Posted on 05/06/2002 8:22:51 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
The Department of Energy (DOE) recently declassified its fifth report to Congress on "inadvertent" disclosures of classified nuclear-weapons information. For the last three years, classification experts have been scouring millions of pages of supposedly declassified government documents dumped into the public domain under the Clinton administration's misguided openness policy. They have uncovered a gold mine of nuclear-warhead secrets that, according to a DOE assessment, "would aid an adversary in obtaining a weapon of mass destruction."
In 1993, citing the end of the Cold War and the "rapidly changing world situation," President Bill Clinton proposed significant changes in security-classification policies that were intended to promote greater openness and trust in government. By executive order, he mandated automatic declassification of government documents that were more than 25 years old.
The White House was in such a rush to get these materials out to the public that it eliminated the requirement of careful, page-by-page review. Instead, it permitted agencies to use a "bulk-declassification" policy. Documents 25 years old or older would not be reviewed unless risk assessments warranted a more thorough review. The risk assessment was mostly a "judgment" as to whether a box of old documents might contain nuclear-weapons information. There were to be some restrictions on automatic declassification, such as information that could aid in the development of a nuclear weapon, but many agencies simply ignored these.
All the defense agencies were affected by this order, including the CIA. The costs were significant, but the White House expected each agency to use existing resources to meet declassification requirements. Not surprisingly, given the potential costs and the impact on other operations, many agencies "judged" that the documents didn't contain such data and simply pushed the boxes out the door.
The documents were sent to the National Archives and Records Administration for storage. By 1997, however, it was clear that the openness policy had run amok. DOE security officers discovered that bulk declassification was exposing many of the nation's nuclear secrets. They ran a test case and found that anyone with a valid driver's license could access these files at the National Archives in College Park, Md., regardless of nationality. In one test, a DOE official collected copies of detailed nuclear-warhead design plans from the open shelves at the archives. They also discovered documents from this collection on the Internet.
This simply reinforced suspicions on Capitol Hill about the recklessness of Clinton's national-security policies, and Congress sought to impose more safeguards on declassification. Archivist John W. Carlin vehemently opposed this legislation as a "waste of time and resources" that would negate the letter and spirit of the administration's policy. He said nearly 500 million pages already were at the archives that would require review, with millions more anticipated. He argued that no one ever had proved that declassification had any effect on the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but Congress added a provision to the fiscal 1999 defense bill that mandated a review of each document suspected of containing nuclear secrets.
Three years later, DOE has found more than 300 declassified documents that contain nuclear-weapons secrets. Among those discovered to date: warhead-design details including size, shapes and configurations; systems for boosting warhead yields; mass and dimensions of fissile materials and nuclear-assembly systems; and the mass, design or operation of high explosives for nuclear weapons.
The most recent date found on any documents is 1976, but much of the warhead-design information is from early-generation U.S. nuclear-warhead programs. DOE says this information is "of significant value" to nations embarking on the production of nuclear weapons and to terrorist groups trying to assemble a simple nuclear device.
There appear to be several hundred million pages yet to be reviewed. For fiscal 2002, Congress appropriated nearly $12 million for the job. The DOE has not responded to our requests for the total costs to date, how much remains to be done and whether documents still accessible at the archives are suspected of containing nuclear secrets.
It would be tragic if terrorists were able to attack us using information collected from our own National Archives. The Bush administration should require that all such information be secured immediately until a thorough review can be completed.
Notra Trulock is associate editor of the AIM Report and a former director of intelligence at the U.S. Department of Energy.
Unbelievable!
You're right Marty.....Clintooon admitted he enjoyed sharing information with the "GLOBAL COMMUNITY."
One of the problems is that while the community has acknowledged the value of (OSINT) Open Source Intelligence gathering for US Government consumption, some have dropped the ball on watching our own hen house. The same powerful methods used by gov and private contractors has been and still is used on US assets.
Robert Steele, a Retired Intel Analysts and founder of Open Source Solutions,(OSS.Net) has promoted this method and the power of open source. However,in the past he also promoted the mass declassification of documents. In theory his argument was valid, but as stated in this article the ball was dropped in the vetting of docments before release.
Major players who in the past had the ear of executive branch is Alvin and Heidi Toffler. They have promoted open source declassification of intel for many years with the argument that too many resources are being wasted on a mass of documents which have little to limited content of a classified nature. In their book "War-Antiwar" they discuss these arguments. Through think tanks they may still have the ear of the executive branch.
You are quite right.I've read speeches By Hazel O'Leary through various search engines and she was the one who ran the DOE early on #42's 1st term.A fascinatingly disturbing Speech by this woman is at this address. http://gos.sbc.edu/o/oleary.html
Hazel O'Leary--- "OPENNESS"---December 7, 1993 Last paragraph: "That's the beginning of an initiative. It is, as I have described it, a foot in the tub. We've got a lot more to do. My sense is,since there is so much to do ,we ought to do it with a clear set of priorities,focused on what the Department of Energy's partners and customers want". Noone ever bothered for a Listing of who those Partners and Customers were did they?
"In August of 1992 they produced a study that moved through the hierarchy of the Department of Energy and came to the conclusion that we now share as a Department,entirely,that there is much information that can be declassified". While I believe those words show a 'Noble' attempt at declassification,surely the following years of info. 'disbursed ,stolen,and given away, negates this entire speech.
"The United States from its stand as leader in determining and letting the world know what it's able and wanting to release in terms of information to inform the dialogue and to also embrace and deal first hand with issues involving transparency. You've got to be certain that stockpiles being reduced are reduced and the material is where we say it is and it's being managed correctly. By releasing information today and further in June and through the year and in the coming years, I think we will be able to posture ourselves in that leadership position that our President took earlier this summer.
Nooooooooo, this policy couldn't have been payback for campaign Contributions.<=========Dripping Sarcasm
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