- Intelligence
and Security Committee's 2002-2003 Annual Report
(PDF)
- Select committee report on the state of the UK's 'national intelligence machinery' and its performance over the past year ( UK Parliament via Cabinet Office )
- �
- See also this Telegraph coverage, and this Guardian coverage
- Select committee report on the state of the UK's 'national intelligence machinery' and its performance over the past year ( UK Parliament via Cabinet Office )
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2003, Issue No. 49
June 12, 2003
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INTELLIGENCE BUDGETS DISCLOSED -- ABROAD
Intelligence services in other Western democracies are doing what the
U.S. intelligence community says cannot and should not be done: They are
routinely disclosing intelligence budget information to their citizens.
Last week the Canadian Security Intelligence Service published its 2002
annual report. Following a review of the global threat environment and
the CSIS response, the report presents a bar chart that displays the
agency's budget totals over the past decade, and projects spending five
years into the future. The totals are further broken down into
operating costs, salaries and construction costs. See:
http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca/eng/publicrp/pub2002_e.html
This week the United Kingdom's Intelligence and Security Committee
presented its 2002-2003 parliamentary report on the UK's intelligence
services. The report included publication of the "single intelligence
account" which is the aggregate of expenditures for the GCHQ, the
Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) for
2001-2006. See the new report (flagged by cryptome.org) reposted here:
In contrast, Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet recently
declared under penalty of perjury that not even a single two year old
aggregate figure for U.S. intelligence spending could be declassified.
Disclosure of this number, he said, would result in damage to U.S.
national security and the compromise of intelligence sources and
methods. See:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/foia/2002/tenet.html
INTELLIGENCE OVERSIGHT TESTED BY IRAQI WMD DEBATE
The mounting controversy over the accuracy and integrity of U.S.
intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq has fractured the
congressional intelligence committees along partisan lines.
The Republican leadership is refusing to undertake anything resembling
an investigation. The very word "investigation" is "pejorative," said
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Senator Pat Roberts at a press
briefing on June 11, and implies "that there's something dreadfully
wrong." Instead, the Committee will review the matter "as part of [its]
ongoing oversight responsibility." See:
http://intelligence.senate.gov/030611.htm
"But closed hearings and review of documents presented by the
administration are not sufficient," replied Committee Vice Chairman
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV. "A full fact-finding investigation is
the usual mechanism for congressional oversight committees like the
Senate Intelligence Committee in a circumstance like this one."
See:
http://rockefeller.senate.gov/2003/pr061103.html
But the issue has already spilled over well beyond the control of the
intelligence committees. "Bush Administration Deceptions About Iraq
Threaten Constitutional Democracy" warned Rep. John Conyers, ranking
member of the House Judiciary Committee, in a June 11 floor statement
that probably represents the kind of thing Senator Roberts hoped to
forestall. See:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/h061103.html
In a series of letters, Rep. Henry Waxman of the House Government Reform
Committee has pressed the Administration to account for the false
information on Iraqi acquisition of uranium that President Bush
presented in the State of the Union address. See:
http://www.house.gov/reform/min/inves_admin/admin_nuclear_evidence.htm
Meanwhile, new information is entering the public domain not through the
oversight process but through media accounts, such as "CIA Did Not Share
Doubt on Iraq on Iraq Data" by Walter Pincus, Washington Post, June 12:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46957-2003Jun11.html
ENHANCED WHISTLEBLOWER PROTECTION SOUGHT
New legislation to protect whistleblowers -- individuals who "blow the
whistle" and expose fraudulent or wasteful activity -- was introduced
this week by Senators Akaka, Leahy, Levin, Durbin and Dayton.
"Whistleblowers have proven to be important catalysts for much needed
government change over the years," said Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT).
"From corporate fraud to governmental misconduct to media integrity, the
importance of whistleblowers in galvanizing positive change cannot be
questioned."
"Whistleblowing is never more important than when our national security
is at stake," said Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), citing the case of FBI
whistleblower Colleen Rowley and others.
Yet the existing protections against retaliation that were codified in
the Whistleblower Protection Act in 1994 have been steadily eroded over
the years. In 1999, for example, a court took it upon itself to rule
that whistleblowers were not entitled to the law's protection unless
they had "irrefragable proof" of their claims. This ruling sent
government employees and attorneys alike rushing to their dictionaries,
where they discovered that "irrefragable" means "impossible to refute."
This extreme interpretation was never Congress' intent, legislators
said.
"To address this unreasonable burden placed on whistleblowers, our bill
would replace the 'irrefragable proof' standard with 'substantial
evidence'," said Senator Daniel Akaka.
See the"Federal Employee Protection of Disclosures Act" (S.1229), with
introductory statements by Senators Akaka, Levin and Leahy here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2003/s1229.html
Whistleblower protection has "a bi-partisan constituency that spans the
ideological spectrum," observed Tom Devine of the Government
Accountability Project and Kris Kolesnik of the National Whistleblower
Center, supporters of the new legislation.
PURSUING THE WEN HO LEE REPORT
In an editorial entitled "Unchecked Power Is An Invitation to Abuse,"
the
Albuquerque Journal this week called on Congress to compel the release
of a new report on the Wen Ho Lee case that has been withheld by the
Justice Department.
"Anyone who harbors no misgivings about the Justice Department cure
being
worse than the ailment of terrorism ought to study the case of Wen Ho
Lee. But that's not possible, because the Justice Department won't allow
it." See:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2003/06/aj061103.html
AGROTERRORISM AND SECRECY
The Department of Homeland Security has classified "many" studies of
agroterrorism -- the potential terrorist threat to food supplies --
according to Dr. Robert E. Brackett of the Food and Drug Administration,
as reported in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
The studies were classified, he indicated, in order to conceal
vulnerabilities that could be exploited by terrorists or other malicious
persons.
But in an increasingly familiar conundrum, this approach to security
through concealment has had unintended negative consequences.
In particular, "As a result of the secrecy, FDA officials are finding it
'very difficult' to work with the food industry to close the security
gaps, Brackett said."
See "'Agroterrorism' poses devastating threat" by Michael Woods,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 23:
ABUSE OF FOIA "OPERATIONAL FILES" EXEMPTION
Intelligence agencies are improperly invoking an exemption from the
Freedom of Information Act that was narrowly intended to protect
"operational" files and using the exemption to deny public access to
historical records, administrative files and other documents that are
far outside the intended exemption.
Some recent abuses of the operational files exemption by the National
Reconnaissance Office and the Central Intelligence Agency are documented
in a new release from the National Security Archive here:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20030611/
This record of abuse implicitly calls into question the propriety of a
new operational files exemption for the National Security Agency that is
pending in the 2004 defense authorization and intelligence bills.
_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.
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