Nuclear Weapons

NSA Releases Disputed Email from Drake Case

07.23.12 | 2 min read | Text by Steven Aftergood

On Friday, the National Security Agency released a declassified email message entitled “What a Wonderful Success” that had been used as the basis for a felony count against former NSA official Thomas Drake in 2010, who was charged with unlawful retention of classified information, including that message.

Although all of the felony counts against Mr. Drake were eventually dismissed, the “What a Wonderful Success” email remains controversial because it has been challenged by a leading classified expert as an exemplar of reckless overclassification.

The document is “an innocuous, internal communication that never should have been classified in the first place,” according to a petition filed last May by J. William Leonard, the former director of the Information Security Oversight Office.  He asked the presiding judge in the Drake case to lift the protective order which currently bars him from discussing the NSA document.

The release of the NSA document was first reported in “Ex-federal official calls U.S. classification system ‘dysfunctional’,” by Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, July 22.

Without getting into the specifics of the newly disclosed document, Mr. Leonard said: “I can generally state that the very critical national security tool of classification of national security information is becoming dysfunctional and requires the highest level of attention if it is to continue to be an effective national security tool.”

“Specifically, the system clearly lacks the ability to differentiate between trivial information and that which can truly damage our nation’s well-being. At the same time, and even more importantly, it appears to be incapable of holding government officials accountable for abusing the classification system.”

“If the system continues to be one-sided, where individuals are routinely held to account for supposedly improperly disclosing protected information but no one is ever held accountable for improperly classifying information in the first place, it sends a very clear message to the millions of individuals with security clearances to continue to overclassify with impunity. That does not bode well for either the security of our nation or our democratic form of government.”

“Absent meaningful corrective action by the Government at the highest of levels, to include the President, I despair for the integrity of the classification system,” Mr. Leonard said.

publications
See all publications
Nuclear Weapons
Report
Nuclear Notebook: Russian Nuclear Weapons, 2023

The FAS Nuclear Notebook is one of the most widely sourced reference materials worldwide for reliable information about the status of nuclear weapons, and has been published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1987.. The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project: Director Hans […]

05.08.23 | 1 min read
read more
Nuclear Weapons
Blog
Video Indicates that Lida Air Base Might Get Russian “Nuclear Sharing” Mission in Belarus

On 14 April 2023, the Belarusian Ministry of Defence released a short video of a Su-25 pilot explaining his new role in delivering “special [nuclear] munitions” following his training in Russia. The features seen in the video, as well as several other open-source clues, suggest that Lida Air Base––located only 40 kilometers from the Lithuanian border and the […]

04.19.23 | 7 min read
read more
Nuclear Weapons
Blog
Was There a U.S. Nuclear Weapons Accident At a Dutch Air Base? [no, it was training, see update below]

A photo in a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) student briefing from 2022 shows four people inspecting what appears to be a damaged B61 nuclear bomb.

04.03.23 | 7 min read
read more
Nuclear Weapons
Blog
STRATCOM Says China Has More ICBM Launchers Than The United States – We Have Questions

In early-February 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) had informed Congress that China now has more launchers for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) than the United States. The report is the latest in a serious of revelations over the past four years about China’s growing nuclear weapons arsenal and the deepening […]

02.10.23 | 6 min read
read more