DNA samples of thousands of suspected terrorists from Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have been collected and preserved in a little-known U.S. government database that is intended for forensic intelligence and counterterrorism purposes.

As of 2005, seven thousand detainee samples had been processed into the Joint Federal Agencies Antiterrorism DNA Database. Ten thousand more were “inbound” at that time from Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a public presentation. See “The Department of Defense DNA Registry and the U.S. Government Accounting Mission” (pdf) by Brion C. Smith, August 2005 (at page 14).

The Joint Federal Agencies Antiterrorism DNA Database working group is comprised of representatives of the Department of Defense, the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community.

Disclosure of DNA and other medical information for intelligence purposes is explicitly authorized by government regulations.

“Under U.S. and international law, there is no absolute confidentiality of medical information for any person, including detainees,” according to the new DoD directive 3115.09 (pdf) on intelligence interrogation. “Medical information may be released for all lawful purposes… including release for any lawful intelligence or national security-related purpose.”

Update: See, relatedly, this new report from the Government Accountability Office, which curiously refrains from mentioning the term “DNA”: DOD Can Establish More Guidance for Biometrics Collection and Explore Broader Data Sharing (pdf), GAO-09-49, October 2008.

Kidnapping and other forms of terrorist violence have developed into a significant form of asymmetric conflict, according to a new U.S. Army manual (pdf) that describes the theory and practice of kidnapping with numerous case studies from recent years.

“This document promotes an improved understanding of terrorist objectives, motivation, and behaviors in the conduct of kidnapping,” the 168 page manual states.

See “Kidnapping and Terror in the Contemporary Operational Environment,” U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command Intelligence Support Activity, 15 September 2008.

The manual on kidnapping is the sixth supplement to “A Military Guide to Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century,” an Army instructional series, portions of which are labeled “for official use only.” A copy of the set was obtained by Secrecy News.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence today released a series of policy documents governing security clearances and access to classified information for intelligence community employees.

Intelligence Community Directive 704 (pdf) and five accompanying policy guidance documents set forth policy on security clearance background investigations, adjudicative guidelines, clearance revocation and appeal processes, reciprocal acceptance of security clearances, and more.

Intelligence Community Policy Guidance 704.5 (pdf) identifies “Scattered Castles” as a comprehensive database of IC security clearance authorizations, which can be used to verify clearances.

With minor technical changes, the new directive and accompanying guidance appear to closely replicate the previous policy under Director of Central Intelligence Directive 6/4.

See ICD 704 and the supporting guidance, along with other IC Directives, here.

Kutztown University, midway between Reading and Allentown, Pennsylvania, has never looked so good. Or at least not like this. The University campus was featured in the first publicly released half-meter, color satellite image produced by the GeoEye-1 satellite, launched on September 6.

“We do find the initial target selection amusing,” the author of the intelligence blog Kent’s Imperative wrote today, “and we are sure that there is a backstory there somewhere waiting to be told. There is something about small, out of the way Pennsylvania colleges and the intelligence community, isn’t there?”

There may be, but “This image captures what is in fact the very first location the satellite saw when we opened the camera door and started imaging,” said Brad Peterson, GeoEye vice president of operations.

The GeoEye-1 satellite will provide imagery for national intelligence agencies and, beginning later this fall, for commercial sale.

“Though the satellite collects imagery at 0.41-meter ground resolution, due to U.S. licensing restrictions, commercial customers will only get access to imagery that has been processed to half-meter ground resolution,” according to an October 8 GeoEye news release.

A new policy seeks to promote sharing of terrorism-related information throughout the government by making information sharing an explicit factor in employee performance appraisals.

“We have taken a critical step toward ensuring that information sharing becomes ingrained in the way the federal government operates,” said Amb. Thomas McNamara, the ODNI Information Security Environment program manager, in an October 6 news release.

The policy (pdf) is particularly noteworthy as an effort to re-engineer the federal bureaucracy in favor of information sharing by creating new incentives that reward the desired actions.

Can it really be that easy? Can the bureaucracy effectively be reprogrammed by installing a suitable set of rewards? And in particular, could a similar policy be adopted that advances open government by designating appropriate public disclosure as a criterion for evaluating employee performance?

It would be extremely interesting to try, but there are reasons for skepticism.

For one thing, the new policy on information sharing emerges from and reinforces an existing consensus in favor of increased sharing; it doesn’t create that consensus. And no similar consensus exists in the current Administration in favor of increased public disclosure of information.

Furthermore, information sharing, as the term is used by officials, is nearly the opposite of public disclosure. Information sharing is predicated on the fact that what is to be shared is not to be made generally available to all comers. If it were openly available, it wouldn’t have to be “shared.”

Finally, the new policy has unfolded at an excruciatingly slow pace that doesn’t bode well for similar efforts. Incredibly, it has been almost three years since the President himself ordered agencies (in a December 16, 2005 memorandum) to adopt the new performance evaluation element for information sharing, and it may take years more before the newly announced policy is fully implemented in practice.

Meanwhile, information sharing is something of a policy phantom that has “had virtually no operational impact,” according to one particularly unfavorable assessment presented in testimony to Congress last month.

“Those of us willing to honestly address this issue will conclude that ‘information sharing’ has no clearly understood meaning, is poorly managed, and has been made overly complicated,” said former U.S. Attorney John McKay in September 24 testimony (pdf) before the House Homeland Security Committee.

“From a national perspective, there is no concept of success, no agreed-upon jurisdiction, no designated authority, no effective leadership. And despite the large sums of money being spent over the past decade and many, many promises, there remains no consensus on the way to proceed,” he said.

In an extraordinary rebuff to Bush Administration detention policy, a federal court yesterday ordered (pdf) that 17 Chinese Uighur detainees held in Guantanamo Bay shall be released into the United States because there is no lawful basis for their continued detention. The government immediately filed a motion to stay the ruling [update: the stay was granted].

Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said in effect that the Administration’s claim of exclusive jurisdiction over the matter was un-American.

“The unilateral carte blanche authority the political branches purportedly wield over the Uighurs is not in keeping with our system of governance,” Judge Urbina said at an October 7 hearing (pdf). “Because our system of checks and balances is designed to preserve the fundamental right of liberty, the Court grants the [Uighur] Petitioners’ motion for release into the United States.”

Judge Urbina ordinarily has a healthy respect for executive branch authority. “[You are] not the DCI,” he once told me, explaining why my views on the need for intelligence budget disclosure had no legal significance. But he also reluctantly became the first federal judge ever to order the CIA against its will to disclose an annual intelligence budget figure (for Fiscal Year 1963), after it was shown that the information was already in the public domain (“Judge Orders CIA to Disclose 1963 Budget,” Secrecy News, 04/05/05).

Uighur detainees at Guantanamo prison were interrogated by Chinese government agents working in collaboration with U.S. military interrogators, who deprived them of sleep the night before by waking them up every 15 minutes in a treatment called the “frequent flyer program.” That practice was noted in a recently updated report from the Congressional Research Service, citing June 2008 testimony from Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine. See “U.S.-China Counterterrorism Cooperation: Issues for U.S. Policy” (pdf), updated September 11, 2008.

The House Intelligence Committee critically reviewed the U.S. intelligence satellite program in a rare unclassified report on the subject. See “Report on Challenges and Recommendations for United States Overhead Architecture,” House Intelligence Committee, House Report 110-914, October 3, 2008.

“All counterterrorism programs that collect and mine data should be evaluated for their effectiveness and privacy impacts,” according to a new report on data mining from the National Academy of Sciences.

A new doctrinal publication from the Joint Chiefs of Staff considers “Meteorological and Oceanographic Operations” (pdf), Joint Publication 3-59, September 24, 2008.

A somewhat older Army Field Manual addresses nuclear warfighting in “Nuclear Operations” (pdf), U.S. Army Field Manual 100-30, October 29, 1996.

Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service that have not been made available online until now include the following (all pdf).

“Supreme Court Appellate Jurisdiction Over Military Court Cases,” October 6, 2008.

“Presidential Succession: Perspectives, Contemporary Analysis, and 110th Congress Proposed Legislation,” October 3, 2008.

“Defense: FY2009 Authorization and Appropriations,” updated September 29, 2008.

“Homeland Security Department: FY2009 Appropriations,” updated September 25, 2008.

“The Global Nuclear Detection Architecture: Issues for Congress,” updated September 23, 2008.

“Operation Iraqi Freedom: Strategies, Approaches, Results, and Issues for Congress,” updated September 22, 2008.

In Israel, “newspaper headlines are often about future events rather than past events.”

That peculiar assertion is presented by the DNI Open Source Center (OSC) in a new report on Israeli news media (pdf). The new report provides descriptive accounts of many major and minor Israeli news outlets, noting their ownership, circulation, political orientation and other distinguishing characteristics.

The OSC report also considers sensitive topics such as military censorship (which it says is “rarely exercised”), ethnocentricity in media accounts, stereotypical treatment of immigrants, and the impact of the internet.

Like most other OSC products, the new report has not been approved for public release by the Central Intelligence Agency, which manages the OSC. But the report is unclassified, is not copyrighted, and does not constitute an input into strategic decisionmaking. Therefore the refusal of the CIA to release it does not command respect. A copy was obtained by Secrecy News.

See Hebrew- and English-Language Media Guide, Open Source Center, September 16, 2008

At its best, Israeli journalism can be very good indeed and can justify the attention of non-Israelis as well. Today in Haaretz, one story considers the growing financial crisis from the perspective of homeless people in Washington, DC. Another story looks at the limits of Israeli nuclear deterrence, with a citation to a classified 1999 report from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.

The OSC statement that Israeli news headlines often refer to future events (which recalls an old Twilight Zone episode) was not immediately confirmed by a review of today’s headlines.

Update: A related article on “The Evolution of Israeli Media” appears in The Middle East Review of International Affairs, September 2008.

“Intentional leaks of intelligence are a violation of law, may result in irrevocable damage to national security, and will not be tolerated,” according to a 2002 directive from the Director of Central Intelligence (pdf) that was itself leaked.

The directive largely reiterates longstanding policy, though perhaps with increased vigor. It states twice that leaks will not be “tolerated” and twice more that intelligence agencies will take “aggressive” measures to combat leaks.

The document notably advises intelligence officials not to prepare a damage assessment of a leak whenever there is a prospect of criminal prosecution against the leaker, implicitly suggesting that an accurate damage assessment might not always favor the prosecution.

The unclassified directive was obtained and published last week by Wikileaks.org, a website that publishes confidential and controlled documents of various types.

See Unauthorized Disclosures, Security Violations, and Other Compromises of Intelligence Information, Director of Central Intelligence Directive 6/8, December 9, 2002

Last August, a Freedom of Information Act request for a copy of all such unclassified DCI Directives was denied on appeal by Delores M Nelson of the CIA Agency Release Panel. In her denial letter (pdf), she strangely cited FOIA exemption (b)(1), among others, indicating that although they are unclassified, the requested Directives are at the same time “properly classified.” Neither the law of non-contradiction nor the Freedom of Information Act is effectively enforced at CIA.

A selection of unclassified DCI Directives (which are gradually being superseded by DNI Intelligence Community Directives) can nevertheless be found here. Thanks to Jeffrey T. Richelson of the National Security Archive for an updated list of DCI Directive titles.

An Army field manual (large pdf) published today updates military policy on “stability operations,” referring to the use of military and other instruments of national power “to maintain or reestablish a safe and secure environment, provide essential governmental services, emergency infrastructure reconstruction, and humanitarian relief.”

The new manual “represents a milestone in Army doctrine,” grandly writes Lt. General William B. Caldwell IV. “It is a roadmap from conflict to peace, a practical guidebook for adaptive, creative leadership at a critical time in our history.”

“The manual captures the key lessons of our past, including the hard-won experiences gained through seven years of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq,” according to a blogger from the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center.

“But this doctrine looks beyond the here and now to address a likely future where threats to our national security emerge from regional conflicts arising from increased competition for scarce natural resources, teeming urban populations with rising popular expectations, unrestrained technological diffusion, and a global economy struggling to overcome the strain of the American financial crisis, meet mounting demands from emerging markets, and extend foreign development aid into third world countries.”

See Stability Operations, U.S. Army Field Manual 3-07, October 6, 2008. The new manual was previewed in the Washington Post on October 5.

In a newly released series of instructions, the Chief of Naval Operations has directed Navy classifiers to give greater attention to the possible need to classify compilations of unclassified information.

According to executive branch classification policy, compilations of information may be classified even when all of their component parts are unclassified.

Thus, the executive order on classification states (EO 13292, at section 1.7e): “Compilations of items of information that are individually unclassified may be classified if the compiled information reveals an additional association or relationship that: (1) meets the standards for classification under this order; and (2) is not otherwise revealed in the individual items of information.”

Now, U.S. Navy classifiers have been told to “consider classification by compilation when updating SCGs [security classification guides] due to the large volume of data transmitted and stored on unclassified and classified Department of the Navy (DON) networks and websites.”

That language appears in each of a dozen Chief of Naval Operations Instructions issued on July 21, 2008 dealing with Navy security classification guides. The Instructions list the titles of many dozens of Navy classification guides on topics ranging from undersea warfare (pdf) to intelligence cover and deception (pdf).

Classification by compilation is a disputed area and a policy that lends itself to misuse since it involves even greater subjective factors than ordinary classification.

A careful but critical account of the subject prepared in 1991 for the Department of Energy is “Classification of Compilations of Information” (pdf) by Arvin S. Quist, June 1991.