The ABLE DANGER data mining program was the subject of a House Armed Service Committee hearing yesterday featuring testimony from Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone.

“Members must decide for themselves what to believe from the testimony presented today — there will be some inconsistencies,” cautioned Rep. Jim Saxton, who co-chaired the hearing.

The prepared testimony from that February 15 hearing is available on the Federation of American Scientists web site.

A recently updated report from the Congressional Research Service addresses data mining — what it is, what it can and cannot do, and some of the controversies that have arisen around it.

(The CRS report was issued before recent reporting by Newsweek on the “Topsail” data mining program, and by the Christian Science Monitor on the “Advise” program. H/T to DefenseTech.org.)

A copy of the CRS report was obtained by Secrecy News.

See “Data Mining and Homeland Security: An Overview,” updated January 27, 2006.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is no longer disclosing the amounts of highly enriched uranium (HEU) that are sought for export to foreign research reactors, prompting complaints that the new non-disclosure policy undermines effective oversight of the traffic in nuclear weapons-grade material.

“Under prior longstanding policy the Commission publicly disclosed such information, and this enabled the public to submit comments that in several cases demonstrated to the Commission that an applicant had requested an amount of HEU exceeding its documented need,” wrote Alan J. Kuperman of the University of Texas at Austin and Paul Leventhal of the Nuclear Control Institute.

“In these [prior] cases, either the application was withdrawn, the Commission reduced the amount approved for export, or the Commission required that the approved amount be exported only in small tranches as the applicant subsequently demonstrated imminent need — to avoid the accumulation of surplus HEU by the applicant.”

But the opportunity for meaningful public comment on two pending applications for export of HEU — to Belgium and to Canada — “has been vitiated by the Commission’s new policy of withholding from the public both the amount of HEU requested and the applicant’s documentation that its existing inventory of HEU is insufficient to satisfy its imminent needs,” wrote Kuperman and Leventhal.

See their February 13, 2006, letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission here.

The Department of Energy recently approved a comprehensive manual on procedures for protecting all manner of classified or controlled information in the Department’s possession.

From RD (Restricted Data) and FRD (Formerly Restricted Data) to SAPs (Special Access Programs) and SPECATs (Special Category programs), it’s all in there. (Or almost all. A complete roster of all of the “sigma” categories of nuclear information is not included.)

The manual has not been readily available online, but a copy was obtained was obtained by Secrecy News and posted on the Federation of American Scientists web site.

See “Information Security,” DOE Manual 470.4-4, approved August 26, 2005 (2 MB PDF file).

Equipped with a one million dollar budget for the current fiscal year, the Public Interest Declassification Board will hold its first meeting on Saturday, February 25.

The Board, which serves a purely advisory function and does not have independent declassification authority, is chaired by L. Britt Snider, the former CIA Inspector General, and supported by the Information Security Oversight Office, which serves as executive secretariat.

The first meeting will be devoted mainly to administrative matters and will not be open to the public. A press release may be issued following the meeting, an official said. The Board is not subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

The Bush Administration requested $655,000 for the Public Interest Declassification Board in Fiscal Year 2007.

The challenges posed by so-called “sensitive but unclassified” information, and Administration efforts to bring order to this problematic policy area, were explored in “Government withholds ‘sensitive-but-unclassified’ information” by Lance Gay, Scripps Howard News Service, February 2, 2006.

The consequences of the government’s unprecedented use of the Espionage Act to prosecute non-governmental employees for mishandling classified information in the AIPAC case were considered in “Big Impact Seen In Israel Spy Case” by Josh Gerstein, New York Sun, February 13, 2006.

The House Government Reform Committee held an extraordinary hearing yesterday on the vulnerabilities of national security whistleblowers who challenge what they see as agency misconduct.

“Breaking bureaucratic ranks to speak unpleasant and unwelcome truths takes courage and risks invoking the wrath of those with the power and motive to shoot the messenger,” said Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT), who chaired the hearing.

In an unusual move, Chairman Shays gave pride of place to several whistleblowers who testified in the first panel of the hearing, while agency representatives waited to testify in the third panel.

All of the prepared testimony may be found here.

Today, “there are no meaningful protections for [national security] whistleblowers,” wrote former FBI linguist Sibel Edmonds in response to a New York Times op-ed last week by DCIA Porter Goss.

See “Porter Goss’ Op-ed: ‘Ignotum per Ignotius’!” by Sibel Edmonds, February 11.

“Ignotum per ignotius” is a Latin expression referring to an explanation which is harder to understand than that which it is meant to explain.

In an unprecedented and previously unimaginable case, two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) were accused last year of mishandling classified government information. Now they have asked a federal court to dismiss the charges against them.

The prosecution of the former AIPAC officials, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, represents an extraordinary attempt by the Bush Administration to use the Espionage Act to restrict the activities and even the conversations of members of the public who are not government employees.

“The prosecutors in this case have taken the unprecedented step of criminalizing an alleged leak not just against the government official who was charged with protecting such information, but also members of public policy organization with First Amendment protection who listened to what this government official had to say,” the new defense motion to dismiss states.

“If this indictment is allowed to stand, a statute which in the first instance is intended to address classic spying will not only be applied to erring government officials but now will be applied to private American citizens pursuing first amendment protected activities.”

What Rosen and Weissman are charged with is nothing more than “what members of the media, members of the Washington policy community, lobbyists and members of congressional staffs do perhaps hundreds of times every day,” the defense says.

There is no allegation that Rosen or Weissman “ever stole, secreted, purloined, paid for or otherwise obtained classified information from any person – inside or outside government – by any illegal means.”

Instead, they listened to, and repeated, information provided by former Pentagon official Lawrence A. Franklin that was purportedly classified.

“Never has a lobbyist, reporter, or any other non-government employee been charged… for receiving oral information the government alleges to be national defense material as part of that person’s normal First Amendment protected activities.”

“The government’s construction of [the Espionage Act] would allow for the punishment of any private citizen who obtains classified information – regardless of how or why – and then discloses it to another private citizen.”

“Such a result would be profoundly disturbing,” according to the defendants’ motion.

Remarkably, the legal memorandum on behalf of the defendants was co-authored by Viet Dinh, the former Justice Department attorney who is best known as one of the architects of the USA Patriot Act.

The defense memorandum was filed under seal on January 19 and unsealed by the court in the Eastern District of Virginia on February 9.

A copy was obtained by Secrecy News and posted on the Federation of American Scientists web site (4.2 MB PDF file).

The Bush Administration’s practice of selectively declassifying information that advances its policy agenda while withholding other information that controverts that agenda is “kind of sleazy,” an analyst quoted in the Wall Street Journal today said.

Okay, it was me. But still.

See “Cheney Role Risks Political Fallout” by Anne Marie Squeo and John D. McKinnon, Wall Street Journal, February 11, 2006.

A long-simmering dispute over the role and character of the Congressional Research Service now threatens to boil over in the form of a clash between CRS management and CRS analyst Louis Fisher.

Fisher, a specialist in American government and separation of powers issues, is one of the superstars of the CRS, whose work is widely cited and universally respected by his academic colleagues.

He “is a national treasure, the foremost expert on the constitutional law of the presidency,” wrote George C. Edwards III, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University in a letter to the Librarian of Congress last week. He “is widely regarded as the nation’s preeminent expert on the institutional powers of Congress and the presidency” according to Cornell W. Clayton of Washington State University.

Now Fisher, age 71, is in trouble at CRS for having expressed views critical of Bush Administration policy.

See “Expert on Congress’s Power Claims He Was Muzzled for Faulting Bush” by Yochi Dreazen, Wall Street Journal, February 9.

The roots of the dispute go back several years and derive from an unresolved disagreement about the proper function of the CRS, and the nature of analytical objectivity.

“We must all see to it that our ability to serve the Congress… is not compromised by even the appearance that we have our own agenda as an agency; that one or more of our analysts might be seen as so set in their personal views that they are no longer to be trusted to provide objective research and analysis; or that some have developed a reputation for supporting a position on an issue to the extent that CRS is rendered ‘suspect’ to those on the other side,” wrote CRS Director Daniel P. Mulhollan in a January 23, 2004 Director’s Statement.

That statement set off alarm bells among CRS analysts.

“No one disputes that our work must be non-partisan,” wrote Louis Fisher in a reply to Director Mulhollan at the time. “But if the front office puts the emphasis on neutrality, balance, and even-handedness, there is little room for careful, expert analysis.”

“Most of the criticism of our work that I am familiar with, from CRS staff and Congress, is that our reports are too diffuse and rambling, without theme, direction, or conclusion. If lawmakers merely want background material to give them a starting point, a descriptive CRS product can be helpful. For deeper and more thoughtful analysis, Congress may decide it has to go elsewhere,” Fisher wrote in a January 31, 2004 memo on CRS Standards for Analysis.

The uncertain premise of the dispute is that Congress desires deep and thoughtful analysis. What complicates matters further is that in many cases, as they say on the Comedy Channel, “the facts are biased” against the Bush Administration.

See also “Hoekstra attacks CRS ‘bias’ on spy program” by Shaun Waterman, United Press International, February 9.

The Central Intelligence Agency continues to make a mockery of its legal obligations under the Freedom of Information Act and the national security classification system.

The Project on Government Oversight recently asked the CIA to undertake a declassification review of the Iraqi declaration on weapons of mass destruction that was presented to the United Nations Security Council in December 2002.

Incredibly, CIA official Scott Koch rejected the request by claiming that “the CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records responsive to your request.”

See “We Know That You Know” on the POGO blog.

A copy of the Table of Contents from the 12,000 page Iraqi declaration, which plainly does exist, was obtained by Secrecy News.

Navy personnel are forbidden to disclose or even discuss the presence or absence of nuclear weapons aboard any U.S. Navy vessel, according to a new Navy Instruction.

“Military members and civilian employees of the Department of the Navy shall not reveal, purport to reveal, or cause to be revealed any information, rumor, or speculation with respect to the presence or absence of nuclear weapons or components on board any specific ship, station or aircraft, either on their own initiative or in response, direct or indirect, to any inquiry.”

See OPNAV Instruction 5721.1F, “Release of Information on Nuclear Weapons and on Nuclear Capabilities of U.S. Forces,” February 3, 2006.

The new Instruction was first spotted by Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists.

See his paper “The Neither Confirm Nor Deny Policy: Nuclear Diplomacy at Work,” February 2006.