[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
TOO MANY SECRETS: OVERCLASSIFICATION AS A BARRIER TO CRITICAL
INFORMATION SHARING
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,
EMERGING THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
AUGUST 24, 2004
__________
Serial No. 108-263
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
98-291 WASHINGTON : 2005
_____________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DOUG OSE, California DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
RON LEWIS, Kentucky DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
CHRIS CANNON, Utah WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida DIANE E. WATSON, California
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania Maryland
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas Columbia
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee JIM COOPER, Tennessee
PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida ------
------ ------ BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
(Independent)
Melissa Wojciak, Staff Director
David Marin, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director
Rob Borden, Parliamentarian
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Phil Barnett, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel
Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International
Relations
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio
DAN BURTON, Indiana DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio TOM LANTOS, California
RON LEWIS, Kentucky BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania Maryland
KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
DIANE E. WATSON, California
Ex Officio
TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Lawrence J. Halloran, Staff Director and Counsel
Robert A. Briggs, Clerk
Andrew Su, Minority Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on August 24, 2004.................................. 1
Statement of:
Leonard, J. William, Director, Information Security Oversight
Office, National Archives and Records Administration; Carol
A. Haave, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense,
Counterintelligence and Security, U.S. Department of
Defense; Steven Aftergood, Federation of Concerned
Scientists; and William P. Crowell, the Markle Foundation
Task Force on National Security in the Information Age..... 22
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Aftergood, Steven, Federation of Concerned Scientists,
prepared statement of...................................... 43
Crowell, William P., the Markle Foundation Task Force on
National Security in the Information Age, prepared
statement of............................................... 61
Haave, Carol A., Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence,
U.S. Department of Defense, prepared statement of.......... 36
Kucinich, Hon. Dennis J., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Ohio, prepared statement of................... 9
Leonard, J. William, Director, Information Security Oversight
Office, National Archives and Records Administration,
prepared statement of...................................... 25
Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Connecticut, prepared statement of............ 3
TOO MANY SECRETS: OVERCLASSIFICATION AS A BARRIER TO CRITICAL
INFORMATION SHARING
----------
TUESDAY, AUGUST 24, 2004
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats
and International Relations,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher
Shays (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Shays, Platts, Kucinich,
Ruppersberger, and Tierney.
Staff present: Lawence Halloran, staff director and
counsel; Thomas Costa, professional staff member; Jean Gosa,
minority assistant clerk; and Andrew Su, minority professional
staff member.
Mr. Shays. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on
National Security, Emerging Threats, and International
Relations hearing entitled, ``Too Many Secrets:
Overclassification is a Barrier to Critical Information
Sharing,'' is called to order.
An old maxim of military strategy warns, ``He who protects
everything, protects nothing.''
Nevertheless, the United States today attempts to shield an
immense and growing body of secrets using an incomprehensibly
complex system of classifications and safeguard requirements.
As a result, no one can say with any degree of certainty how
much is classified, how much needs to be declassified, or
whether the Nation's real secrets can be adequately protected
in a system so bloated, it often does not distinguish between
the critically important and the economically irrelevant.
This much we know: There are too many secrets. Soon after
President Franklin Roosevelt's first executive order on
classification in 1940, the propensity to overclassify was
noted. Since then, a long and distinguished list of committees
and commissions has studied the problem. They all found it
impossible to quantify the extent of overclassification because
no one even knows the full scope of the Federal Government's
classified holding at any given time. Some estimate 10 percent
of current secrets should never have been classified. Others
put the extent of overclassification as high as 90 percent.
During the cold war, facing a monolithic foe determined to
penetrate our national secrets, overclassification may have
provided a needed security buffer. But the risk/benefit
calculation has changed dramatically. Against a stateless,
adaptable enemy, we dare not rely on organizational stovepipes
to conclude, in advance, who should have access to one piece of
an emerging mosaic. Connecting the dots is now a team sport.
The cold war paradigm of ``need to know'' must give way to the
modern strategic imperative, ``the need to share.''
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the
United States, referred to as the 9/11 Commission, concluded
that, ``Current security requirements nurture
overclassification and excess compartmentation of information
among agencies. Each agency's incentive structure opposes
sharing, with risks--criminal, civil, and internal
administrative sanctions--but few rewards for sharing
information. No one has to pay the long-term costs of
overclassifying information, though these costs--even in
literal financial terms--are substantial.''
The National Archives' Information Security Oversight
Office, ISOO, reported that in 2003, more than 14 million
documents were classified by the 3,978 Federal officials
authorized to do so. They classified 8 percent more information
than the year before. But recently declassified documents
confirm the elaborate and costly security applied to some
information is simply not worth the effort or expense. A former
dictator's cocktail preferences and a facetious plot against
Santa Claus are not threats to national security in the public
domain, yet both were classified.
The most recent ISOO report correctly concludes ``allowing
information that will not cause damage to national security to
remain in the classification system or to enter that system in
the first instance, places all classified information at
needless increased risk.''
Current classification practices are highly subjective,
inconsistent and susceptible to abuse. One agency protects what
another releases. Rampant overclassification often confuses
national security with bureaucratic, political or a diplomatic
convenience.
The dangerous, if natural, tendency to hide embarrassing or
inconvenient facts can mask vulnerabilities and only keeps
critical information from the American people. The terrorists
know their plans. Fewer people classifying fewer secrets would
better protects national security by focussing safeguards on
truly sensitive information, while allowing far wider
dissemination of the facts and analysis, the 9/11 Commission
says, must be shared.
Any discussion of intelligence reform must include a new
approach to classification, one that sheds cold war shackles
and serves the strategic needs to share information. Our
witnesses this morning bring impressive experience and insight
to this important issue and we look forward to their testimony.
I welcome each of them.
At this time, the Chair would recognize the ranking member
of the committee, Mr. Kucinich.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]
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Mr. Kucinich. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you
for calling this very important hearing. I want to thank the
witnesses for their attendance and acknowledge the presence of
my colleagues.
The overclassification of Federal materials is a growing
problem, a problem that has been highlighted once again in the
final report of the 9/11 Commission. Overclassification has
serious fiscal costs. It also reduces the accountability and
reduces our security. But the real problem is not the quantity
of materials classified and declassified. Thereal problem, I
would submit, is the systemic and reflexive secrecy rampant
throughout officials in this administration.
But I have to say, as the witnesses certainly know, this
problem of overclassification, of secrecy, has been a problem
throughout the history of this country. And in a book, Mr.
Chairman, which you may be familiar with, Chalmers Johnson, who
is a scholar, wrote a book about secrecy and his relationship
to what he calls ``militarism secrecy and the end of the
Republic.'' The book is called ``The Sorrows of Empire.'' And
he was also the person who is the author of an a book called
``Blow Back,'' which talks about the consequences of the U.S.
foreign policy on what happens here at home.
This book really makes the connections on how secrecy
undermines our country. And in a culture of increased military
spending, together with the secrecy, it makes it very difficult
for taxpayers to have any idea what is going on and how their
dollars are being spent; and it really reflects on the
priorities of the country.
This problem of secrecy is also something we have to deal
with as Members of Congress. How many so-called ``secret
briefings'' has the Congress had over the past few years where
we were just fed misinformation for the purposes of being able
to gain support in Congress for things that people otherwise
would not have supported. But the meetings were kept secret and
that is a way that you stop a discussion in a free society.
Now, the current situation with this administration--
instead of making information available or sharing information,
this administration reversed a trend started in the Clinton
administration, a trend toward openness, the Clinton Executive
Order 2958. Under this order there is a presumption against
classification, and this presumption was used in case of doubt,
and where there was doubt about the appropriate level of
classification, the order specified that the material be
classified at the lower level. An interagency security
classification appeals panel was established and historical
records were declassified at record rates and on a timely
automated schedule.
In contrast, the current administration has dramatically
increased the volume of Federal materials concealed from the
American people. Executive Order 13292, issued in March 2003,
18 months after September 11, permitted officials to classify
information when there was doubt whether or not to do so,
allowed officials to classify information at the more
restrictive level when there was a question as to the
appropriate level.
The order also delayed and weakened the system of automatic
declassification established under the Clinton executive order
and underutilized the appeals panel. As a result, as has been
noted earlier, a record 14 million classification actions were
reported last year, costing U.S. taxpayers an all-time high of
$6.5 billion.
The total number of pages declassified by this
administration was the lowest in the last 10 years, annual FOIA
requests, Freedom of Information Act requests, have become more
tightly controlled, surpassing the $3 million mark last year
for the first time in history and costing the government $325
million.
Secrecy is on the rise throughout the administration.
Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency, the
Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human
Services now have been granted classification authority, while
the Office of the Vice President has become exempt from certain
mandatory declassification reviews.
The FCC, Federal Communications Commission, recently stated
that outage reports from wireless, line, cable and telecom
providers would be protected from public disclosure because of
``increasing concern about homeland security and national
defense.''
In addition, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently
decided that information about the physical security of nuclear
facilities would no longer be publicly available or updated on
the agency's Web site, though this information would be
critical for public health and safety. And I want to say that I
am pleased this subcommittee will be holding hearings on this
issue of nuclear plant security in the coming weeks.
Information seems to be arbitrarily and unnecessarily
classified. Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union
released court documents showing that the Justice Department
tried to file secret affidavits in two civil court cases
challenging the USA Patriot Act. These affidavits can only be
viewed by the judge and would not be seen by the public or even
the plaintiffs.
The attack on the civil liberties of U.S. citizens now
includes this new tactic. The Justice Department even attempted
to redact harmless information, such as a quotation from a 1972
Supreme Court ruling, and general descriptions of a company and
the fact that it did consulting work.
Even more egregiously, we have seen the declassification
used as an excuse to avoid embarrassment to the administration.
The Senate Intelligence Committee's report on prewar
intelligence concerning the Iraqi WMD program was redacted. The
entire report of Major General Antonio Taguba, detailing the
mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, was
classified, though it did not reveal intelligence sources or
methods.
Even in this committee, we saw how the Pentagon
retroactively classified sections of a report critical of the
proposed national missile defense plan by Philip Coyle,
Director of the Department of Defense Office of Operational
Test and Evaluation. The information in the report which had
been disclosed and widely disseminated was subsequently
withheld from Congress for 8 months. The Pentagon then marked a
report ``For Official Use Only'' and classified the 50 specific
recommendations stated in Mr. Coyle's report so it could not be
released to the public for scrutiny.
The final report of the 9/11 Commission confirms what many
of us already know too well. The Bush administration's
excessive use of classification, delay in declassifying Federal
materials and encroachments on the civil rights of individuals
are antithetical to democratic principle; and it is our
responsibility, as Congress, to provide effective checks and
balances, which is really the purpose of this committee.
Thank you, Mr. Shays.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Dennis J. Kucinich
follows:]
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Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman.
At this time the Chair would recognize Mr. Tierney.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I join
with members of the public and Members of Congress and, of
course, the September 11 families in hoping that Congress will
act swiftly to implement the unanimous bipartisan
recommendation of the 9/11 Commission Report.
I must say that as we address today's issue, the
Commission's strong and unequivocal recommendations that the
executive branch move from treating information on a ``need to
know'' to a ``need to share'' basis, I am uncertain that this
transformation can occur within an administration that has
overemphasized classification at the expense of congressional
oversight and, in some cases, at the expense of common sense.
I know during the last administration, in 1995, the
President reset previous default settings, directing
classifiers not to shield information of doubtful value and to
classify information at the lowest rather than the highest
possible level. Reclassification was prohibited if the material
had otherwise been properly put in the public domain.
Under this President Bush, his executive order reverts to a
``when it doubt, classify'' standard, expands classification
authorities and categories, and postpones automatic
declassification on some records.
Now, this leads us here today to ask the witnesses, how can
the administration convince a skeptical public that the
administration is committed to changing this culture when, even
as we speak, they are continuing to classify, in some cases
retroactively, information pertaining to our national defense.
One key example was mentioned briefly by Mr. Kucinich, and
it has to do with missile defense. I happen to have a longer
history with this issue, and so I want to take a moment to
recount it. And the chairman has shared this history.
In the context of the 9/11 Commission Report, the most
immediate threat is not an incoming intercontinental ballistic
missile, but an act of terror, some biological or chemical
agent introduced in this country, or a dirty bomb delivered in
a suitcase. Even our own intelligence agencies prioritize
threats in this manner. So the public has the right to ask, why
is this administration spending more than $10 billion per year
on a national missile defense system instead of protecting our
ports, equipping the Coast Guard or our local first responders,
protecting chemical facilities, our nuclear reactors, and so on
down the line--the many things that need to be done, which are
underfunded seriously in the President's budget and in the
majority's budget.
The public has the right to an answer.
Do experts and security personnel think this system will
work? The answer is ``no.'' Forty-nine previous generals and
admirals and other higher retired military individuals speak
out against deployment at this point in time. In a letter to
the President, they clearly set out, ``As you have said, Mr.
President, our highest priority is to prevent terrorists from
acquiring and employing weapons of mass destruction. We agree.
We therefore recommend, as the militarily responsible course of
action, that you postpone operation and deployment of the
expensive and untested GMD system and transfer the associated
funding to accelerated programs to secure the multitude of
facilities containing nuclear weapons and materials and to
protect our ports and borders against terrorists who may
attempt to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the United
States.''
In addition, 31 former government officials called the
missile defense deployment a ``sham.'' These are officials who
worked for Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon,
Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton, and argued that
the missile defense system planned for rollout in September
will provide no real defense, as they called it a ``sham.'' The
officials worked at the Pentagon, the Department of State, the
National Security Council, the Office of Management and Budget,
the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; and their letter
accused the administration of rushing a program into a field
that is largely untested and missing major components.
The fact of the matter is, the public should know whether
or not this President, for political purposes, is satisfying
his ideological extremists by deploying an unproven,
inadequately tested system; and in fact, is he living in the
past instead of addressing the concerns that we have in the
21st century. But instead of allowing for a public examination,
this administration has classified relevant critical reports
and facts, even reclassifying some that have been in the public
domain for as much as 4 or 5 years for what can be argued as
``political purposes.''
I will not go through the long rendition, Mr. Chairman, of
the many letters we have, but starting back in September 8,
2000, this subcommittee held a hearing with the then-Director
of Operational Tests and Evaluation, the Pentagon's own person,
Phil Coyle, who testified about the inadequacies of the missile
defense system. And at that time I asked the subcommittee, and
the subcommittee agreed without objection, to enter his report
detailing 50 recommendations for how this system should be
tested. And we put that in the public record.
What occurred after that was a pattern of stonewalling and
repeated resistance from the Department of Defense that lasted
over 8 months. Finally, on May 31, 2001 the Coyle report was
delivered to Congress. As Mr. Kucinich mentioned, it was first
marked ``For Official Use Only,'' but when challenged, the
Department of Defense was unable to respond to what that
category meant and certainly did not indicate that it was
classified in any sense.
Finally, Chairman Shays took the lead and decided to make
this information available to the public on June 2001. It was
on the Web site. It was in public documents. And since that
point in time, we have had numerous hearings in this committee.
We have had testimony from experts. We have had poster boards
set up with the information on it. We have had it on our own
Web sites.
And finally, I asked the General Accounting Office to
prepare a report to tell us in September 2004 what would the
condition of deployment be, especially with respect to the 50
issues by Mr. Coyle. After fighting for an inordinate period of
time, the General Accounting Office was finally able to issue a
report. It no sooner hit my desk than this administration
classified that report. You can imagine for yourself whether it
was a favorable report to their position or unfavorable.
Not satisfied with that, we asked them to go back and look
over every line and tell us what was classified and was not.
Having done that, they issued a classified report and an
unclassified report. The unclassified report, in my estimation
was damning. You can imagine what the classified report was.
But then the administration took the additional step of going
back in, reclassifying all the previously open, available
information upon which those reports were based, none of them
previously having been classified, all of the information
having been in the public domain for some 4 years.
You can answer the question better than I can, but why
should this administration be trusted with the recommendation
of the September 11 Commission to move toward a culture of
``need to share'' as opposed to ``need to know?''
But it is not all about the missile defense system. There
is a disturbing pattern in this administration of using secrecy
as a means to defend or advance their political purposes and
policies.
When confronted with allegations that the Energy Task
Force, which the Vice President convened, was predominantly
comprised of industry members who would be inclined to favor
the status quo energy policy in this country, the Bush
administration refused to come clean and disclose participants
of the task force, arguing that such inquiries into Federal
agencies are off limits to the courts, the Congress, and thus,
the American people.
In June 2003, when the Environmental Protection Agency
released a report on the state of the environment, the detailed
assessment of climate change, which among other things was to
conclude that carbon dioxide emissions are contributing to
global warming, was deleted by the White House and replaced
with language that was deliberately vague and disingenuous
about the scientific causes of global warming.
After hearing the compelling evidence of defective tires on
certain automobiles and the tragedies that ensued on America's
roads, Congress passed a law making certain that auto safety
data be made available to the public. But this administration's
National Highway Traffic Administration has decided that such
information regarding unsafe automobiles which may be
detrimental to their companies will remain secret.
And now, according to Friday's Washington Post, the
Department of Justice in its court battle with the American
Civil Liberties Union over portions of the Patriot Act has
attempted to rely on secret evidence. As Mr. Kucinich also
mentioned, one aspect of that was inessential censoring a dozen
seemingly innocuous passages on national security grounds,
including an attempt to redact a quotation from a 1972 Supreme
Court ruling that simply said, ``The danger to political
dissent is acute where the government attempts to act under so
vague a concept as the power to protect domestic security.
Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security
interests, the danger of abuse and acting to protect that
interest become apparent.''
Now, there is a dangerous statement if I ever heard one.
But this administration's Department of Justice thought that
had to be redacted from a court proceeding.
This reliance on classification and withholding of
information does not just prevent transparency and
accountability in public policymaking. It is an act that is
fundamentally opposed to the public; it is opposed to their
health, to their civil liberties, to their consumer interests,
and most importantly, to their safety.
How can we trust that this administration with this record
will commit itself to implementing the 9/11 Commission's
recommendation that we have more transparency, that we move to
a culture of sharing, a ``need to share'' versus a ``need to
know''? At a time when it is so important that we put our
resources where the dangers appear most and not on some
ideological extreme program that is unproven and untested,
hiding the facts is not doing this country any service. And we
have to take the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission
seriously.
I hope these hearings, Mr. Chairman, will move us in that
direction of classifying only what needs to be classified and
sharing the rest, so that the American people can make the
right choices and the right priorities for our safety. Thank
you.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman for his statement.
At this time the Chair would recognize Mr. Ruppersberger,
who serves on the House Intelligence Committee.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you. We
have a tremendous opportunity at this time in our history to
provide for national security as a result of what happened on
September 11. I want to first praise the Commission and all of
those people involved, including the families of those who died
in the September 11 incident.
At this point, it is very, very important that we deal with
this issue in a nonpartisan way. And it is important that we
also understand that there are different elements we have to
deal with as far as the 9/11 Commission's report.
First, it is extremely important that we do have one person
that can hold all the intelligence communities accountable. We
have to make sure that the intelligence communities, all of
them, including the military, the DOD, CIA, NSA, all the
intelligence communities, work as a team and that they
integrate the information. We can be extremely sophisticated in
our intelligence community, but if we do not get to the bottom
line and do what needs to be done and get the right information
to the right people, we will not be successful in what is our
goal of national security.
Now, the issue we are dealing with today is
overclassification as a barrier to critical information. I
think it is extremely important that we deal with this issue.
Just one aspect of this overclassification is also the barrier
in getting people cleared and how ridiculous it is. I have a
Federal Times, August 16, ``482,000 Wait For Clearance, Backlog
of Security Checks Holds Up Work, Wastes Billions of Dollars.''
Now, one of the American intelligence community's greatest
problems is the cult of classification in which information,
both rare and commonplace, is a safeguard with equal zeal. Both
cases also illustrate the intense political pressures on
intelligence and counterintelligence agencies, diluting the
value of the Nation's intelligence. These are parts of our
system that are broken, the ones that no one in Washington
wants to talk about, but we are going to have to deal with to
fix this testimony.
There is certainly vital information that must be protected
from foreign espionage. These secrets worth saving should be
held closely. Far too much effort is being wasted protecting
nonsecrets which allows vital secrets to slip through.
In Washington, classification has led to sort of a game,
creating those ``in the know'' and those who are ``not in the
know.'' This game heightens the power of bureaucrats, but so
much is classified that it is impossible for people with
security clearances to know what is derived from a spy
satellite and what is plucked out of the newspaper, which is
considered open source.
So what is a secret? Nuclear secrets should be kept secret.
The names of U.S. agents in other countries must be kept
secret. Operation capabilities of U.S. weapons should be kept
secret. Unlike today's situation, a secret requires that there
not be the slightest hint that even a secret exists. To do
that, the government would need to follow just a few simple
rules instead of the myriad of complexities it has erected. And
whether it is a Democratic administration, or a Republican,
there is not consistency in what we do as far as this
classification is concerned. And we need consistency. We need
standards.
First, there must be few secrets. Unless you are willing to
stash people, it is easiest to keep a small number of secrets.
Second, give secrets to fewer people. The idea of hundreds of
thousands of people wandering around with secrets is absurd. Do
not use access to classified materials as a justification for
doing background checks on military officers. Just do
background checks.
Do not classify as secret that which is in the New York
Times and on the Internet. Do not use secrecy as a shield to
protect idiotic political and policy decisions.
I am looking forward to hearing what your recommendations
would be to deal with this very important issue. It is a strong
component of what we need to deal with to provide the best
national security for our country.
Intelligence clearly is the best defense against terrorism,
but we need to get our system right, consistent, and focused.
Thank you.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman, especially your comments,
given that you do serve on the Intelligence Committee. I would
just say, I appreciate the gentleman breaking a family vacation
to be here.
I have the opportunity to ask the first questions. I am
going to defer to you to start off, and then we'll go to Mr.
Kucinich, Mr. Tierney and myself. I ask unanimous consent that
all members of the subcommittee be permitted to place an
opening statement in the record and that the record remain open
for 3 days for that purpose.
Without objection, so ordered.
I ask further unanimous consent that all witnesses be
permitted to include their written statement in the record.
Without objection, so ordered.
This is a fairly big document that I have shown the ranking
member. It's entitled, ``Dubious Secrets: A Briefing Book of
Overclassified Documents,'' prepared by the National Security
Archive, George Washington University. I am going to ask that
it be submitted into the record.
Without, objection.
[Note.--The report entitled, ``Dubious Secrets: A Briefing
Book of Overclassified Documents,'' may be found in
subcommittee files. A copy of the title page follows:]
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Mr. Shays. I want to just note that the George Washington
Archive maintains a body of documentation demonstrating the
inconsistency and the arbitrariness of many classified
decisions. They find documents released by one agency
classified in whole or in part by another, and they track a
declassification process they find to be extraordinarily slow
and litigious.
Without objection, we will put that in the record.
At this time, I recognize our witnesses. We have Mr.
William Leonard, Director, Information Security Oversight
Office, National Archives and Records Administration. We have
Carol Haave, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for
Counterintelligence and Security, Department of Defense; Mr.
Steven Aftergood, Federation of American Scientists; and Mr.
William P. Crowell, the Markle Foundation Task Force on
National Security in the Information Age.
We truly have four experts on this issue. It is not an easy
issue to deal with, and given that we have one panel, we will
have the 5 minutes that you may speak; you can trip over a
little bit. I'd just as soon you not take another 5 minutes but
you have that right. Then we will go to 10 minutes of
questioning.
At this time, we will swear in our witnesses. Is there
anyone else that has accompanied you that might provide
information so they can stand and be sworn in at this time.
Is there anyone else?
No one else.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Shays. Note for the record our witnesses have responded
in the affirmative.
At this time we will begin with you, Mr. Leonard. Thank you
for being here.
STATEMENTS OF J. WILLIAM LEONARD, DIRECTOR, INFORMATION
SECURITY OVERSIGHT OFFICE, NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS
ADMINISTRATION; CAROL A. HAAVE, DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY OF
DEFENSE, COUNTERINTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
DEFENSE; STEVEN AFTERGOOD, FEDERATION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS;
AND WILLIAM P. CROWELL, THE MARKLE FOUNDATION TASK FORCE ON
NATIONAL SECURITY IN THE INFORMATION AGE
Mr. Leonard. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Kucinich, members of the
panel. I wish to thank you for holding this hearing on security
classification and declassification issues. As Director of the
Information Security Oversight Office, I am responsible to the
President for overseeing the governmentwide classification
program within both government and industry.
Executive Order 12958, as amended, sets forth the basic
framework by which executive branch agencies classify national
security information. Pursuant to his constitutional authority
in this order, the President authorizes a limited number of
individuals to apply classification to certain national
security-related information. While the order is clear that the
employment of classification is based in large part upon the
judgment of an original classifying authority, in delegating
classification authority, the President has established clear
parameters for its use and certain burdens that must be
satisfied.
Classification authority is not without limits. The
President has spelled out some very clear prohibitions with
respect to the use of classification. Specifically, in no case
can information be classified in order to conceal violations of
law or prevent embarrassment to a person, an organization, or
an agency. Unfortunately, there have been instances giving the
impression that information has been classified in violation of
the order. In each case I am aware of, I have found that this
often arises due to lack of proactive oversight within agencies
or a lack of effective training and awareness provided to some
cleared personnel.
I believe that the overall policy for security
classification as set forth in the current executive order is
fundamentally sound. While I and others, including the 9/11
Commission, have advocated revisions to basic concepts such as
the ``need-to-know'' principle, the order as currently
configured is replete with measures to ensure the
classification system's continued effectiveness. Many agencies
are excelling at fulfilling these requirements; others are not.
It is no secret that the government classifies too much
information. Many senior officials will candidly acknowledge
the problem of excessive classification. This is supported in
part by agency input to my office that indicates that overall
classification activity is up over the past several years.
What I find most troubling, however, is that some
individual agencies have no idea how much information they
generate is classified, whether the overall quantity is
increasing or decreasing, what the explanations are for such
changes, which elements within their organization are most
responsible for the changes, and most importantly of all,
whether the changes are appropriate.
The identification of baseline information such as this is
essential for agencies to be able to ascertain the
effectiveness of the classification efforts.
My current concerns extend to the area of declassification
as well. It's disappointing to note that declassification
activity has been down for the past several years. In some
quarters, when it comes to classification in times of national
security challenges, when available resources are distracted
elsewhere, the approach toward classification and
declassification can be to err on the side of caution. Yet the
classification system is too important and the consequences
resulting from improper implementation too severe to allow
error to be the part of any implementation strategy.
Both too little and too much classification is not an
option. Too much classification unnecessarily impedes effective
information sharing. And inappropriate classification
undermines the integrity of the entire process. Too little
classification can subject our citizens, our democratic
institutions, our homeland security, and our interactions with
foreign nations to potential harm.
Proactive oversight by agencies of their security
classification program and involvement by senior leadership is
crucial.
The security classification system is permissive, not
prescriptive. It identifies what information can be classified,
not what information must be classified. The decision to
classify information or not is ultimately the prerogative of an
agency and its original classification authorities. The
problem, however, with all due apologiesto John Donne, is that
no agency is an island.
The exercise of agency prerogative to classify certain
information has ripple effects throughout the entire executive
branch, as well as the Nation as a whole. It can serve as an
impediment to sharing information with another agency or with
the public who have a genuine need to know about the
information.
The 9/11 Commission has recommended that information
procedures should provide incentives for sharing to restore a
better balance between security and shared knowledge. The
administration is currently developing guidelines and
regulations to improve information sharing both among Federal
departments and agencies and between the Federal Government and
State and local entities.
On August 2 of this year, President Bush announced that he
will be issuing a directive requiring all relevant agencies to
complete the task of adopting common data bases and procedures
so that intelligence and homeland security information can be
shared and searched effectively, consistent with privacy and
civil liberties.
I thank you for inviting me here today Mr. Chairman. I will
be happy to answer any questions you and the committee may
have.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Leonard.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Leonard follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Ms. Haave.
Ms. Haave. Good morning, Chairman Shays, Mr. Kucinich, and
members of the panel.
I appreciate the chance to speak with you today about the
protection of classified information within the Department of
Defense. My opening statement will be brief, as I believe the
time we have here can best be spent in direct dialog.
Protection of classified information is one of the most
important priorities of the Department. No one wants to provide
information outside of proper channels that would do our
servicemen and women, as well as our civilian coworkers harm.
Nor does anyone want to give away what is our economic and
military advantage by providing information about advanced
science and technology, sources or methods of our operations.
The question becomes, how do we balance the risk of
disclosure and its often incalculable consequences against the
public's desire to know? The issue before us today is
overclassification and whether it is an impediment to
information sharing.
I have not found within the Department of Defense that
people are intentionally overclassifying. That's not to say
that it doesn't and isn't happening. More, I have found that
these problems stem from time-driven, operational circumstances
and a misunderstanding of classification guidance. In the end,
people simply don't want to make mistakes that could have both
personal and national security consequences.
Does this impact information sharing? Sometimes it does.
We in DOD are working to ensure our policies are clear
about when and how to classify information, as well as ensuring
personnel know and understand their responsibilities in sharing
with those who must have the information.
Much data that is transported on DOD networks is protected
by classification guidance provided by other government
organizations. We adhere to that guidance, but we certainly can
improve the way we do it. For example, how do we deal with
originator-controlled documents in an electronic environment?
The 21st century is about information technology. It is
about the seamless availability of information across security
domains consistent with the governance strategy that ensures
people are properly vetted and trained.
The collectors of information and also, normally, the
original classifiers can never know the myriad ways that their
information might be used for good purpose. Therefore, we have
to migrate to a user-driven environment to support true
competitive intelligence, to ensure the warfighters and
policymakers have the information that they need to make good
decisions, and to mutually support other organizations and
agencies in successfully accomplishing their missions as well.
We must break down the functional stovepipes and
institutional barriers in favor of a more horizontally
integrated collaborative enterprise characterized by
cooperation and incentivized, shared goals. We must make better
use of all-source analysis to blur the origin of information
and right to release using automated terror lines.
``Need to know,'' while still a valid concept that drives
information security, must now also include the need to share
information more broadly at multiple classification levels, as
well as in the unclassified public domain.
Technology is not the problem. The technology we need is
here today, or is being developed, and there are any number of
initiatives that are moving us collectively in the right
direction. Instead, I would offer that the problem is
institutional and cultural, and no agency or organization is
immune. Change is always difficult and fear of making a mistake
precludes people from moving forward in ways that are
consistent with technology and business process improvements.
In the end, this is a discussion about risk. How much risk
is the Nation willing to endure in the quest to balance
protection against the public's desire to know? It is a complex
question that requires thought and, ultimately, action.
The Department of Defense has been taking that action with
respect to information that it alone controls. As stated in my
formal statement, the Department has embraced a network-centric
enterprise with common standards and protocols and a robust
information assurance and protection schema. But this
architecture and enterprise are not cheap, and when extended to
other governments, as well as State, local and other
organizations, the costs are high.
We are working closely with the intelligence community, the
Department of Homeland Security, and others to extend the
enterprise, to facilitate the collaboration and cooperation
that the public deserves, and we are better for it.
Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Thank you very much, Ms. Haave.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Haave follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Mr. Aftergood.
Mr. Aftergood. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I was going to begin by attempting to document for you the
state of the classification system as it is perceived from
outside the government. I was going to explain to you that
classification policy is often arbitrary, inconsistent, that
classifiers sometimes classify contrary to their own rules.
Sometimes, as in the case of the Taguba report, they use
classification to conceal criminal activity, and the
classification system is, in other ways, unsatisfactory.
I have documented some of those rather serious charges in
my formal testimony. I know from your opening statements that
all of you already are aware of many of these problems.
Mr. Shays. Let me ask how long would it take for you to do
that.
Mr. Aftergood. I can do it very quickly.
Mr. Shays. I would like it to be part of the public record.
So you have the time to do it. In the course of your presenting
those documents, it gives us something to question everybody
with.
Mr. Aftergood. OK. I will do that briefly.
Mr. Shays. We will start the clock over again.
Mr. Kucinich. Mr. Chairman, if I may, I think the witness
ought to feel very comfortable in going over this material with
the committee, and we eagerly await your recitation of your
report.
Mr. Aftergood. Thank you very much. I have selected not
quite at random, but a cross-section of cases that have come
into my hands that include several anomalies in classification
policy.
The recent Senate intelligence report on prewar
intelligence on Iraq included abundant redactions, that is,
removals of information from the report that in some cases were
inconsistent or inexplicable.
On one page attached to my testimony it was stated that
Iraqi agents agreed to pay up to a ``deleted'' amount for
certain aluminum tubes. This is a point of controversy having
to do with Iraq's nuclear weapons program. But on another page
of the same report, CIA reviewers included the very same
information: Iraqi agents agreed to pay up to $17.50.
At a minimum, this is inconsistent. It shows a lack of
professionalism in classification; but more than that, I think
it shows an improper attempt to withhold information that has
no business being classified. Obviously, the Iraqis know what
they paid. The vendors know what they paid. They know that we
know. There is nothing sensitive that's being concealed here,
but it held up the release of the report, and it helped turn it
into a kind of Swiss cheese.
A second example is the Taguba report on abuses of
prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. As you can see from the
title page of the report, which is also appended to my
testimony, the whole report was classified as Secret. That is,
the Secret classification level means that its disclosure could
reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to national
security.
If you look at page 16 of the report, you can see that
several individual paragraphs of the report were also
classified Secret, such things as a finding that numerous
incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses were
inflicted on detainees; punching, slapping and kicking
detainees; jumping on their naked feet and so on. These
individual findings were classified Secret.
That is not only inappropriate, it actually is a violation
of the rules governing the classification system itself. Those
rules state in President Bush's executive order that in no case
shall information be classified in order to conceal violations
of law. Yet it appears that is exactly what happened here. When
agencies violate their own classification rules, one thing that
tells you is that oversight is inadequate.
A third example that I pulled from my written statement is,
to me, the most extreme example of overclassification, and that
has to do with CIA's insistence on classifying historical
intelligence budget data. In 1997 and 1998, the CIA
declassified, under pressure of litigation, the total
intelligence budget for those years, for 1997 and 1998. But in
2000 they said that similar information from 50 years earlier
is still properly classified.
To state the obvious, that is a logically incoherent
position. There is no national security construct that permits
the declassification of the 1997 budget, but prohibits the
declassification of the 1947 budget.
What that tells me is that the CIA has completely lost its
bearings when it comes to classification of budget information,
and that there is no one to stop them from arbitrary and
mistaken classification actions.
There are many other examples. The document you entered
into the record, Mr. Chairman, ``Dubious Secrets,'' from the
National Security Archive, is filled with other cases. I
imagine that anyone who has had dealings with the national
security system, either as a government employee or as a
concerned citizen, has their own horror stories to tell.
Certainly the public is increasingly becoming concerned.
I am a member of the steering committee of a new coalition
of politically diverse organizations under the rubric
openthegovernment.org, that has come together to try to remedy
this situation.
I would just like to say one final word about what is in a
way the most important aspect of this hearing. That is, what's
the solution? The solution is not a broad policy critique. I
don't think the solution is to try to fix the whole system at a
single blow. I think the solution was identified by the 9/11
Commission. That is start with a very specific, tangible
change. Start with declassification of intelligence budget
information. There is no other category of information that has
been as vigorously maintained as Secret for so long with so
much energy as intelligence budget information. If we can fix
that, then the road becomes clear to fixing a whole range of
other erroneously or improperly classified categories of
information; and that's the point I wanted to stress.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Aftergood.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Aftergood follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Mr. Crowell. I want to say it correctly. Is it
Crowell?
Mr. Crowell. It's Crowell. That's to avoid getting confused
with a certain admiral that I'm always confused with.
Good morning, Chairman Shays, Mr. Kucinich, and members of
the subcommittee. I would like to thank you for this
opportunity to testify this morning on recommendations that are
made by the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security
in the Information Age.
I think you will find that our observations are in
agreement, Mr. Chairman, with your opening statement of the
problem. The Markle Foundation Task Force is seeking, though,
to outline and propose a new strategy of information sharing
that can benefit our war on terrorism.
Information and information sharing are key to fighting
terrorism and enhancing our security. Today, our government
still does not have all of the information it needs to fight
terrorism, and the information it does have is sometimes
isolated in different agencies, and therefore it is more
difficult to see its significance.
While the discussion about how to implement the 9/11
Commission's recommendation to restructure the intelligence
community is important, another key 9/11 Commission
recommendation that is creating and implementing a trusted
information network to facilitate better information sharing
among our intelligence and law enforcement organizations at the
Federal, State and local levels could actually make America
safer today.
The 9/11 Commission embraced the recommendations for
creation of a System-wide Homeland Analysis and Resource
Exchange, the acronym SHARE, network, made last December by the
Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the
Information Age.
The Markle Foundation Task Force consists of leading
national security experts from four administrations, as well as
widely recognized experts on technology and on civil liberties.
The SHARE network concept represents a virtual reorganization
of government by fundamentally altering how people in the many
organizations ask to fight terrorism, how they share
information to facilitate better and faster decisionmaking.
Such an approach when paired with strong divide lines that
govern the system is also the best way to protect privacy and
civil liberties. The SHARE network is aimed at moving us from
our current need-to-know system into the need-to-share culture
that you've been describing. However, one of the barriers to
enabling that move involves classification and information-
security practices.
Decisions about sharing intelligence in the Government
today are still made largely in the context of a system of
classification that was developed during the cold war. During
the cold war, the use of information was dominated by a culture
of classification and tight limitations on access in which
information was shared only on the need-to-know basis.
The current system assumes that it is possible to determine
in advance who needs to know particular information and that
the risks associated with disclosure are greater than the
potential benefits of wider information sharing. The results of
the incentives currently in place to protect information
results and far more information being classified initially and
remaining classified than is necessary or appropriate.
Another problem with the current system is that each agency
has its own classification practices which leads to cultural
tensions when agencies attempt to share information with each
other. This cold war mindset of classification, sanitization
and tight limits on sharing information is ill-suited to
today's homeland security challenge. While certain information,
particularly about sources and methods, must be protected
against unauthorized disclosure, the general mindset should be
one that strives for broad sharing of information with all of
the relevant players in the network.
The Markle Foundation Task Force approach is to develop new
concepts of operation and to use new technology to achieve a
sharing culture. The SHARE network concept is a decentralized,
loosely coupled, secure and trusted network that sends
information to and pulls information from all participants in
the system. Such an approach empowers all participants, from
local law enforcement officers to senior policymakers.
Our approach combines policy and technical solutions to
create a network that would substantially improve our ability
to predict and prevent terrorist attacks. The SHARE network is
based upon the right to share concept. By taking steps, by
creating tear-line reports, it moves us from a system of
classification to one that is based on authorization and
encourages reports that contain the maximum possible amount of
shareable information.
In addition, SHARE would use existing technologies that can
facilitate the sharing of sensitive information with
inappropriate channels and with protections for privacy.
Screening tools can be used to help the redaction process to
create less classified reports and can also tell us when
sensitive information is about to be sent to parties who lack
the proper permission to receive it.
To address the need for information about reliability of a
source without having to rely on classified descriptions, we
recommend the use of reputation meters, similar to those that
are used today to rate sellers in e-bay in formats, and also to
use standard formats for intelligence documents.
Auditing technology could be deployed to track the flow of
information to different players and to record how the
information is used, which could help deter leaks. Information-
rights management technologies when combined with digital
certificates can also help by allowing agencies to create self-
enforcing rules about who can have access to particular
documents, how they can be used and how long the documents can
be viewed before access expires.
Finally, information can be accompanied by clear, more
specific handling requirements and dissemination limitations.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, information sharing itself is
not the goal. Rather, it is the means by which we can
effectively enhance security and protect privacy, by maximizing
our ability to make sense of all of the available information.
To accomplish this, particularly in fighting terrorism, we must
shed our current cold war need-to-know mentality and replace it
with a culture based on need-to-share. Information security is
a legitimate concern, but it can be appropriately addressed in
the ways that I've outlined above. What is needed now is the
leadership by both Congress and the President to get the
information flowing.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Crowell follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Crowell.
Let me just make a few observations before Mr.
Ruppersberger begins the questions, and one is that I carry a
basic view that when the executive branch gets more power, it
must be accompanied with more legislative oversight. I also
take the view that classification practices impede oversight by
Congress for the public.
I have read, in my 17 years in Congress, confidential--in
terms of the rates of classification, confidential documents,
secret documents, top secret documents, and then we have
compartmentalized with code-word access and special access and
so on, but much what I've read under confidential and secret
and, in some cases, top secret, but not obviously as often, it
has been information I have wondered why it has been
classified.
In a meeting I had with the chairman of the 9/11
Commission, Governor Kean said to me his biggest surprise was
reading hours of information, wondering why in the world was
this classified.
Just another observation, that yesterday we were talking
about fighting a network called Al Qaeda. We were told we need
a human and a communication network. This was in public
diplomacy, and I'm hearing today, no, we need to break out of
our stovepipes and have a data network. It's just interesting
that the word network keeps showing up.
Finally, to conclude my observation, we have nearly 4,000
people classifying information, 14 million documents, but some
of those documents could, literally, have been a book. They
could be extensive. So even when I think of 14 million, the
document could be small, you know, just bit of information, or
it could just be pages and pages and pages of information.
So, in the end, I'm interested in is learning what the
solution is. That's my interest, and we'll start with Mr.
Ruppersberger.
You have 10 minutes. If you need to run over, we can be
informal with this.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First, Mr. Leonard, in your opening statement, you said
that each agency has its own classification criteria, but no
agency is an island. This creates both confusion and
inconsistency that impedes the necessary bounds for national
security and transparency in a democracy.
My question is this, do you believe a National Security
Intelligence Director would help to solve part of this problem
if that person had the authority both--also budgetary control
to implement the policies that are necessary, some of the
recommendations in the 9/11 Commission Report, but especially
as it deals with the issue we're talking about here today,
overclassification, making sure that what is classified needs
to be classified and what is not is not?
Mr. Leonard. Thank you, Congressman.
One thing I don't want to do is to presuppose any
particular outcomes, but let me address it along these lines.
Mr. Ruppersberger. I'm asking your opinion. I know this is
in debate now. The President has recommended a National
Security Director. The issue of budgetary still is not there.
We're trying to get information.
Let me say this. The reason I'm asking these questions and
we're all here is, we have an opportunity, I think now, to
really do something very positive as it relates to our national
security and intelligence, and it's very important that, based
on your expertise, we get your opinion.
Mr. Leonard. Yes, sir.
Mr. Ruppersberger. I know you are not speaking for the
administration, but I'm asking, from your expertise, what your
opinion would be as far as a National Security Director, as far
as the budgetary issues are concerned, so that person might be
able to implement what we're talking about here today.
Mr. Leonard. Yes, sir. Let me address that along these
lines.
One of the most significant challenges we have, I think, in
this area is that we do have a basic framework for
classification, as I mentioned, but superimposed upon that are
multiple variations of the system which are all designed to
achieve the same end. So, for example, currently, the DCI has
his own unique authorities with respect to protecting sources
and methods. The Secretary of Energy has his own unique
authorities with respect to protecting atomic energy
information. The director of NSA has his own unique authorities
with respect to protecting communication security information.
The Secretary of Defense has his own unique authorities with
respect to protecting NATO-related information, and the list
goes on and on and on and on.
Those variations are, I think, significant impediments to
information sharing. When it comes to protecting information, I
see it as a binary state: Either it's protected or it isn't
protected. And we have all these variations on the system that
have minor nuances and differences in terms of how we protect
information, how we credit systems, how we mark them and things
along those lines.
If a single individual had the authority, had the authority
to overcome the existing statutory and regulatory authority
that allows multiple agencies to come up with their own nuances
and variations on the system, yes, I think that would be a good
thing.
Mr. Ruppersberger. In your opinion, do you feel that person
would need budgetary control, also, of those agencies?
Mr. Leonard. Let's put it this way, Congressman, it's one
thing to have the authority to write regulations. There always
has to be consequences for noncompliance with regulations. I
find budgetary authority is one of the best means in which to
get people's attention with respect to compliance and
noncompliance of the regulations.
Mr. Ruppersberger. I guess you need the power to do what
you need to do, I guess.
Mr. Leonard. Yes, sir.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Mr. Aftergood, there was an intelligence
open hearing, I believe last week or the week before, where
they talked about the intelligence budget, and you addressed
that in your testimony as far as whether or not that needs to
be public. And I think there's a bipartisan consensus that
there is a lot in the intelligence budget that could be made
public, but there also was a concern that some of that should
not be made public, and I think in your report you seem as if
the whole budget.
I would be concerned that, line by line, could be very
dangerous to both our military and to some of our CIA people or
NSA people throughout the world. Could you give me your opinion
on whether or not you think that the whole budget should be out
front and open or whether or not we should focus on the areas
which could cause some type of problem to our people who are
fighting and working for our national security?
Mr. Aftergood. Yes, sir. I do believe that there are
portions of the intelligence budget that should remain
classified. I would be guided by the recommendations of the 9/
11 Commission which said that the total, the top line number,
as well as the individual agency budget totals should be made
public but nothing beyond that. I think that's a reasonable
middle ground that would provide oversight. It would break the
logjam of secrecy in this area, but it would keep sensitive
programs protected.
Mr. Ruppersberger. OK. I'm going to ask--I don't know how
long I have. It's a broad question to the whole panel, but the
9/11 Commission endorsed the creation of a decentralized,
technologically advanced, trusted information network to make
threat information more widely accessible and to reverse cold
war paradigms and cultural biases against information sharing.
The Commission noted such a network had been described in a
task force report commissioned by the Markle Foundation, Mr.
Crowell, but the concept has not yet been converted into
action.
My question to the whole panel if we have time--and I know
it's a broad question, but I would like your point of view--
what would you recommend to Congress as to how you would start
to implement the changes that need to be done in order to
effectuate the issue that we're talking about here today,
overclassification, need-to-know? I mean, there are many issues
that need to be classified in that question. But we have a
tremendous amount of volume. We have a lot of agencies.
Part of the problem in intelligence is just getting this
enormous amount of volume on Internet and all that we get and
then analyzing it and then getting it to the right people so
they can implement and use it to protect our national security.
You have to remember now, we're focused on this. The
country is focused. How would you begin to implement the
changes that need to be made? You want to start with Mr.
Crowell and then go down that way. Thanks.
Mr. Crowell. Thank you very much. Let me start by saying
that we have just concluded a preliminary session at the Aspen
Institute in Colorado in which we were addressing the very
issue that you raised, which is, what are the next steps for
implementing a SHARE concept network? It's a very difficult
problem, and it's a long kind of effort because it's a very
large undertaking.
We believe that it begins with legislation that would
essentially outline the kind of network that the Congress would
like to see, based upon some of the principles which I will
very briefly describe, and that the President then put together
the cross-agency kind of implementing process that is
necessary, because once you begin working across agencies,
funding and management of large undertakings like this become
very, very difficult and very complex.
All of this to be done with a short deadline, so that we
can move this along, using existing technology, not inventing
new technologies.
We think that this concept can be fleshed out. I'd like to
just add, before I mention the characteristics of the network,
that the larger problem in trying to achieve the balance that
was described earlier is to not only have a network which
encourages sharing but also to have the kind of guidelines and
policy that encourage sharing; that we train people in sharing
concepts and in classification concepts; and that we have
metrics and auditing capabilities so we can see whether or not
they're following the policy and guidance.
Mr. Ruppersberger. And standards. You need standards.
Mr. Crowell. Yes, and we need standards. We need compliance
enforcement, both for protecting information that needs to be
protected but also for sharing information that will benefit
the public, the public good.
Just one last quick thing, some of the concepts that we
believe are important then are concepts that have flexible
access controls, authentication authorizations, so people trust
the system; that they have a publish-and-subscribe capability
in which people can say, I want to be able to get certain kinds
of information to assist me in doing my mission or to assist me
in doing my analysis, and they will get it; that it be a
distributed system in which it's a system of systems. You don't
build it centrally and manage it centrally from some place in
the U.S. Federal Government. There's a longer list----
Mr. Ruppersberger. I understand. We have other witnesses. I
just want to make sure that we understand that we have done so
much in identifying the problem; let's get to the
implementation.
My yellow light has gone on so the quicker you can go, but
I probably will not be able to ask you any more questions.
Mr. Aftergood. Very quickly, a couple of points. The
problem will never be fixed; it will never be over. It will
always require continuing oversight, continuing refinement.
Therefore, I would say, don't attempt to do too much. Do
attempt to get the process started.
The other point I would just like to mention quickly is,
when I hear trusted information network, I get concerned that,
when barriers go down between agencies, they're going up
between the Government and the public. So I would say keep in
mind the question of public access. Keep in mind the option of
allowing a way for the public to gain access to information
that it needs sometimes.
Mr. Ruppersberger. I would say this, we always sometimes
have a tendency to overreact, and we still have to keep our eye
on the ball and make sure that information, which can be very
dangerous to this country or to the people working for this
country, needs to be classified. And really there is an issue
that hasn't been discussed, and I think if you can't trust the
people with the information, then they shouldn't be in that
position.
Ms. Haave.
Ms. Haave. The first thing that we have to do is to ensure
that people are properly classifying information. What you find
is, where there are seams, there's friction. So, as you're
trying to create a trusted information network that spans the
different Government agencies, local, State, etc., what we need
are common standards and protocols.
For example, the Department of Defense and CIA have
recently come to agreement on a metadata standard. Metadata is
important so that computers can do for us what takes us a long
time to do, and that is parse information with respect to
security classifications in a way that people get the
information that they are entitled to and not information that
they're not.
Cross-domain security systems that allow accreditation
across domains, not necessarily making one generic network, but
having separate networks where the cross-domain security, that
governance strategy, is already mandated and agreed to by all,
will facilitate that movement of information across the
network.
There are a number of things that we can do, automated
tear-lines, etc., and I think we are down the path of looking
at doing all of those things. The DCI runs an Information-
Sharing Working Group. There are number of congressionally
directed actions that we are looking at with respect to that,
and we are making progress toward that.
In the end, however, what it requires is that all of us
come together with the common standards and protocols to
facilitate that sharing, and that's an issue that's above any
one Department.
Mr. Leonard. Very quickly, sir, the one thing I would
recommend being addressed is, as I alluded to before, the issue
of unique agency prerogatives, especially those that are
legislatively based. We currently have what I refer to as a
patchwork quilt of various information protection and sharing
regimes, not just in the classified arena but in the
unclassified arena as well. We have literally dozens of
unclassified--of protection regimes for controlled,
unclassified information, many of which date back to the cold
war, that we've never revisited. And we add to them every year.
We now have controlled critical infrastructure protected
information. We have sensitive security information in the
transportation field. We have sensitive homeland security
information. All these are unique regimes that are being
created and unique rules that are being written that will
definitely impede when people then try to fuse all these
various types of information in a network environment.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman.
At this time the Chair would recognize Mr. Kucinich.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you very much.
I would first like to speak to the testimony of Mr.
Aftergood. In part three of your testimony, you speak of the
classification of the historical intelligence budget data, and
you also get into the discussion, which Mr. Ruppersberger
alluded to, about whether or not intelligence budgets ought to
be classified.
This is not an arcane question or one that actually can be
left solely to the Department of Defense or the Central
Intelligence Agency. This is a constitutional matter. We take
oaths, not to defend the CIA or the Defense Department; we take
an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. So to
provide an appropriate frame for this discussion, let me cite
Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 of the Constitution, ``No money
shall be drawn from the Treasury but in consequence of
appropriations made by law, and a regular statement and account
of the receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be
published from time to time.''
The Constitution of the United States makes it very clear,
you can't have secret budgets. Our Founders anticipated that
the only way to protect a democracy was to have it be open and
that we know exactly how the taxpayers' money is being spent.
Now, I alluded at the beginning of this hearing to a book
called The Sorrows of Empire by Chalmers Johnson. Here's what
he says about this article, about Article I, Section 9, Clause
7 of the Constitution. He says, ``This article is one that
empowers Congress and makes the United States a democracy. It
guarantees the people's representatives will know what the
State apparatus is actually doing, and it authorizes full
disclosure of these activities. It has not been applied to the
Department of Defense or the Central Intelligence Agency since
their creation. Instead, there's been a permanent policy of
``don't ask don't tell.'' The White House has always kept the
intelligence agencies budget secret, and deceptions in the
Defense budget date back to the Manhattan Project of World War
II and the secret decisions to build atomic bombs and use them
against the Japanese.
``In 1997, then Senator Robert Torricelli, a Democrat of
New Jersey, proposed an amendment to the 1998 Defense
Authorization Bill requiring that Congress disclose aggregate
intelligence expenditures. He lost, but he was able to make the
point that the intelligence agencies spend more than the
combined gross national products of North Korea, Libya, Iran
and Iraq, and they do so in the name of the American people,
without any advice or supervision from them,'' from Chalmers
Johnson.
Now, I want to go a little bit more into this discussion,
Mr. Aftergood. What about this? I mean, we are talking about
something that is key to the survival of our democracy, are we
not?
Mr. Aftergood. We are talking about fundamental principles.
It's easy to look at this, and think, oh, this is a detail, who
really cares anyway. It's a fundamental principle.
Budget disclosure is one of only two categories of
Government information whose publication is required by the
Constitution, and as you correctly say, Government officials
don't take oaths to particular agencies. They take oaths to
uphold and defend the Constitution.
In this area, most Government officials have been derelict.
I would add that it's not simply the White House. It's not
simply the Bush administration. It's the Clinton
administration. It's past administrations. It's the Congress.
The last time the matter was voted on in the Congress in 1997,
majorities in both the House and Senate voted against budget
disclosure. I consider it a serious lapse.
I should say that the Constitution doesn't say that
everything must be open and must be published right now. It
says it must be published from time to time, and that allows
the possibility that things could remain secret for a period of
time. But when the CIA says that 50-year-old intelligence
budgets must remain secret, that tells me that they are acting
in bad faith. When the Justice Department defends the CIA, as
they are doing now, in Freedom of Information Act litigation
against having to disclose such historical information, that
tells me they are also acting in bad faith and not in accord
with constitutional values.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you.
I want to move on to Ms. Haave.
Today's headline, Washington Post, Iraqi Teens Abused At
Abu Ghraib, Report Finds; Officials say inquiry also confirms
prisoners were hidden from aid groups. The article goes on to
say among other things that speaking on the condition of
anonymity, because the report has not been released, other
officials at the Pentagon say the investigation also
acknowledges that military intelligence soldiers kept multiple
detainees off the recordbooks and hid them from international
humanitarian organizations.
Now, Ms. Haave, there have been several examples given
today of instances where the Department of Defense has acted
questionably in classifying information. These include large
sections of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on
Iraq'sWMD program and the report of General Taguba on Abu
Ghraib prison. Did your office make the decisions to classify
those reports?
Ms. Haave. Sir, my office did not make those decisions.
Original classification authorities make those decisions as
documents are being prepared. The review for security
declassification is also made by the original classifying
authority.
Mr. Kucinich. Now, this morning's Post that I just pointed
out to you points that you have several of these new reports on
the Abu Ghraib prison abuse; they're near completion. This one
report by Major General Fay describes the use of dogs to attack
and frighten detainees, including Iraqi teenagers.
So let me just ask you, for the record, will this report be
made public, unclassified, in whole, and what about the report
of the independent commission led by former Defense Secretary
James Schlesinger that is also pending?
Ms. Haave. Sir, I have not seen Mr. Schlesinger's report,
so I can't answer that question. With respect to the Taguba
report, for example, I know there were places where information
was classified, and there were other places in the report where
that same information was not classified. There is a security
review being undertaken today that should be done in the next
couple of weeks, and so that security review and its results
will be made available to you.
With respect to the General Fay report, I also have not
seen that report in its entirety. I think large portions of it
are unclassified, but again, I have asked, as a result of the
interest in these reports, that the original classifying
authorities go back and review and be sure that they are
classifying properly those portions of the report that are
classified, if they are.
Mr. Kucinich. Have you ever been involved in keeping things
classified as a way of protecting the administration from any
embarrassment?
Ms. Haave. Sir, I have not.
Mr. Kucinich. Now, these instances that we just discussed
occurred recently in regard to operations in Iraq, Mr. Tierney
pointed out earlier--and he and I have had the opportunity to
work together on the issues relating to the testing at the
Department of Defense--how you had results withheld from this
committee for 8 months relating to the planned National Missile
Program, and the report and all 50 recommendations it made were
then reclassified, though the report had been publicly
available and disseminated before. Do you have any idea why
this was done?
Ms. Haave. Sir, I don't. I only just learned of this
instance yesterday when my staff brought it to my attention.
What I am willing to do, however, is to go back and review it,
pull the information as best I can and have a conversation with
you about what the results are after I do an independent
assessment. I know that's not probably satisfying to you.
Mr. Kucinich. How long have you been involved in this
particular assignment that you have?
Ms. Haave. In this assignment, as a deputy under, for about
1 year, sir, and then, prior to that, I was a deputy assistant
secretary for security and information.
Mr. Kucinich. Are you familiar with the challenges which
this committee made to the administration over gaining access
and public release of materials with respect to the Missile
Defense Program?
Ms. Haave. Sir, not always. Typically, what happens----
Mr. Kucinich. Is that a yes or a no?
Ms. Haave. Sometimes, I am. For example, with respect to
Abu Ghraib right now, I am aware of those things.
With respect to missile defense, what happens is that the
original classification authority, which in this case is
probably the Missile Defense Agency, would handle those. I
would not necessarily be apprised of those.
Mr. Kucinich. Do you have any oversight over them at all?
Do you look at their classification decisions?
Ms. Haave. We do have oversight over the Department. Most
of that is conducted at multiple levels, decentrally, and so
they have a responsibility to assure that their people are
properly trained. They have a responsibility to conduct self-
inspections and to report. We often will answer questions for
them, and we sometimes go and visit. I cannot remember the last
time that we had a conversation on this subject with the
Missile Defense Agency.
Mr. Kucinich. Mr. Chairman, the question that I think needs
to be asked here is, who has the final word on classification?
I mean, you can chase this thing around a tree forever. Who has
the final word on classification, let's say, on the Missile
Defense Program? Do you have the final word or don't you?
Ms. Haave. No, sir. The Missile Defense Agency has the
final word, to the best of my knowledge. What we have done
inside the Department, that is a recent change, for example,
with respect to the habeas cases at Guantanamo is that we have
convened a group of people, for example, from Guantanamo, from
SouthCOM, from the office of the Secretary of Defense in order
to take on these classification/declassification issues. And
where there are impasses, where people cannot come to
agreement, those things will now be brought forward to me, and
I will make the final classification decision. That is new in
the Department of Defense.
Mr. Shays. At this time, the Chair would recognize Mr.
Tierney.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Haave, I don't mean to pick on you, but I do want to
followup on this line of thought. First of all, I'm grateful
for your offer to look at that information and get back to us.
I presume you will do that within a week or two.
Ms. Haave. Yes, sir, I will.
Mr. Tierney. I'll tell you why, because I think the public
needs confidence that this classification system is not being
used for political purposes, that it's not being used to
demonize somebody or to avoid embarrassment. We have serious
issues here, and they are how we're going to apportion our
resources and whether we're going to apportion them fighting
the cold war and looking backward with a National Missile
Defense System that's unproven and untested, or whether we're
going to acquire resources for the most immediate threat
according to our own intelligence agencies and almost every
other independent body that has looked at what our needs are at
this point in time.
You heard my rendition of how we press this matter, and I
want you to know that Mr. Waxman, who is the ranking member of
the full Committee on Government Reform, and I sent a letter as
far back as March 25th of this year, March 25th to Secretary
Rumsfeld objecting to his reclassification of already public
information, as well as his classification of a report based on
that.
And essentially, we found that this is important
information. What he is doing is preventing a public debate on
this. We can always debate whether that's a system that's
necessary or not, but we do need a debate on whether or not it
should be going to the field unproven or untested and how much
money we are going to spend or how we're going to spend $10
billion. And that's something that the American people need
confidence that those decisions are being made.
He has not responded yet. So you should know, we can give
you a copy of that letter, but since March 25th, they haven't
had any hesitation in going forward and saying that they're
going to deploy this system and making a big political
hullabaloo about it for those that they're interested in
satisfying, but they haven't found time to respond to, I think,
very legitimate instances.
Let me share with you one other aspect you may want to
investigate when you look at this. Theodore Postol is a
Professor of Science and Technology and National Security at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At one point in
time, he wrote a letter to the White House that described how
the Missile Defense Agency had doctored results of the National
Missile Defense test to hide the fact that they could not tell
the difference between simple decoys and warheads. He described
how the Agency had altered its entire test program to hide that
flaw.
Subsequently, two General Accounting Office reports issued
in March 2002 verified the facts that he had written about to
the White House.
The way the Agency responded to that was by claiming that
it was classified. What it did beyond that was it then sent
three agents to deliver a letter to Mr. Postol that was
classified as secret. The letter contained nothing more than
publicly available information deemed classified by the
Government, in his words, so that the Agency could claim that
he would be violating security agreements if he continued to
speak on the matter of national security. That's pretty
extraordinary.
That's going to a pretty extreme length, and that's just
not a matter of oversight for somebody making a bad decision
about that. That's a conscious decision to try and muzzle
somebody who had very specific and worthwhile information for
the public to know and for us to make determinations on how
we're going to allocate our resources.
So I hope you will also look into that matter. We can send
you some information on that. Will you do that?
Ms. Haave. Yes, sir.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you. That should make every American
concerned about just how these decisions are being made.
So with that in mind, and I note, Mr. Aftergood, you had a
very nice thought in your report that congressional oversight
is necessary and important, but you say it need not be arduous
or an elaborate undertaking; it can be as simple as posing a
question to the Pentagon. That's not so. We have been posing
this question for years and getting stonewalled on it.
So I think what we might discuss here is beyond--now,
that's the way Government should work and that's the way we'd
like this administration to work. They clearly are not working
that way, given the lengths to which they go to get Mr. Postol
quieted and the fact that we haven't had an answer from March
25th. It took us to 2000 to get this information first to the
public domain and then reclassified.
What's a better way for congressional oversight--and that's
the question I pose to each of the members of the panel--after
we have the challenge or the classification determination made
within the administration by the Interagency Security
Classification Appeals Panel, ISCAP, which is nothing more than
executive officers looking it over, although they have had a
pretty good record of ordering some declassification that's not
a 100 percent when they don't agree with the public, when the
public raises a question about reclassification, and as to
declassification, where do they go? What should be Congress'
role? How do we get some decent oversight that sticks to what
we are trying to do here and not go beyond that?
Mr. Leonard, I'll start with you and maybe go left to
right.
Mr. Leonard. If I understand your question correctly, sir,
is, where would the public go after, for example----
Mr. Tierney. Well, when Members of Congress who says we'd
like have this declassified, the executive says no, then you
have Mr. Aftergood's recommendations, have a nice letter
saying, please reconsider and let us know what your thoughts
are, and they basically send you off into ether space
somewhere.
Mr. Leonard. Basically, pursuant to the order right now,
you've identified one of the two primary routes individuals
have. One is to go through the courts, through the Freedom of
Information Act process.
Mr. Tierney. What's the record been on that? Is anybody
familiar with any court----
Mr. Leonard. My understanding is that almost without
exception the courts will always defer to the executive branch.
Mr. Tierney. Exactly.
Mr. Leonard. And the other process that you alluded to,
that's provided for in the Executive order, is to go to this
administrative appeals process, to this interagency group which
does have at least somewhat of a more favorable record with
respect to releasing the information.
My experience has been that, when a group of agency
representatives get together rather than just the owner of the
information, you get a less parochial view of the situation, a
more holistic assessment, and I believe, off the top of my
head, the historical record is that, approaching 60-some odd
percent of the time, the panel will override an agency's
determination in whole or in part.
Mr. Tierney. I appreciate that account.
Now, we get to the point where, in instances, the decision
back to thepetition, whether it be a Member of Congress or a
member of the public in general, is unsatisfactory, Congress
should have a role to play here. That's our oversight
responsibility. We've had hearings here. We get stonewalled
left and right. So what you're saying, our only response is to
subpoena and beat it out of them, and in that sense of the
word, ought there to be some statutory change? What's your
opinion where we should go from here?
Mr. Leonard. The challenge there is that, by and large, the
exercise of classification authority has primarily been
pursuant to the President's constitutional Article II
authorities, and that, of course, would complicate any sort of
legislative remedy with respect to ultimate decisions along
those lines.
Mr. Tierney. So you're saying, nowhere, we're stuck?
Mr. Leonard. I do believe that there can be more responsive
means by which to resolve disputes. I believe the ISCAP process
can be enhanced. I believe----
Mr. Tierney. How would you do that?
Mr. Leonard. One of my concerns is the ISCAP process right
now is primarily--and I'm not trying to be disparaging here--
but is primarily a hobby horse for historical researchers. And
again, that's important that they get that kind of information,
but I believe that process can be used for more relevant, more
timely information as well, and I believe it can be stepped up,
possibly with some sort of specific time limitations for action
and with consequences if action is not taken; for example,
absent of a decision, such and such would occur. Those types of
remedies at least provide for a responsiveness and provide for
some consequences if attention and resources are not devoted to
that topic.
Mr. Tierney. Ms. Haave, since that's in a Presidential
Executive order, would you recommend to the President that he
take that kind of action and step it up, as Mr. Leonard says,
or what would be your remedy for Congress and the American
public?
Ms. Haave. I think there are a number of things that we can
do that are different from how we've been doing this in the
past. The first step I just described, within the Department of
Defense, for this limited classification review for these
reports, but that's not to say that we shouldn't put in place a
process whereby that information comes to me or comes to
whoever sits in my position or in a different position as
decided by the Secretary and is an adjudicator within the
Department. That may, in fact, facilitate and speed some of the
questions and answers that you appear to want.
I think the ISCAP could, in fact, be expanded a bit beyond
its typical historical base to do those kinds of adjudication
when the Congress is feeling that it's not getting the
information that it needs.
On that committee sit representatives from each of the
agencies. We review the information that's in question. We
research it, and we make our decisions. And that could, in
fact, for your information, be provided to you.
Mr. Tierney. Is my understanding correct that right now
ISCAP does not do that? For instance, if the Secretary ever
decided to respond to our March 25, 2004, letter, and we wanted
to appeal that to ISCAP, we'd be thrown in the pile and maybe
never reached at all.
Ms. Haave. Mr. Leonard could probably answer this. I don't
know that the Congress has ever come to ISCAP and asked for
that.
Mr. Leonard. There's no reason why that could not be
processed according to those procedures.
Mr. Tierney. With respect, of course, that then those
executives, which would include the Department of Defense
Secretary, would then want to respond from that body where they
haven't responded individually.
Mr. Leonard. That's correct.
If I could make one further point, Mr. Congressman, that I
neglected to make. There is currently on the statutory books
since 2001 a Public Interest Declassification Board. This is an
outgrowth of Senator Moynihan's Secrecy Commission. It was his
legacy. It does exist on the books, as I say.
The administration has taken action to look to appointing
some members, but quite frankly, there has been no action from
the legislative branch that I'm aware of to appoint their
members. And this is an existing forum that does exist that
will allow for some of these issues that you addressed to be
worked out in such manner.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Mr. Aftergood.
I'm taking license here, Mr. Chairman, for the last two of
these. Thank you.
Mr. Aftergood. There's a pending proposal that's been
introduced in the House and the Senate. In the House, it's H.R.
4855, to create an independent National Security Classification
Board, which I believe is intended to serve as a forum to
mediate these kinds of disputes. In several ways, it really
replicates the Public Interest Declassification Board that Mr.
Leonard mentioned, but it's something that's maybe worth
considering.
To answer your question directly, what to do, I think look
at what works and strengthen it. ISCAP works on a small scale.
It has led to the declassification of all or part of the
majority of disputed cases it has worked on.
ISOO, Mr. Leonard's organization, if he will forgive me,
works. A couple of months ago, I faxed him, Mr. Leonard, a
letter pointing out the Taguba report seemed to be improperly
classified. He responded to me the very same day, initiating an
investigation and carrying on some work he already had
underway. I thought it was an extraordinary response from a
Government agency. Nobody responds like that.
But ISOO is a tiny organization, particularly when it's
compared to the vast expanse of the Government classification
system.
But look at what works and strengthen it. I would even say
that your questions that have been stonewalled are not without
effect. I don't think Ted Postol would say that you have
accomplished nothing. I would think he would say you have
accomplished a great deal by standing up for his interests over
a period of years.
Regular hearings are very important. I think, perhaps when
Mr. Leonard's organization puts out his annual review of the
classification system, it might be an opportune time to hold
regular oversight hearings on what's going on in the
classification system, what's going right, what's going wrong.
Harness the courts. The scope of judicial review has
shrunken over the years to the point that courts now routinely
defer to executive branch agencies. They say, if you say it's
classified, that's all we need to know, we're not going to look
further. That is not what Congress intended when it enacted the
Freedom of Information Act. I think if there is the political
will, it would be very desirable if Congress could say our
intention is that the courts do real review of classification
decisions. That doesn't mean overturn them all the time. It
means look at them and see if they make sense. Do not defer.
Exercise your judicial function. If that can be accomplished,
then a great deal will have been done.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Mr. Crowell.
Mr. Crowell. Mr. Tierney, I think, in fairness to the
Markle Foundation, I should say that they have not studied this
issue, and I cannot represent them on it, but I do have
personal views.
Mr. Tierney. Well, let me hear your personal views.
Mr. Crowell. First of all, I participated in the Commission
on Secrecy that Senator Moynihan conducted, and as a result of
some of that participation, I have seen large numbers of
Government documents released and declassified.
My personal belief is that we have to start with the
policies that currently exist and the guidelines that currently
exist at the department and agency levels, and we have to
refine them and redefine them in some ways in which we
emphasize what needs to be released to the public and what must
be shared with other agencies in order to conduct the fight on
terrorism, as opposed to the current mechanism which is owing
it toward what must be protected.
Second, guidelines that are completely inconsistent with
those policies should be developed in each agency. Each agency
has a unique problem that they have to deal with in terms of
substance and so on, but they should be refined even further
to--and issued in each agency and then reviewed by those
departments to make sure they are consistent with the policies
of release and of sharing.
Third, there should be metrics and audits that are
conducted, as many of them as possible conducted in automated
means, which means that you actually look at trends that were
discussed here by the committee, and each agency expected to
review those audits and those trends and make reports.
Finally, there should be a compliance mechanism which says,
here are the consequences of not following these policies.
And I said finally, but I think the final thing is that
there should be reports to Congress which essentially say how
the policies and guidelines are being followed and how
consistent the practices and conformance is across the entire
Government. I think that's at least a fair way in which we can
approach the problem.
Mr. Tierney. That's very helpful.
I thank all of you for your testimony.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman.
I want to just first start out by saying, I have this
impression that the President's in charge, and then it
degenerates into 4,000 people who then make the decision. I
used the word degenerate, but I mean, in other words, it goes
down to 4,000 people. Is that a right impression or a wrong
impression?
Mr. Leonard. The one thing I would modify that with, Mr.
Chairman, is the critical role that agency heads play. The
President, in his executive order, directs agency heads to take
personal involvement to ensure the commitment of senior
management.
Mr. Shays. So how many people do we think it would be? In
other words, if the President wanted to delegate to one person
and say we need to change this and I want to get everybody
together, you're not going to get 4,000 people together. How
many people would the President need to get together with?
Mr. Leonard. You would need to get together those agency
heads with original classification authority, as well as
especially those agencies with other unique statutory or
regulatory authorities in this related area. You're talking
dozens. I can't give you an exact count, but it is----
Mr. Shays. It would be just dozens?
Mr. Leonard. I'm sorry, sir.
Mr. Shays. It would just be dozens? It would be under 100?
Mr. Leonard. Yes, sir. I firmly believe that those 4,000
original classifiers can respond very effectively to the
leadership of their individual agencies. That's where the tone
is set. That's where, that's where----
Mr. Shays. Let me say, where I think the tone is set is at
the very top, and I have this general view that most
Presidents, but particularly this administration, believe that
the less known, the better. I happen to believe the more known,
the better. I think they draw on experiences of past
Presidents, Iran Contra, you go through this list of it, and
there's this general view that I hold that you don't talk, you
don't tell, you don't discuss, you don't disclose. That's a
view I hold as a Republican about, frankly, a Republican
administration.
At any rate, the tone is set to the agency heads, and you
believe that, ultimately, agency heads set the tone for the
various people, the 4,000 people that work under them.
Mr. Leonard. Absolutely, sir. Secrecy is an important tool,
especially in time of war, but it is a tool that comes at a
price.
There's a consequence to secrecy, and my frustration is
that I do not believe that this Government, through its
agencies, consistently approaches the issue of to classify or
not as a deliberate process, as an informed process; that
secrecy in some quarters is almost a fundamental first
response.
Secrecy can be a fundamental issue, and it should be. It's
a fundamental tool, but it should never be an automatic first
response, because there are consequences to it, and that's what
we have to instill, from my perspective, a more informed and
more deliberate process in terms of to classify or to not.
Mr. Shays. Let me get into that in a second, but Ms. Haave,
do you disagree with the general view that it's the President
down to agency heads and then 4,000 people?
Ms. Haave. Clearly, there's a framework that we work to
that is executed by the agency heads through the Department. I
will say that, with respect to a number of the reports that are
coming out now and because of the interest in them, that the
timeframe by which we would do these security reviews normally
has been shortened, and in fact, the Department has had
actually a good history of declassifying large amounts of
information. In fact, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
has initiated a tiger team, if you will, to look at documents
pertaining to pre-Iraq and Afghanistan, as to whether or not
they can now, in fact, be declassified.
So I think there is no doubt that, at the top, the tone is
set, and I think that is executed through the Department. We
have somewhere on the order of 2 million cleared personnel.
That's equivalent, roughly, I think, to the population----
Mr. Shays. What's that mean?
Ms. Haave. People who have clearances, confidential,
secret, top secret. That's roughly equivalent, I think, to the
population of the State of Rhode Island. So it's not an
inconsequential effort that we go through, the way that the
Department does it, that it's decentralized.
Mr. Shays. I don't know what that says to me. You're
saying, 2 million people can look at classified documents. How
does that relate to the issue of overclassification?
Ms. Haave. What it says is that how we conduct our
training, how we conduct our oversight, we probably are the
largest organization that has classified information.
Mr. Shays. I understand, but I don't gain any comfort from
that or not because, once something is classified, I don't have
the right to talk about it.
Ms. Haave. Correct.
Mr. Shays. I don't have the right to talk about it. I have
oversight of the Department. I can't talk about it, and I have
17 years now of experience and some huge disagreements with
your Department, and, I mean, my own Government's Department of
Defense.
I'm grateful for what the Department of Defense does. But I
can go back to 1991 where I had an Inspector General who said
they classified a study. Our study was that we had determined
that 40 percent of the masks were basically leaking. These are
the chemical masks, and nobody's doing anything about it, and
it's classified. So they came to me. I went to Senator Riegle
at the time, who also knew about this, to say, what do we do
about this? And there was this play on two different parts. One
is we didn't want to disclose.
First off, the Army disagreed that they were vulnerable and
that they leaked. So we debated for 6 years on whether the
Inspector General's report was accurate, which for the most
part was, and we had this issue of, well, do we declare that
we're vulnerable. But then I had this knowledge that the men
and women who were putting these things on were putting on
masks that didn't basically work. They didn't know it.
Now, the Department was saying, well, it's still a debate.
It didn't seem to me we should have debated for 6 years whether
this Inspector General's report was valid, and yet we finally
outed this report when we started to talk about Gulf war
illnesses because it happened to relate to it, and then it was
made public by the Department of Defense. They put it on the
Internet, and then they took it off.
I mean, that's just one experience that I've had, and
frankly, I just, for the life of me, don't know how to have
dealt with it. I couldn't disclose it, and yet I knew about it.
I'd like to know--Mr. Aftergood first, why don't you just
start--is this a President to executive heads to potentially
4,000 people?
Mr. Aftergood. My perception is that it's the agency head
level that is the most important, perhaps even more important
in some ways than the President. If you look back over the past
decade, what you see is that openness and transparency flourish
where the agency head cares about the subject and wants it to
happen. They care about it, it happens. If they are
indifferent, it doesn't happen.
In the Clinton administration, we had former Energy
Secretary Hazel O'Leary who, in fact, got way out in front of
her own administration with an openness initiative. Some people
said she declassified to a fault. I don't necessarily agree
with that, but the point is, she cared about the issue. She
made it a priority. It happened, even over the resistance of
her own agency.
In the first Bush administration, DCI Robert Gates had his
own modest openness initiative in the intelligence community.
It's the agency heads who really make stuff happen.
Mr. Shays. I don't want us to be naive. I don't want us to
be foolish, but I just really believe when I look at the
documents that I've seen, my number comes closer to the 90
percent overclassified than the 10 percent because I would tell
you, page after page, slide after slide, I would look at the
Army folks, the Marines, the Air Force, the Navy folks who
would give these briefings, whether in Iraq or anywhere else,
and I'm saying, is this classified? And it would have, you
know, some classification, and I would be dumbfounded as to
why. Collectively, when I start to think about it, I can hardly
think of a few things that I felt were classifiable material.
Let me ask you, Mr. Crowell, your view of the President,
the agency heads and then the 4,000. Is that the way you view
it?
Mr. Crowell. Again, this is a personal answer and not
reflective----
Mr. Shays. Yes, it's an answer based on the fact that I
read your bio.
Mr. Crowell. I have gotten the experience.
Mr. Shays. Yes, you have a hell of a lot of experience, and
that's not secret.
Mr. Crowell. I would agree, first of all, that the overall
tone is set in policies that come from the Presidents to
Departments, but I would also agree with the members of the
panel that the agency heads really set the tone for what
happens on the day-to-day basis, on whether or not people are
properly trained, properly oriented and whether or not there
are any consequences whatsoever for classifying something
improperly.
Mr. Shays. Let me do this. Let me ask this one other
question, then go to Mr. Tierney.
You get the quote for the day, Mr. Leonard. You said, for
example, ``it is no secret that the Government classifies too
much information.''
What is a secret to me is whether it's 10 percent or 90
percent. I'm going to ask each of you to give me your best
estimate of whether you think we classify, overclassify too
much to the level of 10 percent or closer to the level of 90
percent. I'm going to give you an opportunity to answer last.
You had the quote of the day.
Mr. Crowell, I want you to give me the answer. What is the
secret to me is whether it's 10 percent or closer to 90
percent.
Mr. Crowell. In all fairness, Mr. Chairman, I have to put
some context around the question. I realize you framed it
carefully. I'd like to frame the answer carefully.
I believe, with regard to advanced technologies and weapons
systems and so on, it would be more favorable to proper
classification initially, but it would remain classified for a
longer period of time than most people might consider
appropriate when you look at the pace of technology today.
Mr. Shays. So, on the technology side, you would be closer
that we overclassify over 10 percent or less, but over time,
it's still classified, and then you could maybe make the
argument that it is closer to the 90 percent over time?
Mr. Crowell. That's correct, sir. With regard to sources
and methods in the intelligence field, I would have the same
general, although I'd make it an 80/20 cut.
Mr. Shays. At the end?
Mr. Crowell. Yes. It would be 80 percent properly
classified to protect a source or a method in the beginning,
and then over time that source and method goes away and it
doesn't get declassified.
Mr. Shays. And it should be, in your judgment.
Mr. Crowell. With regard to information----
Mr. Shays. It should be--over time be declassified.
Mr. Crowell. Yes. With regard to information, that is the
essence of conclusions either of analysis or whatever, I think
it tends to be overclassified quite heavily because people fear
that sources or methods will be revealed when, in fact, if they
did their own careful analysis, they would find that a lot of
information, just set as information without saying where it
came from and who produced it, would be unclassified.
Mr. Shays. You know what, this is a longer answer than what
I am expecting.
You want to jump in?
But they're good answers. It's not a reflection on you,
these are excellent helpful responses. Mr. Aftergood.
Mr. Aftergood. My personal access to classified information
is very limited and entirely unauthorized. I don't feel
qualified to answer that in any detail. I would say that your
question is predicated on a correct assumption that
classification decisions are subjective.
Mr. Shays. Could I ask you a question? Based on your
answer, are you saying you're like Woodward, you just basically
get all this information but----
Mr. Aftergood. That's not the way I would put it, but I
would say sometimes I stumble on stuff, sometimes people send
me stuff. That's just the way it is. Classification is a
subjective matter. You know, I might have my opinion, others
will have their opinion. What do you do about it? I think if
there are 4,000 people in the executive branch who are out
there classifying information, maybe we need, if not 4,000,
then at least dozens of individuals or entities distributed
throughout the executive branch whose job it is to oversee and
to look for overclassification, many ISOOs planted throughout
the executive branch that function like antibodies to counter
inappropriate classification. Just as classification authority
is widely distributed, maybe we need to find a way to widely
distribute declassification authority, people whose only job is
to look for overclassification.
Mr. Shays. OK. You're getting to me like Alan Greenspan,
you're talking in tongues a little bit for me. My original
question was the 10 percent/90 percent.
Mr. Aftergood. And my original answer was I don't know.
Mr. Shays. But you used that as a wonderful opportunity. I
didn't catch on right away.
Ms. Haave.
Ms. Haave. I agree with that. I don't know.
Mr. Shays. No, you do know. You do know more than most.
Ms. Haave. I do believe that we overclassify information. I
do believe that it is extensive not for the purpose of wanting
to hide anything, but I will tell you that with respect to
military operations, people have a tendency to err on the side
of caution and so therefore may in fact classify things, and at
the time they could, in fact, be classified. Military
operational data tends to be perishable. So after the operation
much of that can be declassified.
There are clearly things that will continue to take place
in an operational environment that we do not want to release.
And those are--you know, have to do with sources and methods
and----
Mr. Shays. So you're basically saying it's greater than 10
percent, but you're not suggesting how much greater.
Ms. Haave. How about if I say 50/50?
Mr. Shays. OK. That's significant. Someone in your
experience would say we tend to do it 50/50. I think that's
quite significant. Thank you.
Mr. Leonard.
Mr. Leonard. Two approaches. One is information that
shouldn't be classified in the first place is ineligible to be
classified. That's a number that, quite frankly, from my
perspective over the past year, is disturbingly increasing,
where information is being classified that is clear, blatant
violation of the order.
Other than that, as Mr. Aftergood pointed out and as I
pointed out in my testimony, this is an act of discretion. It
is an application of judgment by an original classifier. To
give some empirical basis to my answer, I serve as the
executive secretary for the appeals panel. And at least in that
environment, in those instances where the panel still votes to
uphold the classification, based upon my over 30 years of
security and counterintelligence background, my personal
opinion, my personal judgment, is even that is overclassified.
And so from that point of view, I would put it almost even
beyond 50/50 in terms of when it comes to applying judgment,
there's over 50 percent of the information that, while it may
meet the criteria for classification, really should not be
classified in terms of what we lose. The price we pay for
classification outweighs any perception, any advantage we
perceive we gain.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Tierney.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Ms. Haave, when a document comes from the Department of
Defense and is marked on it ``For Official Use Only,'' who
creates that designation and what exactly does it mean?
Ms. Haave. ``for Official Use Only'' is not a
classification level. It's an exemption, if you will, from
public release for certain types of information that may have
to do with privacy, it may have to do with proprietary
information, it may have to do with law enforcement
information. There are categories of information. ``for
Official Use Only'' does not mean, however, that is releaseable
to the public.
Mr. Tierney. So let's take an example of the situation
where a director of operations, in testing an evaluation,
issues a report that he is required by statute to make, comes
before the Government Reform Committee and testifies orally as
to the content of that report in significant detail without
objection from the Department of Defense. There are charts,
there is written testimony, it's on C-SPAN, it's recorded and
replayed on C-span. That information is put on Web sites,
remains on Web sites for an extraordinary amount of time.
Groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists and other outside
experts review the information and put opinions out with
respect to it.
And then months later, in answer to a request of this
committee that the report be issued out, all those things being
in the public domain for almost a year, the committee gets a
document saying ``For Official Use Only.'' How does that fit in
with the classification or with the description that you just
gave me? What category does that fall under?
Ms. Haave. Without knowing the substance of the report,
sir, it's hard for me to--and I won't look at the substance of
the report.
Mr. Tierney. Well, I can tell you the substance of the
report was public for almost a year, but it was publicly stated
it is a statutory report.
Mr. Shays. Will the gentleman suspend? Let me tell you this
is the challenge that we face as a subcommittee. Part of our
responsibility is to--in the context of a public hearing--is to
disclose what we've learned. When we get documents ``For
Official Use Only'' we don't know if that's classified or not
classified. Frankly, the way I treat it is you would prefer
whoever sends it that it not be publicized, but we have every
right to publicize it. That's kind of the way I interpret it.
Mr. Tierney. With all due respect, it goes beyond that for
me, as you know. It's to the point of ludicrous. When you put
it out there in the public domain for that, the Department does
not object to its--nobody came in and said this individual
shouldn't testify. It's a statutory report. Then to try and put
some sort of designation, which admittedly is not a
classification, smacks to me of just an attempt to put this on
and hope they don't put it out, because we'd like to keep it
secret, and then some years later when that information is used
for the foundation for a very critical report on something that
a group of people want to politically do, it's classified
retroactively. That's the challenge.
I don't expect you to answer this now. I don't want to be
unfair to you or anything like that. But that's the challenge I
want you to take back with you on that. Because that is an
insult to the American people, to the public, to this
institution of Congress which continually struggles with the
way in which it's going to do its oversight. If I have to be
critical of all the things with this particular Congress, the
last of this 108th, 107th, it's an absolute abdication of our
responsibility for oversight. A lot of it is not the fault of
Congress but the fault of a totally uncooperative
administration that will not be forthcoming and will not
cooperate and will not work with Congress to allow it to do its
job and feels that the executive--the prerogative surpasses any
responsibility to Congress and doesn't allow or want Congress
to do its constitutional functions.
I think we've got to redraw that balance. Congress has to
have the ability to have oversight. It should be strong
oversight if we're going to have a successful government here,
particularly in view of the 9/11 Commission Report.
If we have, as we do have, the challenge of homeland
security and protecting these people or whatever, and if we
want to give more authority to a national intelligence director
and to a center on counterterrorism, then we had better have an
equally aggressive congressional oversight, or it's going to
lead to an executive that is out of control, taking this
country in a direction we may not want to go. So it has to be
corresponding--for to us do the job we need to do against
terror, we have to have that national intelligence director, I
believe, and a counterterrorism center. But that only works if,
correspondingly, we have a strong congressional oversight
authority that goes in line with what our constitutional
responsibilities are, and that means getting this issue of
classification under control and not having that kind of a
situation where you get ``For Official Use Only'' nonsense sent
up here after it has been in the public domain, and then a
reclassification just because a report is critical and doesn't
let you go off in some ideological path here to try to satisfy
one element of your supporters on that.
So I thank you. I won't ask you for an answer on that
because it really was more rhetorical than anything. But please
do get us your review of that. Let us know. We do need to get
the bottom of that particular issue.
Thank you, each and every one of the witnesses, for the
valuable contributions you have made here today.
Mr. Shays. I agree with the gentleman. You have been a
wonderful panel and very helpful.
I am going to ask another question that I am wrestling
with. I don't expect necessarily I'm going to get definitive
answers. But in my capacity of chairman of the National
Security Subcommittee, we oversee Defense, State Department,
and the Department of Homeland Security, for programs, waste,
abuse, fraud, how well are they running the program and how
well they are not. So we have a keen interest in the
notification system. The country has been at yellow, which is
elevated alert. Everybody thinks we've just been at general
alert, because that's the way we feel. But we're at elevated.
When we kick into orange, which is high alert, that's quite
significant.
We kicked into high alert last December, and we kicked into
high alert because we were basically told planes might be
hijacked from Europe to the United States and a concern that at
a high-profile event a dirty weapon might be used. Now, there
was more detail to that. The public had a general basis to
understand it was something like that.
So when people called and asked should their kids fly to
Europe during Christmas when they heard we went to orange, I
said well, I wouldn't have my daughter fly to Europe because
she'd have to fly back. The flying back was the concern.
When I had groups say, well, if we went to an event like
New Year's Eve in New York, would it make sense to bring my
kids? I said, well, I sure as heck wouldn't bring my child. In
fact, I would think twice before going because it is at a
potential target.
Now, in the process of having Admiral Loy come before us,
the Deputy of Department of Homeland Security, I asked him what
was the threat? He said to me, I can't disclose this in an open
forum, and I am thinking to myself, let me get this straight:
The terrorists know that they're going to hijack a plane and
the terrorists know they want to do the following, and the
government knows, but the public doesn't know that may go to
those venues.
I just find that absurd to the point of wondering how could
he have said no. He did say no. He said no more than once when
I requested it. Walk me through his best argument as to why he
would say that. It may be a very good one, and you can wipe the
smile off my face, but tell me the best argument that you would
know for not disclosing this information when the terrorists
knew and the committee knew and certain privileged people knew.
By the way, I want to say this to you. Every staff person
and every Member who got that briefing told me they wouldn't
fly to Europe and they wouldn't go to a venue like New Year's
Eve in New York. So they knew. The public didn't know, and so
tell me the best argument here.
Mr. Leonard. Without knowing the specifics myself, sir, the
best argument that I could articulate is concern possibly that
what we knew, how we knew it, the specificity that we knew it,
and whatever might reveal sensitive sources and methods that
was used to collect that information.
At the same time, though, I would like to make one very
important point. As you know, the President amended Executive
Order 12958 just last year. One of the things we specifically
included in that order was that when it comes to homeland
security, when it comes to imminent threat to life or to
property with respect to homeland security, and there is
classified information that individuals need to have, the
absence of a security clearance shall not serve as an
impediment to the sharing of that information.
Mr. Shays. So, for instance, if the chief of police of New
York needed this information, he could get it.
Mr. Leonard. Exactly. Just a couple of months ago I had a
rather senior official come up to me and say--this was post-
Madrid bombing--he said, I was in this environment, I had some
senior private sector individuals there, I was telling them
what they needed to do post-Madrid, they wanted specifics; I
felt compelled that I had to give them specifics, so I
disclosed classified information to them.
The reason he was bringing it up to me, he turned to me, he
said, Leonard, am I going to have problems with my polygraph
the next time I take one? I was able to assure him absolutely
not, because that is exactly what that revision of that policy
was intended to address, those types of situations.
The challenge now for agencies--and not all agencies are
there--is to implement this provision within their own
implementation regulations so as to empower their rank and file
to be able to have that same confidence. He did it not because
he knew about the policy, he did it because he had the rank
that gave him the confidence. But we need to empower people.
That was the intent behind that policy revision. It was very
important, and we need to move out on implementing it.
Mr. Shays. Thank you for sharing that. Is there any
question we should have asked any of you that you might have
prepared that for, that you think needs to be part of the
record? Frankly, sometimes that question elicits some of the
most important information we get from a hearing. Is there
anything that we need to put on the record, anything you feel
guilty about that wasn't.
Mr. Aftergood. I might add one quick thing. This whole
subject has been investigated by a congressional commission led
by Senator Moynihan, the Commission on Protecting and Reducing
Government Secrecy. They took a year or more, couple of million
dollars, produced an excellent report, a whole series of
recommendations. It essentially went nowhere.
I think one of the lessons of that is that one should not
be overly ambitious in trying to fix this whole problem at a
single blow. And that's why I think it is of particular
importance that the 9/11 Commission recommendation to start
with intelligence budget declassification is such an astute
one, because it is a finite, specific, achievable goal that
will have positive consequences throughout the system.
Mr. Leonard. If I could reiterate one point, Mr. Chairman--
I alluded to it before--but speaking of Senator Moynihan again,
there is his legacy, the Public Interest Declassification
Board. That is legislation that was passed several years ago.
It's on the books. It's never come to fruition. I personally
would urge you, to the extent you can, to confer with
leadership in the legislative branch to see if there's a way to
move forward with that. It's not a silver bullet, it's not a
solution, but it is a tool that's out there right now that
provides for legislative executive branch interaction on this
issue. And I know from my understanding, I believe the
executive branch is ready to make some nominations to serve on
that board.
Mr. Shays. That's interesting as well. Thank you.
Ms. Haave. I also would like to say that I think the
discussion really needs to be about risk and how much risk
we're willing to take. For example, if another organization has
information that is relative to the Department of Defense and
the protection of lives, and we would like to have that
information released to protect our forces, is it that one
person could be saved, 10 people could be saved, 100 people,
1,000, 10,000? At what point does that risk decision come into
play and how do we make that risk decision in the best interest
of the Nation?
Mr. Shays. Yes. OK. Thank you. Mr. Crowell, did you have
any?
Mr. Crowell. I would just like to underscore some of the
things that were said earlier about the contributions of
Senator Moynihan and his Commission on Secrecy, but also about
the book he wrote afterward which was called ``Secrets,'' which
is a remarkable study of the history and the impact of
decisions that have been made by people throughout history,
both positively and negatively on the country and our well-
being.
Mr. Shays. Thank you very much. I also want to thank Mr.
Leonard, Ms. Haave, as government officials to be able to have
you sit on the same panel with nongovernment officials, it
helps us do our job better. I appreciate you not making that an
issue. This was really a very interesting panel. I learned a
lot. We got our work cut out for us but I think it's important
work. I thank you all for the work you all do. Thank you.
With that, this hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:17 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]