On January 26, 2007, the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council approved the establishment of a National Exercise Program (NEP) that would conduct management exercises to help senior government officials prepare for national crises from terrorism to natural disasters.

In a briefing last month (pdf), the Department of Homeland Security presented a proposed Five Year Schedule for the NEP.

Proposed exercises would model government responses to a nuclear weapons accident, pandemic influenza, Olympic terrorism, IED and MANPADS attacks, and other emergency scenarios.

Cabinet officers and other senior officials would be required to participate in five such exercises annually.

See the Department of Homeland Security briefing on the National Exercise Program, March 8, 2007 (For Official Use Only).

See also “Exercise Synchronization Working Group and NEP Implementation Plan Update and Way Ahead” (pdf), Joint Chiefs of Staff, 5-6 March 2007.

Thanks to Nemo at Entropic Memes.

The U.S. Army yesterday issued a new Field Manual on “Sensitive Site Operations” (FM 3-90.15, 25 April 2007).

The document itself is restricted and the Army would not immediately provide a copy to Secrecy News. But a few blanks can nevertheless be filled in.

“A sensitive site is a designated, geographically limited area with special military, diplomatic, economic, or information sensitivity for the United States,” according to the Army Field Manual (2-0) on Intelligence (pdf).

“This includes factories with technical data on enemy weapon systems, war crimes sites, critical hostile government facilities, areas suspected of containing persons of high rank in a hostile government or organization, terrorist money laundering, and document storage areas for secret police forces.”

“Sensitive site exploitation consists of a series of activities inside a sensitive site captured from an adversary.”

“These activities exploit personnel, documents, electronic data, and material captured at the site, while neutralizing any threat posed by the site or its contents. While the physical process of exploiting the sensitive site begins at the site itself, full exploitation may involve teams of experts located around the world.”

For further background and description of some fairly recent sensitive site operations, see a seminar paper entitled “The Strategic Implications of Sensitive Site Exploitation” (pdf) by Col. Thomas S. Vandal, National Defense University, 2003.

See also “Managing Sensitive Site Exploitation — Notes from Operation Iraqi Freedom” (pdf) by Major Pete Lofy, 2003.

Wal-Mart, the massive retail chain, has established its own “intelligence” unit to conduct threat assessments, and to perform intelligence collection and analysis.

And it has been recruiting senior personnel from U.S. intelligence agencies to staff its operation.

“I’ve had a number of people contact me who have purely law enforcement / security investigative backgrounds,” wrote one Wal-Mart recruiter in a January 2007 bulletin board posting. “That is not what the company is looking for.”

“The primary screening criteria for the positions is [sic] formal training and experience in intelligence analysis. If an individual does not possess that minimal criteria, then he will not be considered.”

See “Wal-Mart Recruits Intelligence Officers” by Marcus Kabel, Associated Press, April 24.

See also “Wal-Mart Defends Itself with New Intel Unit” by Jason Goodwin, Government Security News, February 2006.

Having spent months assessing the role of contractors in U.S. intelligence agencies, U.S. intelligence officials say they cannot disclose how many contractors there are, because that’s classified. See “Government Keeps a Secret After Studying Spy Agencies” by Scott Shane, New York Times, April 26.

Veteran female intelligence officers charge that the Central Intelligence Agency deals more harshly with women employees who have relationships with foreign nationals than it does with men. See “Does the CIA have a double standard when its spies cozy up to foreigners?” by David E. Kaplan, U.S. News and World Report, April 22.

A tumultuous congressional hearing on the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program was captured by Jeff Stein in “A CIA Man Speaks His Mind on Secret Abductions,” CQ Homeland Security, April 20.

In 1967 the United States had a top secret contingency plan for attacking Israel to prevent it from moving westward into the Sinai or eastward into the West Bank, reported Amir Oren in Haaretz. See “The Right to Strike,” April 23.

With congressional concurrence, the Congressional Research Service refuses to make its products directly available to the public. Some noteworthy new CRS reports obtained by Secrecy News include the following (all pdf).

“Presidential Advisers’ Testimony Before Congressional Committees: An Overview,” updated April 10, 2007.

“Information Operations, Electronic Warfare, and Cyberwar: Capabilities and Related Policy Issues,” updated March 20, 2007.

“Network Centric Operations: Background and Oversight Issues for Congress,” updated March 15, 2007.

“Statutes of Limitation in Federal Criminal Cases: An Overview,” updated April 9, 2007.

“Speechwriting in Perspective: A Brief Guide to Effective and Persuasive Communication,” April 12, 2007.

Presidential secrecy is best understood not as an expression of executive strength but as a sign of weakness and insecurity, according to a provocative new book on the subject.

“When the president lacks diplomatic or interpersonal skill, he is likely to compensate by shielding his activities — even shielding his very self — from the public, relying on secrecy rather than diplomacy,” write political scientists Robert M. Pallitto and William G. Weaver in “Presidential Secrecy and the Law.”

The authors explore how the growth of executive branch secrecy has transformed the institution of the presidency and the character of American government.

Secrecy, they say, “has depoliticized the president’s role in governmental action. Where a president may do what is desired in secret, there is no reason to withstand the ordeal of a political battle to achieve the same ends.”

“Increasingly, our governmental institutions are unable to hold the president accountable for actions undertaken in secret in the name of national security. In a subtle but sweeping way, this failure is working detrimental changes in our federal government institutions.”

The authors review the landscape of national security secrecy and the accumulation of unchecked executive authority and they proceed to critique the performance of the legislative and judicial branches.

Legislative initiatives such as the War Powers Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that were intended to restrain the executive branch have consistently backfired, they contend, serving instead to legitimize the presidential actions that they were intended to restrict.

“As counterintuitive as it may seem, we conclude that congressional efforts to control executive abuse in areas of purported national security concerns are ill-advised. These efforts insulate the president and establish a bureaucratic machinery and process for engaging in precisely the kinds of activity that were meant to be avoided.”

“We argue that aggressive action to control executive branch abuse of secrecy should not come from Congress but from the courts, which are in a position to provide the scrutiny necessary to discourage presidential abuse of secrecy powers.”

For more information, see “Presidential Secrecy and the Law” by Robert M. Pallitto and William G. Weaver, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.

A White House obsession with secrecy should not be confused with a commitment to good security. Rep. Henry Waxman yesterday itemized several gross violations of classified information security policy in the Bush White House (pdf) and called upon former White House chief of staff Andrew Card to explain security practices during his tenure.

The Department of Defense has asked Congress to enact two expansive new provisions in the FY 2008 defense authorization act to help it restrict public access to information.

One of the provisions would create a new exemption to the Freedom of Information Act for certain unclassified information related to weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The other would establish civil and criminal penalties for the unauthorized publication or sale of maps and images (“geodetic products”) that the Secretary of Defense has designated for “limited distribution.”

The proposed exemption for unclassified WMD information, which was proposed and rejected by Congress last year, is exceptionally broad in scope.

Its definition of “weapons of mass destruction” even extends to devices that are not lethal, as long as they may cause “serious bodily injury to a significant number of people” (50 U.S.C. 2302).

The Pentagon’s argument for the exemption is further undermined by the assertion that without it, unclassified information could “easily” assist a terrorist to make or use a weapon of mass destruction. The notion that terrorism is “easy,” popular with some New York Times op-ed writers and other lazy persons, was memorably dissected by George Smith of GlobalSecurity.org and the Dick Destiny blog.

The second provision to penalize “inappropriate disclosures” of geodetic information, “including postings of such products on the internet,” originated with the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), which said it could not effectively protect these unclassified maps and images without a new criminal prohibition.

“For several years, products bearing the LIMDIS [limited dissemination] caveat have wrongfully been offered for sale to the public … on eBay or displayed on internet sites. To date, DCIS efforts to prosecute the eBay sellers have not been successful.”

An organization that engaged in unauthorized disclosure or dissemination of such materials would be subject to a penalty of “not more than $500,000 for each violation….”

The text of the two proposed Pentagon access restrictions, with accompanying explanation and justification, may be found here.

Some notable new or newly-acquired publications include these (all pdf):

“Physical Security Program,” Department of Defense Regulation 5200.08-R, April 9, 2007.

“National Defense Intelligence College,” Department of Defense Instruction 3305.01, December 22, 2006.

“Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance: Preliminary Observations on DOD’s Approach to Managing Requirements for New Systems, Existing Assets, and Systems Development,” U.S. Government Accountability Office testimony [GAO-07-596T], April 19, 2007.

“Bioterrorism and Biocrimes: The Illicit Use of Biological Agents Since 1900” by W. Seth Carus, August 1998 (rev. February 2001).

The unprecedented trial of two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, who are charged under the Espionage Act with unlawful receipt and disclosure of national defense information, is likely to be postponed from its scheduled start date on June 4.

The need to resolve disagreements between the parties over the handling of classified information involved in the case will “knock the trial date into a cocked hat,” said Judge T.S. Ellis, III at an April 19 hearing.

The Judge gave prosecutors until May 2 to decide whether they will propose a new set of “substitutions” for classified evidence, which would then need to be reviewed by the defense and the court under the provisions of the Classified Information Procedures Act.

Alternatively, prosecutors may decide to stand fast with their previous proposal to bar public access to the classified evidence, a position that the judge has already rejected, thereby setting the stage for an appeal.

Judge Ellis issued a detailed memorandum opinion (pdf) on April 19 to explain why he concluded that the prosecution proposal to exclude public access to classified evidence is not authorized by statute or precedent.

The memorandum opinion advised the government that any proposal to exclude public access to classified evidence would have to be thoroughly supported by “a highly detailed explanation of the ensuing harms to national security… [since] much of the classified information at issue [here] is not self-evidently damaging to national security.”

(Updated Below)

A federal court this week rejected a government proposal to restrict public access to evidence in the forthcoming trial of two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who are charged under the Espionage Act with unauthorized receipt and transmission of classified information.

Using a procedure called the Silent Witness Rule, the prosecution had proposed to present classified evidence to the jury but to withhold it from the public and from open deliberation during trial.

“I think it is fair to say that the government’s proposal is novel,” said Judge T.S. Ellis, III on April 16.

But he said that because the evidence could not be openly addressed in court, the proposed procedure “would render virtually impossible an effective line of cross-examination that might be vital to the defense.”

Therefore, the judge ruled, “you can’t do it. It closes the trial. It’s unconstitutional. It’s unfair to the defendants.”

Explaining what is at stake, Judge Ellis elaborated:

“A public trial requires witnesses’ testimony to be public, so it deters perjury. It requires a judge’s rulings to be made in public, as today, so it deters partiality and bias. And by requiring prosecutors to present their charges and evidence publicly, it deters vindictiveness and abuse of power.”

Another “novel and distinctive” feature of the government proposal noted by Judge Ellis is that prosecutors were prepared to share classified evidence with jurors who do not hold security clearances. (“Interestingly, there is some authority for that,” he observed.)

More dubiously, the judge said, “the government’s proposed procedure treats even certain selected public domain documents, including news reports, as if they were classified documents.”

At any rate, while the government may suggest unclassified substitutions for classified evidence (as provided by the Classified Information Procedures Act), the proposal to withhold evidence from the public altogether was decisively rejected.

At the conclusion of the April 16 hearing it was unclear how the government would proceed, and even whether the trial itself could go forward.

If the prosecution “decline[s] to submit any substitutions [for classified evidence] that you would ever make public,” Judge Ellis warned, “then maybe … I have decide whether to dismiss the indictment, if that’s the case.”

The transcript of the April 16 hearing provided substantive discussion of the issues involved in handling classified evidence and the importance of open trials, along with some intense legal maneuvering and occasional flashes of humor. A copy was obtained by Secrecy News.

A follow-up hearing was scheduled this afternoon (April 19) to identify the prosecution’s next step.

Update: See Justice Dept. Given 2 Weeks to Weigh Use of Classified Data in Espionage Case, Washington Post, April 20.

Independent press reporting of Army plans to extend soldiers’ tours of duty in Iraq by three months prompted outraged warnings (pdf) from the Army vice chief of staff about the need to improve control of Army information against unauthorized disclosure. See “General: Embarrassing = Secret” in the Danger Room blog, April 18.

The government asserted the “state secrets” privilege in a Nevada lawsuit involving eTreppid Technologies (and the classified BIG SAFARI program). But instead of trying to shut the case down, as commonly occurs in state secrets cases, the government, which is not a party to the case, is proposing a way that it could proceed. See “eTreppid case gets special treatment” by Martha Bellisle, Reno Gazette-Journal, April 19.

Senate efforts to advance the FY2007 Intelligence Authorization Act collapsed again on April 17 in the face of Republican opposition to several provisions of the legislation, further undermining congressional oversight of intelligence.

Some noteworthy new reports of the Congressional Research Service include the following (all pdf).

“Environmental Impacts of Airport Operations, Maintenance, and Expansion,” April 5, 2007.

“What’s the Difference? — Comparing U.S. and Chinese Trade Data,” April 10, 2007.

“Vulnerability of Concentrated Critical Infrastructure: Background and Policy Options,” updated January 26, 2007.

“Polar Bears: Proposed Listing Under the Endangered Species Act,” updated March 30, 2007.