One of the simplest, most effective ways to strengthen congressional oversight of intelligence would be for Congress to make increased use of specially cleared investigators from the Government Accountability Office.  This is such a straightforward step towards improving oversight that it was even championed by CIA Director Leon Panetta when he was a Congressman.

But the Obama Administration told Congress on Monday that new language to reinforce the GAO’s role in intelligence oversight was among several provisions in the pending FY2010 Intelligence Authorization Act that were objectionable to the White House and that might prompt a presidential veto of the bill.

“Three categories of provisions are so serious that the President’s senior advisers would recommend that the veto the bill if they are included in a bill presented for his signature,” wrote Peter Orszag of the White House Office of Management and Budget in a March 15 letter (pdf).  He cited a requirement to increase congressional notification of covert actions beyond the “Gang of 8”; the proposed GAO language; and a proposed reduction in the budget authorization for the Office of the DNI.  The letter also expressed lesser opposition to numerous other provisions.

The dispute over an increased role for GAO in intelligence oversight is particularly illustrative of the disparate and conflicting interests of the legislative and executive branches.  Should Congress use all the tools at its disposal to improve its oversight of intelligence?  Or is the status quo good enough?  The White House letter implied that the current arrangement is already optimal and that any revision would be destabilizing.

“By allowing GAO to conduct intelligence oversight, these provisions would fundamentally change the statutory framework for oversight of the IC [intelligence community] through the intelligence oversight committees and alter the long-standing relationship and information flow between the IC and intelligence committee members and staff,” Mr. Orszag wrote.

If one believed that the long-standing relationship between the IC and the intelligence committee members and staff was altogether satisfactory, this might be a compelling argument.  But if one concluded that the existing structure has been woefully inadequate, then other options would merit consideration.

Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI), Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and others have repeatedly argued that the GAO could usefully supplement the intelligence oversight process without detracting anything.  “It is Congress’s responsibility to ensure that the IC carries out its critical functions effectively and consistent with congressional authorization. For too long, GAO’s expertise and ability to engage in constructive oversight of the IC have been underutilized,” Sen. Akaka said last year.

In 2008, Sen. Akaka chaired a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee hearing (at which I testified [pdf]) on the feasibility and utility of GAO intelligence oversight.  “Congress must redouble its efforts–that is what we are trying to do–to ensure that U.S. intelligence activities are conducted efficiently, effectively, and with due respect for the civil rights and civil liberties of Americans, and I will work to see that it does,” Sen. Akaka said then.

Amazingly, an earlier version of the proposal for an expanded GAO role in intelligence oversight was introduced in 1987 by then-Rep. Leon Panetta, who is now the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

According to Rep. Panetta’s proposed “CIA Accountability Act of 1987” (pdf) (H.R. 3603 in the 100th Congress), “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Comptroller General [who directs the GAO] shall audit the financial transactions and shall evaluate the programs and activities of the Central Intelligence Agency” either at his own initiative or at the request of the congressional intelligence committees.

Today, DCIA Panetta is presumably among those senior advisers who would advise a veto of the proposal he once advocated.

At the January 22, 2009 confirmation hearing (pdf) of Adm. Dennis C. Blair to be Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Blair also acknowledged 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.”

But the Obama Administration now says it will not help the GAO do their job if that means an enhancement of their legal authority to do it.

Arguably, the Administration is acting rationally in attempting to minimize independent oversight of its intelligence activities.  Who would voluntarily seek out an independent auditor to look over his shoulder?  But that leaves it up to Congress to pursue its own institutional self-interest with equal or greater determination, and to take maximum advantage of the intelligence oversight tools that it has available, including appropriate use of the GAO.

“We’ve already agreed to drop a significant number of the provisions identified as concerns [in the Orszag letter],” a congressional official told Secrecy News.  He declined to say whether the GAO oversight language was among the now-abandoned provisions.

A government website (USAspending.gov) that is intended to provide transparency on government contracts and awards currently presents incomplete, inconsistent and sometimes invalid data, the Government Accountability Office said last week.  See “Electronic Government: Implementation of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006” (pdf), GAO-10-365, March 2010.

“Improving Transparency and Accessibility of Federal Contracting Databases” (pdf) was the subject of a September 29, 2009 hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (published last month).

“Homeland Security Intelligence: Its Relevance and Limitations” was discussed at a March 2009 hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee (also published last month).

“Widespread violent crimes in the United States posed threats to the lives, properties and personal security of its people,” the Chinese government declared in a new report on the “Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009.” The Chinese government report, a compilation of sad facts, dubious assumptions and assorted exaggerations, was published on March 12 as a rejoinder and a rebuke to the U.S. State Department which published its latest Country Reports on Human Rights Practices on March 11.  “The [U.S.] reports are full of accusations of the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China, but turn a blind eye to, or dodge and even cover up rampant human rights abuses on its own territory,” the new Chinese report said.

The U.S. Joint Forces Command has updated its assessment of emerging geopolitical and technological trends and estimated their potential impact on future military operations in the new Joint Operating Environment (JOE) 2010 report (pdf).

“We will find ourselves caught off guard by changes in the political, economic, technological, strategic, and operational environments,” the report states. “We will find ourselves surprised by the creativity and capability of our adversaries. Our goal is not to eliminate surprise – that is impossible. Our goal is, by a careful consideration of the future, to suggest the attributes of a joint force capable of adjusting with minimum difficulty when the surprise inevitably comes.”

The JOE 2010 report is not overly sophisticated.  It is full of clumsily formulated truisms.  (“Modern wars are fought in more than simply the physical elements of the battlefield.”)  It recycles tired maxims from Sun Tzu.  It misspells Hitler’s first name.

But it also presents a number of stimulating assertions and provocative observations.  For example:

Growing financial deficits “will likely mean far fewer dollars available to spend on defense… Indeed, the Department of Defense may shrink to less than ten percent of the total Federal budget…. If the U.S. enters a financial regime in which defense is to be cut by a third or more, Joint Force planners must carefully explore new areas of risk as force posture and procurement budgets shrink.”

“Future Joint Force commanders will find conflict over water endemic to their world, whether as the spark or the underlying cause of conflicts among various racial, tribal, or political groups, …with armed groups controlling or warring over remaining water, while the specter of disease resulting from unsanitary conditions would hover in the background.”

“The challenges that Chinese leadership confronts at present are enormous, and an unsuccessful China is perhaps more worrisome than a prosperous one. China is confronting major internal problems that could have an impact on its strategic course. The country will face increasing demographic pressures as its population ages. Due to its ‘one child’ policy, China may grow old before it grows rich. Furthermore, a cultural preference for male heirs will create a surplus male population nearing 30 million by 2020.”

“The open and free flow of information favored by the West will allow adversaries an unprecedented ability to gather intelligence. Other nations without the legal and cultural restraints found in the U.S. may excel at capturing, assessing, or even manipulating this information for military purposes as an aid to waging the ‘Battle of Narratives.’ Indeed, adversaries have already taken advantage of computer networks and the power of information technology not only to plan and execute savage acts of terrorism, but also to influence directly the perceptions and will of the U.S. Government and the American population.”

“It is by no means certain that the United States and its allies will maintain their overall lead in technological development over the next 25 years. America’s secondary educational system is declining in a relative sense when compared to leading technological competitors, e.g., India and China.”

The previous edition (pdf) of the JOE report in 2008 generated unwanted controversy when it explicitly identified North Korea and Israel as nuclear weapons states, and warned of a threat to the stability of Mexico from criminal gangs and drug cartels.  Regrettably, perhaps, most of those rough edges have been smoothed out in the latest report.

Nearly two dozen reports from the JASON defense advisory panel have just been added to the archive of JASON reports on the Federation of American Scientists website.

New additions (all pdf) include a 2004 report on “DNA Barcodes and Watermarks,” a 2001 report on “Moletronics” or molecular electronics, and a 1998 report on “Insonification for Area Denial” (where “insonification” means the projection of focused sound waves).  Scanned copies of older JASON reports have been OCR’d to render them word searchable.

A partial, chronological list of unclassified JASON titles from 1963 to 2009 (pdf) was prepared by Allen Thomson, who also helped gather the latest additions to the online collection.

The JASON panel is regularly tasked to investigate challenging, complex issues that are on the horizon if not the forefront of defense science.  But many of the panel’s reports are sufficiently well written that they are at least partially intelligible to non-specialists.  No new JASON reports have been approved for public release since October 2009.

Executive branch agencies should “increase the use of prizes and challenges as tools for promoting open government,” the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a memorandum to agency heads (pdf) this week.

“It is Administration policy to strongly encourage agencies to utilize prizes and challenges as tools for advancing open government, innovation, and the agency’s mission,” OMB said.

The memorandum, as promised in the December 2009 White House Open Government Directive (pdf), is intended to provide “a framework for how agencies can use challenges, prizes, and other incentive-backed strategies to find innovative or cost-effective solutions to improving open government.”

The substance of the desired improvements was not spelled out in the latest memo, but the earlier Directive said that “The three principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration form the cornerstone of an open government.”  None of these principles is instinctive or can be taken for granted, and the prize program is an evidently sincere effort to help overcome bureaucratic resistance to greater openness.

“A prize should not be an end in itself, but one means within a broader strategy for spurring private innovation and change,” the new OMB memo said.

Slowly and unevenly, the Obama Administration’s open government message is filtering down to the agency level.

We have entered “a new era of open government,” Army officials informed a government audience recently.  There will be “increased emphasis on the Freedom of Information Act… Agency FOIA programs must be improved… Commanders need to direct all agency personnel to place a higher priority on timely assistance to FOIA personnel.”

The FOIA requester “is not an adversary,” the Army FOIA Management Conference was told, according to November 2009 briefing slides (pdf) that were released last month.

In reality, many FOIA proceedings are quite adversarial.  But perhaps the Army meant that both FOIA requesters and FOIA responders are part of the same process, and therefore ought to cooperate as far as possible.  It’s a wholesome message to send.

New Congressional Research Service reports obtained by Secrecy News that have not been made readily available to the public include the following (all pdf).

“Visa Security Policy: Roles of the Departments of State and Homeland Security,” March 8, 2010.

“Legislative Options After Citizens United v. FEC: Constitutional and Legal Issues,” March 8, 2010.

“FY2011 Budget Documents: Internet and GPO Availability,” March 8, 2010.

“House Committee Markups: Manual of Procedures and Procedural Strategies,” February 25, 2010.

“Congressional Oversight: An Overview,” February 22, 2010.

The transition of U.S. military forces in Iraq to post-major combat operations in 2003 was marred by failures in leadership and planning, according to an internal report (pdf) prepared for the Pentagon that was partially declassified and released this month under the Freedom of Information Act.

“The transition that occurred was not the one that was planned,” the 2006 report delicately stated.

“Insufficient and untimely availability of resources impeded effectiveness of post-combat operations and contributed to a difficult transition.”  Intelligence support, joint command and control, and communications infrastructure all “fell short of expectations or needs.”

See “Transitions in Iraq: Changing Environment, Changing Organizations, Changing Leadership,” Joint Center for Operational Analysis, 21 July 2006.

The newly disclosed report was cited in a 2008 book by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.  According to Gen. Sanchez’s account, the report had been suppressed at the direction of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who did not welcome its critical findings.

In 2008, U.S. Joint Forces Command told TPM Muckraker that the report had been completed but was classified and not publicly available.  (“Pentagon Report on Iraq Debacle ‘Remains Classified'” by Paul Kiel, May 6, 2008). Now portions of it have been released.

Another newly declassified report found no corroboration of allegations that the DoD Joint Forces Intelligence Command (JFIC) had withheld information from the 9/11 Commission.  The DoD Inspector General said there was no basis for such a claim.  But the 2008 IG report, formerly classified Secret, provides some new details on the operation of the JFIC.  See “Review of Joint Forces Intelligence Command Response to 9/11” (pdf), September 23, 2008.

The U.S. Navy has released some new guidance pertaining to intelligence programs, including the following items (both pdf).

“Oversight of the Department of the Navy Military Intelligence Program,” SECNAV Instruction 5000.38A, February 5, 2010.

“Required Operational Capabilities and Projected Operational Environment for Navy Expeditionary Intelligence Command Forces,” OPNAV Instruction 3501.382, March 1, 2010.

The Department of Defense has invited comment on a proposal to modify and enhance controls on unclassified DoD information held in industry in order to protect such information from unauthorized access and disclosure.  The proposed changes may be altered at a later date, the DoD notice states, in response to ongoing development of a government-wide policy on “controlled unclassified information.”  See the March 3 DoD Federal Register notice here.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration issued its own proposed rule on the handling of “restricted information” in a March 4 Federal Register notice.

One of the few unclassified discussions of official U.S. policy on the use of “cover stories” to conceal classified activities and operations advised that “Cover stories must be believable.”  (1992 draft SAP Supplement [pdf], at p. 3-1-5).

But such pedestrian guidance would not have been needed by British military and intelligence officials during the past century because they had an almost instinctive gift for concealment and misdirection, writes Nicholas Rankin in “A Genius for Deception: How Cunning Helped the British Win Two World Wars” (Oxford University Press, 2009).

From the emergence of camouflage (a word that entered the English language in 1917) to the development of modern propaganda to the strategic deceptions of World War II, the author treats familiar figures such as T.E. Lawrence and John Buchan (author of The 39 Steps) and many unfamiliar ones.

“A Genius for Deception” is surprisingly colorful, with an endless stream of strange, offbeat and sometimes appalling anecdotes that the author has culled from his extensive reading and research.

He quotes an enterprising British intelligence officer in World War I who discovered that the German officers’ latrines in an East Africa camp “were a good source of soiled documents and letters, yielding ‘filthy, though accurate information’.”

In a personal epilogue, Rankin observes that the calculated deception of an enemy is ethically distinct from and not to be confused with propaganda directed at one’s own people.

The White House yesterday released a newly declassified description (pdf) of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), a highly classified program that is intended to protect U.S. government computer networks against intrusion and disruption.

The cybersecurity initiative was established in January 2008 by President Bush’s classified National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 54, and quickly became controversial in part because of the intense secrecy surrounding it.

“Virtually everything about the initiative is highly classified,” the Senate Armed Services Committee complained in 2008, “and most of the information that is not classified is categorized as ‘For Official Use Only’.  These restrictions preclude public education, awareness and debate about the policy and legal issues, real or imagined, that the initiative poses in the areas of privacy and civil liberties…. The Committee strongly urges the [Bush] Administration to reconsider the necessity and wisdom of the blanket, indiscriminate classification levels established for the initiative.”  No such reconsideration was forthcoming until now.

Concerns about overclassification were also expressed by the National Academy of Sciences in a 2009 report, which called for “a broad, unclassified national debate and discussion about cyber-attack policy,” and argued that “secrecy even about broad policy issues serves mostly to inhibit necessary discussion about them.”

The Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative was “the single largest request and the most important initiative of the President’s fiscal year 2009 [intelligence] budget request,” the House Intelligence Committee said in its report on the FY2009 intelligence authorization act.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit (pdf) just last month seeking declassification and disclosure of the Bush Administration’s NSPD 54.

But that foundational directive was not disclosed, nor did the Obama Administration address the issue of offensive cyber policy raised by the National Academy.  Instead, the White House released a descriptive summary of 12 component elements of the Cybersecurity Initiative, a gesture that it said was consistent with the President’s emphasis on increased transparency.

“Transparency is particularly vital in areas, such as the CNCI, where there have been legitimate questions about sensitive topics like the role of the intelligence community in cybersecurity,” said Howard A. Schmidt, the White House Cybersecurity Coordinator who announced the disclosure.  “Transparency provides the American people with the ability to partner with government and participate meaningfully in the discussion about how we can use the extraordinary resources and expertise of the intelligence community with proper oversight for the protection of privacy and civil liberties,” Mr. Schmidt said.

But without a clear delineation of legal authorities and implementation mechanisms, the scope for meaningful public discussion seems limited.

As the House Intelligence Committee put it in 2008, “a cybersecurity initiative [is] worthwhile in principle, but the details of the CNCI remain vague and, thus, open to question.”

In order to bolster independent oversight of programs such as the CNCI that must remain classified, at least in part, dozens of public interest organizations including the Federation of American Scientists this week urged President Obama (pdf) to finally appoint the members of an independent executive branch oversight board.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (pdf), originally proposed in 2004 by the 9/11 Commission to monitor and defend civil liberties in information sharing and counterterrorism activities, was given independent agency status by Congress in 2007.  But it has remained vacant since that time and thus unable to fulfill its assigned task.

“It is crucial that you nominate qualified individuals to serve on the PCLOB, so that it may begin to provide guidance as new policies and procedures are developed,” the public interest group letter said.

U.S. Army doctrine (pdf) published last week anticipates an increasingly unstable information environment that may challenge Army operations and test national capabilities.

“Unprecedented levels of adverse activity in and through cyberspace threaten the integrity of United States critical infrastructure, financial systems, and elements of national power. These threats range from unwitting hackers to nation-states, each at various levels of competence. Collectively, the threats create a condition of perpetual turbulence without traditional end states or resolution.”

Under prevailing circumstances, the Army says, “Notions of ‘dominating’ cyberspace are simplistic and unrealistic. A realistic and meaningful goal is to achieve and maintain freedom of action in and through cyberspace while being able to affect that of the adversaries.”

The Army’s assessment and proposed response are described in “Cyberspace Operations Concept Capability Plan 2016-2028,” TRADOC Pamphlet 525-7-8, February 22, 2010.