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Sent: Monday, November 11, 2002 9:19 PM
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Subject: Secrecy News -- 11/11/02
SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2002, Issue No. 112
November 11, 2002
** UNANSWERED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CIA YEMEN STRIKE
** DARPA'S TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS
** THE MYTH OF CYBERTERRORISM
** CIA REJECTS "CENSORSHIP" CHARGE
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CIA YEMEN STRIKE
The attack last week in Yemen by a CIA unmanned aerial vehicle that
killed six al-Qaeda suspects including an American citizen has mostly
been welcomed as a success in the war against terrorism. But it also
leaves a host of unanswered questions in its wake.
Under what conditions will the United States initiate lethal
operations away from a recognized battlefield? Under whose
authority? Does CIA Director George Tenet now literally have a
license to kill? Can an American lose all vestiges of his
constitutional protections, and then lose his life, on the CIA's
say-so?
"I can assure you that no constitutional questions are raised here,"
said national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Fox News. "The
President has given broad authority to US officials in a variety of
circumstances to do what they need to do to protect the country" and
he is "well within the balance of accepted practice and the letter of
his constitutional authority."
"I'm not going to talk about Yemen at all," said Pentagon spokeswoman
Victoria Clarke last week.
The attack "may not have violated the U.S. ban on assassinations, but
the Bush administration's new rules on America's right to
self-defense in the uncertain battlefield of the war on terrorism
need to be sharply defined, according to former intelligence
officials and experts," wrote Pam Hess of UPI.
See "Yemen Strike Not Assassination" by Pamela Hess, United Press
International, November 8:
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20021107-042725-6586r
DARPA'S TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working to
create a "visionary" new computer monitoring system known as "Total
Information Awareness" that would search for terrorists by probing
through networked databases of private "transactional" information.
"We must be able to detect, classify, identify and track terrorists so
that we may understand their plans and act to prevent them from being
executed," said John Poindexter, director of the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Awareness Office.
"Total Information Awareness -- a prototype system -- is our answer,"
he said in an August 2 speech describing the initiative.
"If terrorist organizations are going to plan and execute attacks
against the United States, their people must engage in transactions
and they will leave signatures in this information space," Adm.
Poindexter said.
Of course, anyone who does anything must also "engage in transactions"
and "leave signatures," raising immediate questions about the
implications of Total Information Awareness for data security and
personal privacy, among other issues.
See Adm. Poindexter's August 2 speech here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/poindexter.html
The new initiative was further described in "Pentagon Plans a Computer
System That Would Peek at Personal Data of Americans" by John Markoff
in the New York Times, November 9:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/09/politics/09COMP.html
THE MYTH OF CYBERTERRORISM
While computer security needs to be an everyday concern for anyone who
transmits or maintains valuable data online, "cyberterrorism" is a
word that has no right to exist.
"There is no such thing as cyberterrorism," writes Joshua Green.
There is "no instance of anyone ever having been killed by a
terrorist (or anyone else) using a computer."
Green's article "The Myth of Cyberterrorism" in the November 2002
Washington Monthly marks the growing skepticism about the prospects
of an "electronic Pearl Harbor" and echoes a critique that has been
voiced notably by George Smith of The Crypt Newsletter for years.
See:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0211.green.html
A somewhat more credulous view of the subject was offered by the
Congressional Research Service in "Critical Infrastructure: Control
Systems and the Terrorist Threat," updated on October 1:
http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL31534.pdf
CIA REJECTS "CENSORSHIP" CHARGE
Central Intelligence Agency spokesman Bill Harlow lashed out at author
David Wise last week after Wise wrote a New York Times op-ed that
accused the CIA of attempting to censor his book.
Mr. Wise described CIA's efforts to discourage him from disclosing the
name of a CIA counterintelligence officer who had been falsely
suspected of espionage. Mr. Wise said that the pressure he faced
to withhold the name exemplifies how the Agency uses secrecy to avoid
embarrassment and to conceal its failures. The officer's name was
nevertheless published in Wise's recent book about the Robert Hanssen
espionage case.
"It seems clear that the C.I.A. attempted to censor the book merely to
avoid embarrassing publicity," Mr. Wise wrote. See his November 7
op-ed, "Spies as Censors," here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/07/opinion/07WISE.html
That is "complete and utter nonsense," said the CIA's Harlow. "Mr.
Wise misleads the readers of the New York Times by suggesting that
the CIA was trying to avoid embarrassing publicity. On the contrary,
the officer involved, through his lawyer, even offered to be
interviewed for the book. His only condition was that his true name
be withheld." See the CIA statement and related correspondence from
DCI George Tenet to Mr. Wise's publisher here:
http://www.odci.gov/cia/public_affairs/press_release/pr11072002.html
What seems clear in this case is that the CIA is right, and Mr. Wise
is wrong.
There is no reason to believe, and Mr. Wise did not even try to
establish, that disclosing the name of the falsely accused CIA
officer could be, or was, a source of "embarrassment" to the CIA.
The only embarrassment that may have resulted from Mr. Wise's
disclosure is to the officer himself, who is not a public figure and
who by all accounts has done nothing wrong.
CIA information policy is profoundly dysfunctional, and routinely
involves the abuse of classification authority. But measures to
maintain the anonymity of clandestine service personnel are not part
of this problem.
_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.
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_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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