Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) placed two “sensitive but unclassified” (SBU) State Department documents in the Congressional Record last week, illustrating the informal, non-binding character of this information control marking.

Rep. Wolf took to the House floor to express his views on the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an advocacy organization that he said had unacceptable links to terrorist groups.  CAIR has generally disputed such allegations.

But what is of interest here is Rep. Wolf’s willingness to introduce two State Department cables that are specifically marked “sensitive” and “SBU” and to place them in the public record.  Doing so might annoy the State Department and violate unofficial norms of confidentiality, but it breaks no law.

The problematic aspect of SBU and similar labels is that anyone can mark anything “sensitive” or “for official use only” for any reason.  The system is completely unregulated.  But the flip side is that records bearing such markings are not rigorously protected and in fact are often openly distributed.

As the government moves to replace all kinds of SBU markings with a more uniform “controlled unclassified information” (CUI) system, the expectation is that the standards for applying controls on sensitive but unclassified records will be more clearly articulated, limited and enforced.  By the same token, however, the freewheeling disclosure of such records may grind to a halt.  It’s hard to know in advance if the benefits in terms of public access to government information will exceed the costs.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal was confirmed by the Senate last week to be the new commander of U.S. (and NATO) forces in Afghanistan, a role that he assumed today.  But his nomination was opposed by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) who objected to the General’s advancement on unspecified “classified” grounds.

“I oppose the nomination of LTG Stanley McChrystal to command U.S. forces in Afghanistan for two reasons,” Senator Feingold said on June 11. “The first relates to a classified matter about which I have serious concerns. I have conveyed those concerns in a letter to the President.”

The second reason cited by Sen. Feingold was McChrystal’s embrace of interrogation techniques that went beyond those authorized in the Army Field Manual on the subject.

Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service obtained by Secrecy News include the following (all pdf).

“Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty: Updated ‘Safeguards’ and Net Assessments,” June 3, 2009.

“The Role of the Department of Defense During a Flu Pandemic,” June 4, 2009.

“Congressional Oversight and Related Issues Concerning International Security Agreements Concluded by the United States,” June 2, 2009.

“The President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy: Issues for Congress,” updated June 3, 2009.

“Landsat and the Data Continuity Mission,” May 22, 2009.

“Geospatial Information and Geographic Information Systems (GIS): Current Issues and Future Challenges,” June 8, 2009.

The public has been significantly misled and misinformed concerning the practice of abusive interrogation by the U.S. government and the resulting damage to American political institutions, said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) on the Senate floor yesterday.

“I am very sorry to say this–but there has been a campaign of falsehood about this whole sorry episode. It has disserved the American public. As I said earlier, facing up to the questions of our use of torture is hard enough. It is worse when people are misled and don’t know the whole truth and so can’t form an informed opinion and instead quarrel over irrelevancies and false premises. Much debunking of falsehood remains to be done but cannot be done now because the accurate and complete information is classified,” Sen. Whitehouse said.

“I want my colleagues and the American public to know that measured against the information I have been able to gain access to, the story line we have been led to believe–the story line about waterboarding we have been sold–is false in every one of its dimensions.”

He itemized several statements he said were demonstrably untrue, beginning with the declaration by President Bush that “America does not torture.”

He said a structured investigation was needed into what he called “America’s descent into torture.”  First, it is necessary to document what was done, under what conditions, and to what end.  A second set of questions concerns “how this was allowed to happen.”  Finally, a rigorous debunking of erroneous and false assertions is needed.

Classification policy is an obstacle to all of these objectives, he said, especially the latter:  “At the heart of all these falsehoods lies a particular and specific problem: The ‘declassifiers’ in the U.S. Government are all in the executive branch.  No Senator can declassify, and the procedure for the Senate as an institution to declassify something is so cumbersome that it has never been used.”

Senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham said they would do their utmost to block the release under the Freedom of Information Act of photographs documenting the abuse of detainees held in U.S. custody.  “Such a release would be tantamount to a death sentence to some who are serving our nation in the most dangerous and difficult spots like Iraq and Afghanistan,” they said, urging passage of an amendment to exempt any such photographs from the FOIA.

Rep. Jane Harman introduced legislation to terminate the National Applications Office, the DHS organization that would employ intelligence satellite imagery for homeland security and domestic law enforcement purposes.  DHS has failed to provide a legal framework and justification for the program, she said, and therefore “Operation of the NAO in its current state poses serious constitutional questions and threatens to violate the privacy of Americans and their civil liberties.”

Senator Russ Feingold and several colleagues in both parties introduced a resolution that would strengthen the Senate Intelligence Committee by giving it the power to appropriate as well as authorize funds for intelligence.  The move is needed, the resolution said, “to provide vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States to ensure that such activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States.”

The record of a July 2006 hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee entitled “Hamdan v. Rumsfeld: Establishing a Constitutional Process” (pdf) was published in April 2009, with supplementary material for the record.

Another Senate Judiciary Committee hearing volume from a June 2006 hearing on “The Use of Presidential Signing Statements” (pdf) was also published in April 2009.

Executive branch officials understandably seek to maximize their authority to regulate the distribution and disclosure of classified national security information, and they often cite historical precedents dating back to the days of President George Washington to justify their claims.  But though some members of Congress seem not to realize it, Congress has an independent claim to access such information, a claim with its own historical foundation.

A new analysis (pdf) by Louis Fisher of the Law Library of Congress provides a nuanced account of several episodes from the Washington Administration that tend to refute the more expansive views of executive branch authority over classified information.

“Upon closer examination, precedents from the Washington Administration do not support the claim of exclusive and plenary authority by the President,” Dr. Fisher writes.  “The scope of the President’s power over national defense and foreign affairs depends very much on what Congress does in asserting its own substantial authorities in those areas,” he concludes.  See “Congressional Access to National Security Information: Precedents from the Washington Administration” by Louis Fisher, Law Library of Congress, May 22, 2009.

One of the most successful innovations in the otherwise mostly stagnant domain of classification policy was the creation of the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP), an executive branch entity that was established by President Clinton’s 1995 executive order 12958.

For over a decade, the ISCAP has maintained an astonishing record of ordering the declassification of information in a majority of the documents that have been presented for its review.  In each of those cases, the Panel effectively overruled the classification judgment of one of its own member agencies.  There are policy lessons to be learned from this experience concerning the often poor quality of routine classification actions and the value of extending declassification authority beyond the originating agency.

Bill Burr of the National Security Archive recently prepared a thoughtful overview of the creation and the operation of the ISCAP, together with a compilation of several of the latest documents that it approved for release.  See “The Secrecy Court of Last Resort: New Declassification Releases by the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP),” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, June 5.

One of the minor offenses of the Obama White House is its inexplicable failure to publish presidential directives — now dubbed Presidential Policy Directives — even when they are unclassified.  But presidential directives from prior administrations continue to enter the public domain following repeated declassification reviews.

Several National Security Decision Directives (NSDDs) issued by President Reagan were released in full or with fewer redactions last April at the Reagan Library (all pdf):

NSDD 12 on “Strategic Forces Modernization Program” was released in its entirety.  A section on submarine launched missiles that was censored in a prior declassification review was restored, along with other redactions (thanks to www.thereaganfiles.com).

NSDD 35 on “The M-X Program” was also released in full, including two previously censored paragraphs.

NSDD 21 on “Responding to Floggers in Cuba” was released with one paragraph still redacted but several previous redactions now disclosed (Floggers are Soviet MiG-23 fighter aircraft).

Other NSDDs that have undergone declassification review in recent years leading to significant additional disclosures include the following:

NSDD 135, “Los Angeles Olympic Games Counterintelligence and Security Precautions,” March 27, 1984 (reviewed in 2004).

NSDD 139, “Measures to Improve U.S. Posture and Readiness to Respond to Developments in the Iran-Iraq War,” April 5, 1984, including previously withheld passages concerning Saudi Arabia and Egypt (2007).

NSDD 141, “Responding to Escalation in the Iran-Iraq War,” May 25, 1984 (2007).

NSDD 147, “U.S. Policy Towards India and Pakistan,” October 11, 1984 (2007).

These directives and other NSDDs may be found here.

“The Secret Sentry” by Matthew Aid is a comprehensive new history of the National Security Agency, from its origins in World War II through its Cold War successes, failures and scandals up until the present.

Aid, an independent historian who is also a visiting fellow at the National Security Archive, has synthesized a tremendous amount of research into a narrative that is highly readable and sometimes gripping.  All of the familiar stops are there, including the Truman memo of 1952 that established the Agency, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, KAL 007, 9/11 and on to today.

But the book also includes quite a bit of unfamiliar historical material, and almost any reader is likely to discover something new and interesting.  I learned, for example, that a few months after seizing the USS Pueblo in 1968, North Korea published a book in French containing the full text of many captured NSA documents, some of which, Mr. Aid says, are still considered to be classified today (p. 142).

What will make The Secret Sentry indispensable to researchers are its nearly one hundred pages of endnotes, which constitute a unique finding aid to the most current archival releases, internal agency histories, and other valuable records.  Some of the documents gathered by Mr. Aid in the course of his decades of research later vanished from public stacks at the National Archives, prompting him to realize that some government agencies were silently — and often improperly — reclassifying declassified records.  Portions of those now inaccessible records have been integrated into this new history.

Inevitably, the book contains some minor errors.  Mr. Aid repeats an assertion by the 9/11 Commission that Osama bin Laden was alerted to NSA monitoring of his satellite phone as the result of a 1998 news story that appeared in the Washington Times (p. 383, note 69).  But he neglects to note that this assertion has been effectively refuted.  (See, e.g., “File the Bin Laden Phone Leak Under ‘Urban Myths'” by Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, December 22, 2005.)

The author is generous in his citations to the leading authors in the intelligence field, from David Wise and David Kahn to Seymour Hersh and Jeffrey Richelson and other less celebrated writers — with one strange and disconcerting exception.  There is not a single reference in the entire book to James Bamford, whose 1983 book The Puzzle Palace, among others, blazed the trail that The Secret Sentry follows.  Perhaps Mr. Aid felt it was necessary to ignore Mr. Bamford so as not to be constantly agreeing or disagreeing with him, and confirming or disputing his accounts.  If that is the case, he ought to have said so.

The Secret Sentry is being published this week by Bloomsbury Press.

An Inspector General review (pdf) of the State Department Office of the Historian (HO) last month confirmed that there were serious management defects in the Office and recommended reassignment of its Director as well as other changes.

The Office of the Historian is responsible for production of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, which is the official documentary history of U.S. foreign policy and one of the most important vehicles for declassification of historical records.

Allegations of mismanagement and declining performance had surrounded the Office for years until the Chairman of the State Department Historical Advisory Committee, Prof. Wm. Roger Louis, resigned last December to dramatize his concerns that the FRUS series was “at risk.” (See “State Dept: Crisis in the ‘Foreign Relations’ Series,” Secrecy News, December 11, 2008).

“In varying degrees, nearly 75 percent of the present HO employees interviewed … were critical of the way the office is run,” the IG reported.  “They alleged favoritism, cronyism, a lack of transparency, lack of interest in the FRUS, disparagement of the staff, suspicion, an absence of leadership, and, in general, the creation of an unhappy workplace.”

With plummeting employee morale and departures of experienced staff historians, “something in HO is very wrong,” the Inspector General concluded.  “HO is suffering from, and has for some time been handicapped by, serious mismanagement for which the director must be held accountable…. Despite any mitigating factors that may exist in favor of the director, this situation cannot be allowed to continue.”

“It is a devastating indictment,” said Prof. Warren Kimball, a Rutgers historian who chaired an initial review of the situation earlier this year.  “Clearly the IG inspectors listened to what we had to say.  It does give one some faith in the State Department’s internal monitoring system — slow as it is.”

The IG recommended reassignment of the Director, Dr. Marc Susser, to another Department position, and he was in fact reassigned last month.  On May 27, the State Department appointed Ambassador John Campbell to serve as the new Acting Director of the Office of the Historian.  (See “After Critical Report, State Dept.’s Historian is Reassigned” by Walter Pincus, Washington Post, June 8, 2009.)

See “Management Review of the Office of the Historian,” State Department Office of Inspector General, May 2009.

The IG review also underscored the difficulties facing the FRUS series, which is supposed to present a “thorough, accurate, and reliable” documentary account of U.S. foreign policy within 30 years of the events described.  In the past, the foreign policy of the Eisenhower Administration was covered in 66 volumes of FRUS.  Despite a richer and more complex record, the Nixon-Ford years were allocated only 57 volumes.  For the Reagan Administration, which has a fuller record still, only 38 FRUS volumes are planned.

Under present circumstances, the task of the FRUS series, although mandated by law, is “almost unachievable,” the IG said.

The Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence mission is to collect, analyze and disseminate intelligence to reduce the threat of domestic terrorism.  The somewhat complex structure of DHS intelligence, at DHS headquarters and in six operational components, is illuminated in a new report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service.

The new report usefully examines how DHS intelligence is organized to address threat warnings, border security, critical infrastructure protection, and information sharing.  It also considers congressional oversight of DHS intelligence. See “The Department of Homeland Security Intelligence Enterprise: Operational Overview and Oversight Challenges for Congress,” May 27, 2009.

Though it is far from the most urgent or important question facing homeland security intelligence, Congress is pulling out all the stops to investigate the origin of a controversial, inartfully worded DHS intelligence memo on “Rightwing Extremism” (pdf). Last week, the House Homeland Security Committee approved a formal resolution of inquiry to demand documents related to the preparation of that memo.

The leading presidential candidates in Afghanistan’s upcoming August 20 election are briefly profiled in a chart prepared by the DNI Open Source Center.  See “Afghan Presidential Election: Potential Candidates and Powerbrokers” (pdf), May 4, 2009.

Further background on elections in the region may be found in “Middle East Elections 2009: Lebanon, Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq” (pdf), Congressional Research Service, May 18, 2009.  (Elections in Lebanon took place on June 7.)