and challenged when necessary.

By its nature, most of Dr. Relyea’s work for Congress was invisible to the public.  Its impact, though sometimes profound, was not broadly advertised.  But he leaves a lasting imprint on the published record.

At the request of the Church Committee that investigated the U.S. intelligence community in the mid-1970s, he authored “The Evolution and Organization of the Federal Intelligence Function: A Brief Overview (1776-1975),” which appeared in Book VI of the Committee’s Final Report (and which was also published independently).

Among numerous other works of enduring value, he prepared a book-length 1974 report on “National Emergency Powers.”  A recent, abbreviated version of the same title is here (pdf).

One of his last major reports for CRS explored “Security Classified and Controlled Information” (pdf), expertly describing the management challenges posed by the parallel classified and “sensitive but unclassified” information security regimes.

Another report he wrote on “Presidential Advisers’ Testimony Before Congressional Committees” (pdf) was utilized by the 9/11 Commission to cajole testimony from reluctant Bush Administration officials.

Dr. Relyea authored several books, notably including “Silencing Science” (1994), which examined national security controls on scientific communication.  He also found time — during his off-hours, no doubt — to answer questions from interested members of the public concerning secrecy policy and related topics.

We thank him and wish him well.

Attorney General-nominee Eric H. Holder, Jr. said that, if confirmed, he will review current litigation in which the Bush Administration has asserted the state secrets privilege and that he will seek to minimize the use of the privilege.

“I will review significant pending cases in which DOJ has invoked the state secrets privilege, and will work with leaders in other agencies and professionals at the Department of Justice to ensure that the United States invokes the state secrets privilege only in legally appropriate situations,” Mr. Holder wrote in response to pre-confirmation questions for the record from Sen. Russ Feingold.

He also affirmed a general commitment to open government.

“I firmly believe that transparency is a key to good government.  Openness allows the public to have faith that its government obeys the law,” Mr. Holder told Sen. Feingold.

More particularly, he said he favored maximum public disclosure of Office of Legal Counsel opinions.

“Once the new Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel is confirmed, I plan to instruct that official to review the OLC’s policies relating to publication of its opinions with the [objective] of making its opinions available to the maximum extent consistent with sound practice and competing concerns,” Mr. Holder wrote.

Last week, the ACLU called upon the Justice Department to release OLC opinions concerning Bush Administration policies on surveillance, detention, and interrogation.

“Releasing the memos would … signal to Americans, and to the world, that you intend to turn the page on an era in which the OLC served not as a source of objective legal advice but as a facilitator for the executive’s lawless conduct,” the ACLU wrote.

The news organization Pro Publica has prepared a database of pertinent OLC opinions from the Bush Administration.  See “The Missing Memos” by Dan Nguyen and Christopher Weaver, January 28.

In a January 21 memorandum, President Obama directed the Chief Technology Officer to coordinate the development of an Open Government Directive that would implement the Administration’s principles of transparency.

But there is no Chief Technology Officer (CTO), so far.

And there are fundamental questions about the nature, role, authority, budget, and status of such a position that remain to be answered.  Many of the uncertainties involved are usefully delineated in a new report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service.

Up to now, the CRS report said, it is unknown “where a CTO would be located organizationally; whether a CTO would be a single position or supported by a staff, office, or agency; and how the duties and authorities of a CTO would be aligned and integrated with existing offices and agencies charged with similar responsibilities.”

Further, “The President has not indicated whether he intends to establish a CTO position by executive order or other administrative process, or whether he will seek legislation.”

Even more fundamentally, “What would be the scope of duties and authorities given to this position?”

Finally, the CRS astutely observed, “while the duties envisioned for a CTO may affect President Obama’s choice for the [position], the attributes of the person appointed to serve as CTO may, in part, define the role of CTO.”

See “A Federal Chief Technology Officer in the Obama Administration: Options and Issues for Consideration,” January 21, 2009.

A new report from the Congressional Research Service provides an extensive overview of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and the choices that confront U.S. policy makers.

“The U.S. Government faces key strategic and operational decisions about its further engagement in the war in Afghanistan. These may include clarifying U.S. national interests in Afghanistan and the region; defining clear strategic objectives based on those interests; determining which diplomatic, economic, and military approaches to adopt, and what resources to commit to support those approaches; prioritizing ‘Afghanistan’ versus other national security imperatives; and helping marshal a coordinated application of international efforts.”

See “War in Afghanistan: Strategy, Military Operations, and Issues for Congress” (pdf), January 23, 2009.

Other noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service include the following (all pdf).

“Homeland Security Intelligence: Perceptions, Statutory Definitions, and Approaches,” updated January 14, 2009.

“Israel and Hamas: Conflict in Gaza (2008-2009),” January 15, 2009.

“Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty: Background and Current Developments,” updated January 28, 2009.

“The Special Inspector General (SIG) for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP),” January 14, 2009.

“Amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Set to Expire in 2009,” January 6, 2009.

“I think that trying to understand secrecy through geography helps make the subject more real,” writes Trevor Paglen in a new book about secret government. “Thinking about secrecy in terms of concrete spaces and practices helps us to see how secrecy happens and helps to explain how secrecy grows and expands.”

Paglen, a geographer, writes about secrecy at the Groom Lake facility in Nevada, secret prisons in Afghanistan, secret satellite constellations in orbit, secret contractor locations around Washington, DC, and elsewhere. He considers their enabling conditions, as well as their implications for American democracy and public policy.

“The United States has become dependent on spaces created through secrecy, spaces that lie outside the rule of law, outside the Constitution, outside the democratic ideals of equal rights, transparent government, and informed consent,” he concludes. Worse, “the black world’s historical geography shows that where black budgets manifest into a space, informal violence becomes the norm.”

“Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World” by Trevor Paglen has just been published by Dutton Books.

The book has won enthusiastic blurbs from Andrew Bacevich, Robert Baer, Rebecca Solnit, and other esteemed authors. But it has important limitations and defects.

Paglen is a fluid writer with an eye for paradox and incongruity. But he is not a perfectly reliable guide to secrecy policy and practice. There are probably closer to three million persons holding security clearances, not four million [see correction below]. The majority of them are not employees of “the black world” of covert or unacknowledged programs but are engaged in perfectly overt activities that happen to involve handling of classified information. It is absurd to suppose that “In terms of numbers of pages, more of our own recent history is classified than is not” (p. 279). It is not correct to say the term “DET 3” never appeared on official Groom Lake documents (p. 41); it appeared on a facility security guide. The TIARA and JMIP intelligence budget categories which Paglen says are classified (p. 204) have not been in use for several years now.

Paglen’s point of departure is that there is a “lack of serious literature” about black sites and classified government operations (p. 13). But this premise cannot be sustained. If anything, there is an excess of largely repetitive material on the same themes. There are at least two books about Groom Lake alone, the subject of Paglen’s chapter 3. There are at least two other books about the 1953 Supreme Court decision in the Reynolds case on state secrets, which he summarizes in chapter 10. There are several other books about the black budget and classified spending, a topic he introduces in chapter 12, and so forth.

There are also some surprising “blank spots” in Paglen’s own narrative. In the 1990s, an independent researcher named Glenn Campbell spent years mapping the Groom Lake facility in Nevada, testing its perimeters and security procedures, scouting out the best public domain vantage points, and tracking the “Janet” airplanes in their daily flights to and from Groom Lake, fifteen years before Paglen did something similar. Without a credential or a book contract, he produced an astounding volume of genuine “black world” geography called the “Area 51 Viewer’s Guide.” But except for a misspelling of his name in an incidental footnote (p. 286), Campbell’s pioneering effort goes completely unacknowledged. Campbell himself would probably find his erasure from the record sublime, but to me it is dispiriting.

Finally, Paglen is so fascinated by the corruption of secrecy that he misses an opportunity to think more critically and more deeply about the subject. In his view, the National Reconnaissance Office, which builds and operates U.S. spy satellites, is an instrument of “domination” while those who work diligently to expose its secrets are servants of “the public good” (p. 119). But what if the opposite is true? What if by performing secret missions that are authorized and funded by the people’s elected representatives the NRO is actually an agent of liberty? And what if those who work to penetrate its secrecy are thereby undermining its democratically authorized mission? These are live issues for some of us, and there are various ways to respond to them. But in “Blank Spots on the Map” the questions themselves find no place.

Correction: Paglen was roughly correct about the number of security clearances, which reached a reported 4.2 million in 2010, and I was mistaken.

“It is incumbent upon all levels of government, as well as public and private parties within the U.S., to prepare for” a nuclear detonation in a U.S. city, according to a new U.S. government document.  “Planning Guidance for Response to a Nuclear Detonation” (pdf) was drafted by an interagency team and published by the Homeland Security Council earlier this month (h/t Docuticker.com).

Security requirements for the protection of classified or controlled information held by the Department of Energy are set forth in a newly revised “Information Security Manual” (pdf), DoE Manual 470.4-4A, January 16, 2009.

Current policy on biosecurity was discussed in a newly published congressional hearing entitled “One Year Later — Implementing the Biosurveillance Requirements of the 9/11 Act,” House Homeland Security Committee, July 16, 2008.

The record of a May 21, 2008 House Judiciary hearing on “FBI Whistleblowers,” featuring witness testimony from Bassem Youssef and Mike German (now of the ACLU), has also been recently published.

Ambitious new interagency structures that are supposed to provide an improved intelligence response to maritime and air threats to national security are described in a newly-disclosed Intelligence Community Directive.

The directive establishes what it calls Communities of Interest (COI) “to maximize intelligence collection and all-source analytic coordination.”

“IC stakeholders in the maritime and air COIs shall aggressively collaborate and share information to proactively identify and mitigate threats posed within these domains as early and as geographically distant from the U.S. as possible,” the new directive states.

A plan to maximize air domain awareness “directs development and improvement of new capabilities that enable persistent and effective monitoring of all aircraft, cargo, people, and infrastructure in identified areas of interest and at designated times, consistent with protecting civil liberties and privacy,” the directive says.

“Creating a shared common awareness among intelligence, law enforcement and operational communities is a complex task,” the directive notes, “and many associated policy and legal implications must be resolved to achieve success.”

The January 14, 2009 directive, signed by former Director of National Intelligence J. Michael McConnell, has not been approved for public release, but a copy was obtained by Secrecy News.

See “Global Maritime and Air Intelligence Integration,” Intelligence Community Directive 902, effective 14 January 2009.

The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff have issued updated military doctrine on space operations (pdf) that includes new material on “offensive space control” and “proximity operations.”

Offensive space control “entails the negation of enemy space capabilities through denial, deception, disruption, degradation, or destruction.”

“Adversaries — both state and non-state actors — will exploit increased access to space-based capabilities. Hence, it is incumbent on the US military to negate the adversaries’ use of those space capabilities that affect the safety and well-being of US, allied, and coalition forces,” the new publication says.

Another new section of the document addresses “rendezvous and proximity operations,” in which “two resident space objects are intentionally brought operationally close together.”

In addition to assembly and servicing missions, proximity operations “include the potential to support a wide range of future US space capabilities,” which are not further specified.

See Joint Publication 3-14, “Space Operations,” January 6, 2009.

The Pentagon acknowledged using two micro-satellites to approach and inspect a third, disabled satellite, New Scientist reported last week. See “Spy satellites turn their gaze onto each other,” January 24.

The U.S. Army defined its own mission in space in “Department of the Army Space Policy” (pdf), U.S. Army Regulation 900-1, January 23, 2009.