The necessity of secrets

[Tiassa]

Source: Washington Post
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57823-2004Sep2.html
Title: "'Secrets' Perplex Panel"
Date: September 3, 2004

A former dictator's cocktail preferences and a facetious plot against Santa Claus were classified by the government to prevent public disclosure.

Also stamped "secret" for six years was a study concluding that 40 percent of Army chemical warfare masks leaked.

Source: Washington Post

An interesting article from the Washington Post on the nature of secret information in the U.S. government:

There are 3,978 officials who can stamp a document "top secret," "secret" or "confidential" under multiple sets of complex rules.

No one knows how much is classified, he said, and the system "often does not distinguish between the critically important and comically irrelevant."

The problem is growing, said J. William Leonard, director of the National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office, which monitors federal practices. Officials decided to classify documents 8 percent more often in 2003 than in 2002. Total classification decisions -- including upgrading or downgrading -- reached 14 million.

Source: Washington Post

We keep a lot of secrets in this country, and for various reasons. Steven Aftergood, director of a project on secrecy from the Federation of American Scientists, noted that some classification of material took place to avoid embarrassment or hide illegal actions. The Post article includes examples:

The CIA deleted the amount Iraqi agents paid for aluminum tubes from Page 96 of a Senate report on prewar intelligence. The report quoted the CIA as concluding that "their willingness to pay such costs suggests the tubes are intended for a special project of national interest."

That price turned out to be not so high. On Page 105 of the same Senate report, the same security reviewers let the CIA's figure -- as much as $17.50 each -- be printed along with other estimates that the Iraqis paid as little as $10 apiece.

Source: Washington Post

Such is the case for war: are there ethical or even moral conflicts to be considered in such apparent manipulation?

Some explain the issue in terms of organizational techniques within the intelligence community:

Carol A. Haave, deputy undersecretary of defense for counterintelligence and security, said most misclassification was unintentional, resulting from misunderstanding or failure to declassify data that are no longer sensitive. She said a weakness, particularly for anti-terrorism efforts, was that those who collect intelligence determine its classification.

"Collectors of information can never know how it could best be used," Haave said. "We have to move to a user-driven environment.

Leonard, the Archives official, said another obstacle to sharing anti-terrorist data as the Sept. 11 commission envisioned was that federal law divides the authority for writing the rules that govern secrets.

Source: Washington Post

Comment:

Most American boys, at least, during a seemingly-mandatory phase in which espionage is held to be the highest of all arts, understand the idea of official secrets. As long as I've had a political awareness, secrecy has been an issue; Ronald Reagan and Poppy Bush both were criticized for increasing levels of secrecy. The Clinton years were a bizarre mix of secrecy and transparency and odd priorities among both administration and opposition members. The Junior Bush administration is strongly criticized for a "veil" of secrecy over its operations.

Part of this spy heritage in America includes a plethora of conspiracy theories; every secret hides a deeper truth, and therefore is merely smoke and mirrors. Coming from this tangle of paranoia and urban legends is a cynicism annexed by much of America's "mainstream culture" from the fringes. That cynicism has boiled over in the sense that right-wing propaganda radio draws tall ratings, and the liberals have even responded with an ill-fated exercise in embarrassing themselves.

So it doesn't do a collective conscience confused by myth and superstition as much as outright falsehood any good to learn that some of its more unstable and marginalized facets might have a point. "There are too many secrets," says Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT), the chairman of the House Government Reform Committee's national security panel. Certainly there are, and many of them do coincide in some ways with the most basic and assailing rumors of cabal and misbehavior.

So we know Pinochet liked pisco sours. And the fact that the CIA has a sense of humor is classified. This seems harmless; we, the people, don't necessarily need to know or care about such innocuous facts, and rather than browbeating the idea of "abusive" classification of innocuous facts, I'll say I can certainly understand why the CIA needed to know that, and why they would never want to discuss those reasons.

To the other, though, perhaps someday investigations of classified documents might reveal the extent to which the Bush administration--uh--"misled" the people and to what degree the leaders were "misguided".

Politicians can speak easily of America's best interests and protecting people and government transparency. Is it really so hard to expect mere propriety of them?

Should the abuses committed at Abu Ghraib be locked away in secret?

Do the people need to know? Do the people have a right to know? Do those conditions overlap or cross paths at all?
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• Sniffen, Michael J. "'Secrets' Perplex Panel". Washington Post, September 3, 2004; page A17. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57823-2004Sep2.html