The “existence of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)” is Unclassified. So is “the fact that ODNI Headquarters is located within the Liberty Crossing Compound in the Tyson’s Corner Area of Virginia.”
However, “the names and abbreviations of ODNI locations in the Washington Metropolitan Area, both overt and covert” are classified Secret.
These determinations and many others of interest are compiled in a newly released ODNI Classification Guide, Version 2.1, September 30, 2014. The declassified Classification Guide was released by ODNI with limited redactions in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Stephen Revilak.
“The Guide implements ODNI classification policy and procedures for the use and dissemination of ODNI national security information,” the document states.
It covers a wide range of intelligence policy, technology and operational areas involving ODNI that are potentially subject to classification. (Unfortunately, portions of the document released by ODNI are poorly scanned and several pages are cut off at the bottom. Hopefully, a corrected version will soon follow.) [Now fixed.]
“The absence of an item in the Guide does not imply that it is Unclassified,” the reader is cautioned.
Moreover, “The fact that some ODNI information is marked unclassified does not authorize public release,” the Guide states.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.